The Heritage: Black Athletes: A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism by Howard Bryant, 2018, 272 pages, paperback, e-book, and audiobook.

In this powerful book, sportswriter Howard Bryant, blends sports history, the story of black athletes, politics, and patriotism. His account of the struggles of Black athletes mirrors the efforts of ordinary Black people to be treated the same as White Americans, for the Black mind to be valued as much as the Black body. 

The Heritage

 

A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in My Dutch American Family 
by Debra Bruno with an afterword by Eleanor C. Mire, 2024, 287 pages, hardback, and e-book

When Debra Bruno began researching her mother’s Dutch ancestry, an historian friend told her “If you have Dutch ancestors in the Hudson Valley, they probably owned slaves.” She and Eleanor Mire, a Black woman exploring her own family from the same area, worked together to find as much as they could about the slaveholders and the people they owned in the Hudson Valley. This moving book is not only a genealogical inquiry and a history of slavery in one region, but also an excavation of the carefully constructed cultural fiction that paints the North as an innocent bystander in America’s sin of slavery.

Hudson Valley Reckoning

Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church 
by Hahrie Han, 2024, 285 pages, hardback, e-book, and audio book

In this illuminating and absorbing book, political scientist Hahrie Han describes a majority white megachurch in Ohio that created a successful faith-based program designed to foster anti-racism and systemic change. She explores why this program seemed to make a real difference, unlike many DEI programs. To help answer this question, she followed four participants in the program, Black and white, and the Church’s black pastor, Chuck Mingo for seven years.

Undivided

Firekeeper's Daughter
by Angeline Boulley, 2021, 494 pp, paperback, e-book, and audio book

The Firekeeper’s Daughter is a gripping novel about Daunis, a biracial teenage girl (White and Ojibwe) living in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Daunis is dealing with her mixed heritage and the infiltration into the Indigenous community of a new deadly drug, a form of methamphetamine. The story depicts the Ojibwe language and cultural teachings, showing that Indigenous tribes are not an thing of the past, but are made up of people operating in modern society, while preserving ancient traditions that lend purpose and joy to their lives.
Firekeeper's Daughter

The Talk 

by Darrin Bell,  2023, 352 pages, paperback, e-book

In his moving graphic memoir, Black editorial cartoonist Darrin Bell portrays the impact that racism has had on him. It begins when he was six years old and his mother has “The Talk” with him, explaining why it was safer for him to be playing with a neon green water gun than with a realistic looking toy gun. It ends with him trying to answer his six-year-old son’s questions about death of George Floyd. This powerful work should be read by everyone trying to understand issues of race, what’s at stake, and how we might fix it.

The Talk

He/She/They:How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters

by Schuyler Bailar, 2023, 370 pages, hardback, e-book, and audiobook.

In this engaging and informative book Schuyler Bailer, champion swimmer and transgender activist, describes his personal experiences as a trans man and the broader issues of gender identity and sexuality. If you want to know more about gender diversity and why trans rights matter to all of us, read this book.

He/She/They

Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity

by Michele Norris, 2024, 471 pages, hardback, e-book, and audiobook

In this absorbing and original book, journalist Michele Norris describes what she discovered when she began the Race Card Project in 2010 to find out what people really think about race. She left two-hundred postcards that read, “Race. Your Thoughts. 6 words. Please send.” everywhere she went on a 36-city book tour and received a flood of responses. Her 6 words: “Still more work to be done.”

Our Hidden Conversations

Can We Talk About Israel? A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted

by Daniel Sokatch and Illustrated by Christopher Noxon, 2021, 375 pages, paperback, e-book, and audiobook.

Daniel Sokatch, the Jewish-American chief executive of the New Israel Fund, has written an engaging and balanced story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He outlines the history of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and discusses several current contentious issues. As Sokatch puts it, “when it comes to Israel, things are never black and white. Israel is all about the grays.”

Can We Talk About Israel?

Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury

by Drew Gilpin Faust, 2023, 304 pages, hardback, e-book, and audiobook.

In this absorbing memoir, Drew Gilpin Faust, Civil War historian and former president of Harvard University, depicts her childhood in 1950’s Virginia in a privileged white family and describes how she gradually rejected the tenets of racial segregation and the constraints of gender that she had been raised with.

Necessary Trouble

King: A Life

by Jonathan Eig, 2023, 669 pages, hardback, e-book, and audiobook.
 
In this sweeping and engrossing biography of Martin Luther King Jr, journalist Jonathan Eig takes a fresh look at the life and achievements of the civil rights leader. 

King: A Life

Small Mercies

by Dennis Lehane

In this outstanding novel, Dennis Lehane depicts racism, social class, and family during the explosive struggle over school busing in South Boston (Southie) during the summer of 1974.  It is a moving, thought-provoking book about racism, privilege, and hate.

Small Mercies

Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness

by Laura Coates.

In this compelling account, former Federal prosecutor turned CNN legal analyst, Laura Coates describes the role that race play in our criminal justice system and the contradiction she found too often between what is right and what is lawful. 

Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness

Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America

by Dahlia Lithwick.

In this well-written and engaging book, journalist and lawyer, Dahlia Lithwick tells the important story of the women lawyers who have fought against Trumpism and its threats to the rule of law for the past six years.

Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and
the Battle to Save America

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation

by Linda Villarosa

In this powerful, carefully researched book, journalist Linda Villarosa builds on her 2018 articles on mortality among Black mothers and infants to describe the significant health challenges faced by Black American simply because they are Black.

Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968

by  Thomas E. Ricks

In this engrossing and innovative study, war correspondent and author Thomas Ricks examines the Civil Rights Movement through the lens of military history. He examines the Movement that ended the segregated world of Jim Crow South from the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968.

Waging a Good War: A Military History
of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement

by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

In this gripping account, New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
describe how they investigated movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s predatory sexual
behavior towards attractive young actresses and helped ignite the #MeToo movement.

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment
Story That Helped Ignite a Movement

City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town

by Susan Hartman
 
In this engaging book, journalist Susan Hartman followed three refugee families living in Utica, New York for eight years.  She shows how the influx of refugees into Utica has helped revive this struggling upstate old manufacturing city.

City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who
Breathed Life into a Dying American Town

Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success

by Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan

In this very readable and extensively researched account of the lives of millions of immigrants to the United States since around 1880, economists Abramitzky and Boustan answer important questions about the success of immigrants now and in the past.

Streets of Gold: America's Untold
Story of Immigrant Success

Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer

by Kate Clifford Larson

Kate Clifford Larson explores the life of Mississippi sharecropper and civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer that takes readers on the journey of a woman born into the grinding poverty and racism of the Mississippi Delta who rose to become the voice of the unheard and the conscience of a nation.

Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer

Social Justice Parenting: How to Raise Compassionate, Anti-Racist, Justice-Minded Kids in an Unjust World

by Traci Baxley

In this very accessible book, Dr. Traci Baxley, a professor of education and the mother of five bi-racial children, draws on 30 years' experience to help parents understand how to raise compassionate, socially conscious children.

Social Justice Parenting: How to
Raise Compassionate, Anti-Racist,
Justice-Minded Kids in an Unjust

The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family

by Bettye Kearse

Bettye Kearse, an African American pediatrician had always been told “Always remember you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president.” Kearse set out not only to commemorate her family's story in print, but to also find solid evidence to support her family's motto. 

The Other Madisons: The Lost History
of a President’s Black Family

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist

by Judith Heumann, with Kristen Joiner

In this moving memoir, Judith Heumann,  a polio survivor who has used a wheelchair since childhood, shares the story of her life and her lifelong career as a disability advocate.

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir
of a Disability Rights Activist

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town, a Civil Rights Battle

by Kristen Green

Journalist Kristen Green describes how in September 1959 Prince Edward County, to avoid desegregating its schools, closed its 21 public schools for five years. The white leaders created an all-white academy, Prince Edward Academy, for white students and provided no schools for Black children. She has produced a well-researched and compassionate account of what happened and its impact on Blacks and whites.

Something Must Be Done About
Prince Edward County: A Family, a Virginia Town,
a Civil Rights Battle

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle over American Immigration,1924-1965

by Jia Lynn Yang

In this well-written account, Yang, journalist, editor, and daughter of immigrants, focuses on the period between the two sweeping immigration reform laws that dramatically reshaped American society. The 1924 Immigration Act that ended a period of mass immigration and almost unrestricted entry into the United States by Europeans, but not Asians.

The  1965 Immigration and Nationality Act reversed the 1924 Act by ending most restrictions on immigration, including on Asians, ushering in a return to mass immigration that had not been seen since the turn of the 20th century.

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide:
The Epic Struggle over American Immigration,
1924-1965

The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote

by Elaine Weiss

In this absorbing book, journalist Elaine Weiss tells the dramatic story of the struggle in August 1920 in Nashville, Tennessee to secure the thirty-fifth and final vote needed for ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. The approval of the state legislature in Tennessee would be the culmination of the 72-year effort that began in 1848 in Seneca Falls.

The Woman’s Hour: The Great
Fight to Win the Vote

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland

by Jonathan Metzl

In this compelling account, Jonathan Metzl, a psychiatrist and a sociologist, explores the effects of the Republican policies on white population-level health, exploring opposition to gun control in Missouri, opposition to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion in Tennessee, and massive tax cuts in Kansas.

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial
Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland

Last Summer on State Street

by Toya Wolfe

In this moving autobiographical novel, Toya Wolfe tells the story of 12-year-old Fe Fe (Felicia) and her friends Precious, Stacia, and Tonya during the summer of 1999 when the Chicago Housing Authority is tearing down  the Robert Taylor Homes, the enormous public housing project where they all live. Everyone will have to find a new place to live and everything changes.

Last Summer on State Street