Reading List

Books Worth Reading

General Interest

Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power   

Banned Books

-Gender Queer  by Maia Kobabe

-What Girls are Made Of by Elana Arnold

-Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin

Blount County United: Readings on Racism and Social Justice (2020)

• Up to age 8

• Age Level 8-13 

• Age Level 13-21

• Adult Level

Climate Change

-Under White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert (the author of Sixth Extinction). Book is an upbeat look at whether we can turn the tide on climate change and save humanity.

-Climate Church, Climate World, Jim Antal, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018)

-Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken, Penguin Books

-Climate of Hope, Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope, St Martin’s, 2017.

National Park Service Air Quality Report from 6/26/2018.

Criminal Justice

-Supreme Inequality – the Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America , Adam Cohen (Penguin Random House,     2020).

-The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michell Alexander

-Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by B Stevenson

Economics/Poverty

-Equality Within Our Lifetimes; How Laws and Policies Can Close or Widen Gender Gaps in   Economies Worldwide by J. Heymann, A. Sprague, and A. Raub

-This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class, Elizabeth Warren, (Macmillan, 2018)

-Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich, (Simon & Schuster), 2018

-The Third Reconstruction by Rev. Wm Barber

-Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land

Healthcare

-An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back (2017) by Elisabeth Rosenthal

History

-The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore

-Daughters of Kobani: Story of Rebellion, Courage and Justice by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. 

-The Man Without a Party: The Trials of Carl Von Ossietzky, Richard Tres, (Beacon, 2019)

-Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, Jared Diamond, (Little, Brown 2019)

-The Woman' Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, by Elaine Weiss (Viking, 2018)

-These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore, (Norton, 2018)

Immigration

-Refugee by Alan Gratz, (Scholastic, 2017). Selection for Blount County Middle School 1READ program

Libraries/Media

-The Library Book, Susan Orlean, (Simon & Schuster, 2018)

Politics/Civil Resistance/Tyranny

           -Shadow Docket – How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and    Undermine the Republic, by Stephen Vladeck

-Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America, by Michael Waldman

-Beyond How Fascism Works – The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley.

-Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth, Rachel Maddow, (Crown, 2019)

-Dear Rachel Maddow, Adrienne Kisner. (Feiwel and Friends, 2018).

-Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin, (Simon & Schuster), 2018

-One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy, Carol Patterson, (Bloomsbury, 2018) Detailed description of current voter suppression efforts.

-Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy from Big Money and Global Corporations, Jeffrey D. Clements, (Berrett-Koehler, 2014, 2nd edition. Described as the “definitive guide to overturning Citizens United.”

-Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by T Snyder

-Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by E Chenoweth, M Stephan

-What's the Matter with Kansas (How Conservatives won the Heart of America) by T Frank

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America byTimothy Snyder (Tim Duggan Books, 2018)

-Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements by Bill Moyer

-Politics of Resentment by K. Cramer

-Dark Money by J Mayer

-Foxes in the Henhouse by S Jarding & D Saunders

-The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump by BX Lee, RA Lifton, G Sheehy

-One Nation after Trump by EJ Dionne, N Ornstein, TE Mann

-No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need by Naomi Klein

-The Fight to Vote by Michael Waldman

-Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, David Enrich, (HarperCollins, 2020)

Racism, White Nationalism

-Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When we Fall Apart by Alicia Garza

-Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, (Little Brown, 2020)

-So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeomo Oluo

-White Fragility: Why it's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin Diangelo

-Good movie to watch: 13th written/produced by Ava DuVernay, currently available free across a number of viewing platforms.

-Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist, Eli Saslow. (Doubleday, 2018)

-Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class, Ian Haney López, (Oxford UP, 2014)

-Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving

-Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South by Catherine Fosl

-Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

-Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in the USA by Dave Billings

-How to be Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi, (Random House, 2019)

-Caste: the Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson

Society/Culture

-The Privateers – How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers by Josh Cowen published by Harvard Education Press

-Valley So Low - One Lawyer's Fight for Justice in the Wake of America's Great Coal Catastrophe by Jared Sullivan published by Knopf

-The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment America by Jeff Biggers.

-Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild

-Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman (Little, Brown, 2017)

-The End of White Christian America by RP Poole

-Dying of Whiteness, Jonathan Metzl, (Basic, 2019)