In our troubled times, we turn to books to try to understand and for guidance. There are several new important titles to explore, and many that are considered classics. We'll be adding to this list as we discover more. What books do you recommend?
(Please note: Due to demand, some are backordered at the publisher, but we have lots on order and will fill requests as they come in.)
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society—and in ourselves.
The #1 New York Times bestseller and a USAToday bestseller!A timely, crucial, and empowering exploration of racism--and antiracism--in America
This is NOT a history book.
This is a book about the here and now.
A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist, the National Book Award-winning masterwork revealing how racist ideas were created, spread, and became deeply rooted in American society.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST
The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.
In this New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a hard-hitting but user-friendly examination of race in America$17.00ISBN: 9780812984965Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: One World - August 18th, 2015#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX • A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.
$14.99ISBN: 9780711245211Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Frances Lincoln Children's Books - January 7th, 2020Featured by Oprah's Book Club on the Anti-Racist Books for Young Adults list curated by best-selling author Jacqueline Woodson
A USA TODAY Bestseller
Recommended by ESSENCE, We Need Diverse Books, ellentube, Brit + Co, PureWow, Teen Vogue, Time magazine, and New York magazine
“…a clear$18.99ISBN: 9781501878077Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Abingdon Press - February 5th, 2019Living in a racially unjust and deeply segregated nation creates unique conundrums for white children that begin early in life and impact development in powerful ways.
$25.99ISBN: 9781728209807Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Sourcebooks - January 28th, 2020The New York Times and USA Today bestseller This eye-opening book challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in t
$27.99ISBN: 9781250257703Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Henry Holt and Co. - June 9th, 2020NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"With each page, she inspires and empowers us to create systems that reflect a world in which all voices are heard and all people believe and feel that they matter." —Kerry Washington$18.99ISBN: 9781620971932Availability: Backordered (email to check availability)Published: New Press - January 7th, 2020Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly' Slate' Chronicle of Higher Education' Literary Hub, Book Riot' and Zora
$16.99ISBN: 9781433828546Availability: Backordered (email to check availability)Published: Magination Press - March 1st, 2018Something Happened in Our Town follows two families -- one White, one Black -- as they discuss a police shooting of a Black man in their community. The story aims to answer children's questions about such traumatic events, and to help children identify and counter racial injustice in their own lives.
$17.00ISBN: 9781632864130Availability: Usually Available in 3-7 DaysPublished: Bloomsbury USA - September 5th, 2017National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2016
A Chicago Review of Books Best Nonfiction Book of 2016$18.00ISBN: 9781635572957Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Bloomsbury Publishing - March 5th, 2019NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"This is a book that was begging to be written. This is the kind of book that demands a future where we’ll no longer need such a book. Essential." --Marlon James
“The most important book for me this year.” --Emma Watson
Selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for January/February 2018$26.99ISBN: 9780062375094Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Amistad - October 15th, 2019Genocide—the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a group of people.
TIME's 42 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2019
Book Riot's 50 of the Best Books to Read This Fall
$20.00ISBN: 9781555976903Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Graywolf Press - October 7th, 2014* Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry *
* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism * Winner of the NAACP Image Award * Winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize * Winner of the PEN Open Book Award *
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:$28.00ISBN: 9781568589237Availability: Usually Available in 3-7 DaysPublished: Bold Type Books - June 30th, 2020A provocative case for integration as the single most radical, discomfiting idea in America, yet the only enduring solution to the racism that threatens our democracy.
$16.00ISBN: 9781501126352Availability: Usually Available in 3-7 DaysPublished: Scribner - June 20th, 2017A surprise New York Times bestseller, these groundbreaking essays and poems about race—collected by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and written by the most important voices of her generation—are “thoughtful, searing, and at times, hopeful.
$24.99ISBN: 9781250135995Availability: Backordered (email to check availability)Published: St. Martin's Press - January 17th, 2017NOW A NEW YORK TIMES, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, INDIEBOUND, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, CHRONICLE HERALD, SALISBURY POST, GUELPH MERCURY TRIBUNE, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER | NAMED A BEST/MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2017 BY: The Washington Post • Bustle • Men's Journal • The Chicago Re
$24.95ISBN: 9780807029701Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Beacon Press - February 4th, 2020A groundbreaking new vision for public safety that overturns more than 200 years of fear-based discrimination, othering, and punishment
$17.95ISBN: 9781631494536Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Liveright - May 1st, 2018New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection
One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year
One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction
An NPR Best Book of the Year
Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction
Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfi$20.00ISBN: 9780399589065Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: One World - March 24th, 2020A “beautiful and eye-opening” (Jacqueline Woodson), “hilarious and heart-rending” (Celeste Ng) graphic memoir about American identity, interracial families, and the realities that divide us, from the acclaimed author of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing.
$16.00ISBN: 9781101972410Availability: Usually Available in 3-7 DaysPublished: Vintage - December 3rd, 2019WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PROSE
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND KIRKUS REVIEWS
ONE OF MAUREEN CORRIGAN'S 10 UNPUTDOWNABLE READS OF THE YEAR$17.99ISBN: 9780593118764Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now!Published: Random House Books for Young Readers - July 28th, 2020"Incredible and searing." --Nic Stone, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin
The Hate U Give meets Just Mercy in this unflinching yet uplifting first novel that explores the racist injustices in the American justice system.$29.95ISBN: 9780691181776Availability: Usually Available in 3-7 DaysPublished: Princeton University Press - March 10th, 2020How political protests and activism have a direct influence on voter and candidate behavior
$18.95ISBN: 9781948340007Availability: Backordered (email to check availability)Published: Dottir Press - September 4th, 2018An honest explanation about how power and privilege factor into the lives of white children, at the expense of other groups, and how they can help seek justice. --THE NEW YORK TIMES
**A WHITE RAVEN 2019 SELECTION**
NAMED ONE OF SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL'S BEST BOOKS OF 2018
$16.99ISBN: 9780316440097Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Hachette Books - August 6th, 2019Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction"A MUST-READ FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO UNDERSTAND THE INTERSECTION OF RACE AND POLICE BRUTALITY IN AMERICA."-CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS$27.95ISBN: 9781786076229Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Oneworld Publications - August 13th, 2019Racial differences are rooted in biological reality, right? That’s certainly what a small group of anthropologists, psychologists and pundits would have you believe. Portraying themselves as brave defenders of the inconvenient truth, this group took the revival of ‘race science’ from alt-right online message boards into mainstream academic journals.
$28.00ISBN: 9781501160288Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Atria Books - November 12th, 2019“These murder cases expose systemic problems...
$14.95ISBN: 9780807039847Availability: Backordered (email to check availability)Published: Beacon Press - August 20th, 2019A unique and irreverent take on everything that's wrong with our “national conversation about race”—and what to do about it
$25.95ISBN: 9780393608861Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: W. W. Norton & Company - October 15th, 2019A meditation on race and identity from one of our most provocative cultural critics.
$17.95ISBN: 9781619305557Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Nomad Press (VT) - April 16th, 2019How could a country founded on the honorable ideals of freedom and equality have so willingly embraced the evils of enslavement and oppression?
$19.99ISBN: 9780991331307Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Elephant Room Press - January 9th, 2014For twenty-five years, Debby Irving sensed inexplicable racial tensions in her personal and professional relationships. As a colleague and neighbor, she worried about offending people she dearly wanted to befriend. As an arts administrator, she didn't understand why her diversity efforts lacked traction.
$17.99ISBN: 9780399246524Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Nancy Paulsen Books - October 2nd, 2012Jacqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature
WINNER OF A CORETTA SCOTT KING HONOR AND THE JANE ADDAMS PEACE AWARD!
Each kindness makes the world a little better$19.99ISBN: 9780827200937Availability: Usually Available in 3-7 DaysPublished: Chalice Press - June 19th, 2020Learn the language of diversity and raise kids who respect differences and honor similarities. The ABCs of Diversity equips parents, teachers, and community leaders to have intergenerational and intercultural conversations about the differences between us.
$16.99ISBN: 9780062796257Availability: Backordered (email to check availability)Published: HarperCollins - September 25th, 2018A perfect tool for young readers as they grow into the leaders of tomorrow, Veronica Chambers’s inspiring collection of profiles—along with Senator Cory Booker’s stirring foreword—will inspire readers of all ages to stand up for what’s right.
You may only be one person, but you have the power to change the world.
$18.00ISBN: 9781608466122Availability: Usually Available in 3-7 DaysPublished: Haymarket Books - June 21st, 2016What is the reality of policing in the United States? Do the police keep anyone safe and secure other than the very wealthy? How do recent police killings of young black people in the United States fit into the historical and global context of anti-blackness?
$16.95ISBN: 9781642590364Availability: Usually Available in 3-7 DaysPublished: Haymarket Books - September 17th, 2019"This book is a crucial tool for parents, educators, and anyone who cares about the well-being of children who, through no fault of their own, are forced to bear the consequences of our country's obsession with incarceration.
$17.95ISBN: 9781608465620Availability: Backordered (email to check availability)Published: Haymarket Books - February 23rd, 2016Winner of the 2016 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize for an Especially Notable Book
"Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's searching examination of the social, political and economic dimensions of the prevailing racial order offers important context for understanding the necessity of the emerging movement for black liberation."
--Michelle Alexander$12.95ISBN: 9781772781090Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Pajama Press - February 11th, 2020There are many ways children can show kindness to others--human, animal, young, and old. With art from twelve celebrated children's book illustrators including Rebecca Bender, Suzanne Del Rizzo, and Wallace Edwards, this lavishly illustrated book will invite frequent re-reads to examine the joyful and inspiring illustrations.
$25.00ISBN: 9781524760854Availability: On Our Shelves Now (email to confirm availability)Published: Convergent Books - May 15th, 2018NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB X HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK PICK • From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female that exposes how white America’s love affair with “diversity” so often falls short of its ideals.
