A popular form of writing nowadays is one that involves reexamining the lives of people, often members of marginalized groups, who have otherwise been flattened or short-changed by history.

How has society’s assumptions or prejudices informed how a person is remembered, many authors are asking, and what information is available to us that may tell a more complete story?

These are the questions Emily Van Duyne, an associate professor at Stockton University, asks in “Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation.”

In the wake of Plath’s death by suicide, her husband and fellow writer Ted Hughes constructed a narrative that he was the “stabilizing factor” in his wife’s life but that, in the end, even he couldn’t save her. But Van Duyne rejects any notion that Plath was a bad mother or merely a morbid poet. She maintains Plath ought to be remembered as a complicated woman, a formidable writer — one who outshined Hughes — and almost certainly a victim of domestic abuse.

This book is not, for the most part, a hermeneutic study or close reading of Plath’s writings. Rather, Van Duyne’s source material for this reclaimed portrait of Plath are her circumstances. In the wake of #MeToo and cultural conversations about believing women, Van Duyne argues Plath’s story ought to be given a fresh look.

Those wanting a primer on reading Plath or a comprehensive biography should look elsewhere to the plethora of extant literature on the enigmatic literary giant. But “Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation” should be seen as supplementary material for those seeking to better understand the circumstances surrounding her final years. — Krysta Fauria, Associated Press

Author Michael Brodeur takes the gym too seriously — and not seriously at all at the same time — in his book “Swole: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscles” in an effort to show the readers that the overly online world of hypermasculinity is an illusion and what a man can be is what you make of it.

Brodeur evokes his autobiography to guide the reader through the history of weightlifting and the role of men in society. He’s a middle-aged, Gen X, self- described “meathead” who brags about the depths of his squats and size of his biceps and butt, but also lives a life as the classical music critic for The Washington Post and a gay man.

These dueling identities weave through Brodeur’s “Swole.” The narrative works, most of the time, but sometimes Brodeur’s chapters feel more like miniature essays surrounding a broader theme of masculinity than a comprehensive whole.

He celebrates male bodies and men wanting to be bigger, stronger, and uses humor and the history of idols like Arnold Schwarzenegger, He-Man and professional wrestlers to show how men’s identities have evolved and changed since he was a child struggling to come to terms with his own sexual orientation.

Brodeur appears to reject the modern-day gym industry that often sells their version of the ideal body. Instead, Brodeur tells the reader to reach for the ideal you want — be comfortable looking at yourself in a mirror and know it’s also OK to be somewhat embarrassed about looking at yourself in a mirror.

Brodeur also warns about the rising influence that internet personalities are having on younger men and the unending number of TikTok personalities that basically lay out easy ways for young men to purchase and abuse anabolic steroids.

“Adrift and allegedly emasculated by the mass rejection of ‘real masculinity,’ men are now balls-deep in an imaginary internet-based civil war with themselves,” he writes.

“Swole” allows men to celebrate masculinity as they want to define it. — Ken Sweet, Associated Press