Every year brings a plethora of books examining our world and times. Here are just a few of them-
Abolition for the People by Colin Kaepernick – Abolition for the People brings together thirty essays representing a diversity of voices—political prisoners, grassroots organizers, scholars, and relatives of those killed by the anti-Black terrorism of policing and prisons. This collection presents readers with a moral choice: “Will you continue to be actively complicit in the perpetuation of these systems,” Kaepernick asks in his introduction, “or will you take action to dismantle them for the benefit of a just future?”
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green – The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet—from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu—on a five-star scale.
Can We Talk About Israel? by Daniel Sokatch – From the expert who understands both sides of one of the world’s most complex, controversial topics, a modern-day Guide for the Perplexed—a primer on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Countdown Bin Laden by Chris Wallace – Journalist and former longtime anchor of Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace delivers a thrilling new account of the final eight months of intelligence gathering, national security strategizing, and meticulous military planning that leads to the climactic mission when SEAL Team Six closes in on its target.
Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America by Eyal Press – Drone pilots who carry out targeted assassinations. Undocumented immigrants who man the “kill floors” of industrial slaughterhouses. Guards who patrol the wards of the United States’ most violent and abusive prisons. Press offers a paradigm-shifting view of the moral landscape of contemporary America through the stories of people who perform society’s most ethically troubling jobs. He shows, that we are increasingly shielded and distanced from an array of morally questionable activities that other, less privileged people perform in our name. These burdens fall disproportionately on low-income workers, undocumented immigrants, women, and people of color – and are one of the hidden costs of inequality in America.
Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing by Peter Robison – A behind-the-scenes look at how cost-cutting, toxic workplaces and cutthroat management at Boeing contributed to one of the worst disasters in modern aviation history as the company raced to beat their competition.
How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith – Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks ‘those that are honest about the past and those that are not’ that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.
The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth by Sam Quinones – From the best-selling author of Dreamland comes a searing follow-up that explores fentanyl and the quiet yet groundbreaking steps communities are taking to end the opioid crisis nationwide.
The Long War: The Inside Story of America and Afghanistan since 9/11 by David Loyn – Just as U. S. soldiers and diplomats pulled out of Afghanistan, supposedly concluding their role and responsibility in the two-decade conflict, the country fell to the Taliban. Award-winning BBC foreign correspondent Loyn uncovers the political and military strategies -and failures- that prolonged America’s longest war.
Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness by Elizabeth Samet – Samet reexamines the literature, art, and culture that emerged after World War II, bringing her expertise as a professor of English at West Point to bear on the complexity of the postwar period in national life. She exposes the confusion about American identity that was expressed during and immediately after the war, and the deep national ambivalence toward war, violence, and veterans—all of which were suppressed in subsequent decades by a dangerously sentimental attitude toward the United States’ “exceptional” history and destiny.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong – Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative —a nd its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.
The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China’s Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future by Geoffrey Cain – A riveting investigation into how a restive region of China became the site of a nightmare Orwellian social experiment -the definitive police state- and the global technology giants that made it possible.
Raise a Fist, Take a Knee: Race and the Illusion of Progress in Modern Sports by John Feinstein – Seventy-five years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line, race is still a central and defining factor of America’s professional sports leagues. With an encyclopedic knowledge of professional sports, and shrewd cultural criticism, bestselling and award-winning author John Feinstein uncovers not just why, but how, pro sports continue to perpetuate racial inequality.
Trees in Trouble: Wildfires, Infestations, and Climate Change by Daniel Mathews – A troubling story of the devastating and compounding effects of climate change in the Western and Rocky Mountain states, told through in-depth reportage and conversations with ecologists, professional forest managers, park service scientists, burn boss, activists, and more.
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Corenjo Villavicencio – Writer Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she’d tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer’s phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own.
Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine by Geoff Manaugh & Nicola Twilley – Manaugh and Twilley have been researching quarantine since long before the COVID-19 pandemic. With Until Proven Safe, they bring us a book as compelling as it is definitive, not only urgent reading for social-distanced times but also an up-to-the-minute investigation of the interplay of forces –biological, political, technological– that shape our modern world.