#READ2016: Current Events Edition
T’is the season for political bickering! Believe it or not, behind all the smear campaigns and name-calling that election season brings, there are some pretty serious political issues at stake, too. If you’re feeling a bit in the dark or just want to brush up on your politics so you can get involved in all those ill-advised political conversations at family gatherings, here’s a few books we love about the hot-button topics of 2016.*
*Strand is not responsible for any family drama that may result from the aforementioned ill-advised political conversations.
Reproductive Rights
PRO: Reclaiming Abortion Rights by Katha Pollit
This forceful, recently published book argues strenuously for access to abortion as a moral right and social good. Pollit takes a clear stand on this divisive issue with clear, lucid arguments, discussing why terminating a pregnancy can be a force for good for women, families, and society.
The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler
Before Roe v. Wade, 1.5 million women surrendered children for adoption because of familial and social pressure. Ann Fessler, given up for adoption herself, traces the journeys of these women and allows them to tell their stories in this moving and heartfelt book that reminds us of the world inhabited by many pregnant women before abortion was legal.
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
This vital book brings the role of race in reproductive rights movements to the fore. The ability of black women to control their reproductive lives has been curtailed or restricted throughout history with such methods as coerced sterilization or the stigma surrounding welfare. Roberts reminds the reader that the struggle for reproductive rights doesn’t end with abortion, but encompasses a broader set of issues.
Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom by Merle Hoffman
The founder of an abortion clinic in Chicago and tireless advocate for women’s health and right to choose, Merle Hoffman’s writing lays bare her life and career working fearlessly in one of the most contentious areas of medicine today.
Criminal Justice Reform
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Published in 2012, Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking study of mass incarceration remains a bestseller. Her meticulously researched account tells how, with the end of Jim Crow, criminalization of (especially) black and Hispanic men has become the new means of racial discrimination, creating a permanently disenfranchised underclass. It is impossible to read this book and look at the United States justice system in the same way again.
Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
Activist Angela Davis argues that prisons should be the target of the next abolition movement in the United States, and that their time is coming to an end. Her book is an unflinching critique of the system that keeps more than 2 million Americans behind bars, and the corporations who profit from the current prison structure.
Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World by Baz Dreisinger
This worldwide odyssey of prison systems is a comprehensive look at the past, present, and future of justice. Dreisinger examines the world of incarcerated men and women and those who imprison them with equal parts empathy and intellect.
Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman
The basis for the hit television show, this memoir tells the story of the author’s tenure in a women’s prison, exploring the lives of the women locked away and providing a rare window into life inside the criminal justice system.
Economic Inequality
Capital in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Piketty
This comprehensive history analyzes a broad range of data to uncover social and economic patterns about the accumulation and distribution of wealth. He reveals the deep structures of inequality embedded within capitalist structures and provides insight into the ways political action can counter economic trends that are far from inevitable.
The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz examines the interplay between politics and market forces in this book, which demonstrates how inequality and its maintenance has stifled dynamic capitalism. Along the way he examines how inequality in our economy, our democracy, and our system of justice affects and is affected by every aspect of national policy.
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Meyer
Jane Mayer uncovers the myth of a popular uprising against “big government” that ushered in an age of conservative government and decreased oversight of businesses. She shows how a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system, leading in part to the current era of extreme inequality and stymying vital reforms — even those popular among the American people.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
A sensitive book exploring the experience of the lives of many American families who live on the edge of eviction through the stories of eight families in Milwaukee. Desmond sheds light on the extreme poverty and economic exploitation of poor renting families and offers fresh ideas for the solution of this growing American problem.
ISIS/War on Terror
ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror by Hassan Hassan & Michael Weiss
American journalist Michael Weiss and Syrian analyst Hassan Hassan explain how these violent extremists evolved into a jihadi army of international volunteers. They explain the group’s origins, its key players, and the role political and military maneuvering by powers like the United States and others have contributed to ISIS’s rise. A good source for understanding who ISIS is and what powers them.
Black Flags: the Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick
This narrative history tracks the rise of ISIS from a Jordanian prison in 1999, specifically beginning with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Warrick’s history reveals the long arc of today’s most dangerous extremist threat and how they rose to power in part through taking advantage of the Syrian Civil War beginning in 2011.
Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Larry Siems
Closer to home, and more relevant than ever given President Obama’s recent announcement of a plan to close Gitmo once and for all, this diary by detainee Mohamedou Slahi, imprisoned since 2002 without trial and without formal accusation, is not only a record of the miscarriage of justice by the American government but also a compelling and deeply personal memoir.
Healthcare Reform
The Healing of America by T.R. Reid
Providing a tour of successful, affordable health care systems around the world, T.R. Reid simultaneously provides a view of alternate systems to the broken American one and seeks to discover why the United States is the only first world nation that continues to deny its citizens universal health care. Reid’s light, witty touch makes his explanations of this complex issue easy to understand.
America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Door Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System by Steven Brill
This New York Times Notable Book examines how the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — is changing and not changing the rampant abuse and corruption in the American health care system. Brill also covers the fight to pass the ACA, and the failures of its implementation after passing, showing all the ground that still needs to be covered.
The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It by Marcia Angell
Dr. Angell, long-time witness to the misdeeds of Big Pharma, demonstrates exactly how new drugs are brought to market. She shows how companies rig clinical trials and use lawyers to stretch out government-granted exclusive marketing as long as possible, along with other unethical practices that result in spiraling costs for American consumers and create the kind of environment that the now infamous Martin Shkreli emerged from.
Climate Change
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein
The Shock Doctrine author Klein argues that climate change should be the catalyst to transform a broken economic system. She builds a case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine political systems, and rebuild gutted local economies. This Changes Everything is a call to bring radical change before the changing climate brings radical change to us first.
Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert
Author of the award-winning The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert’s first book brings attention to the causes and effects of climate change around the world, from melting ice caps to changing migratory patterns. Kolbert’s highly readable style makes the sometimes baffling science of climate change accessible to lay readers.
Merchants of Doubt by Erik Conway & Naomi Oreskes
Now a documentary, this book tells the story of a high level coalition of scientists and researchers with connections in politics and industry who intentionally obscured the truth about climate change, running effective public campaigns to mislead the public and deny established scientific knowledge. These same few researchers are also linked to the smoking lobby’s attempts to deny links between lung cancer and cigarette smoke, coal smoke and acid rain, and CFCs and the ozone layer.
Immigration Reform
Integration Nation: Immigrants, Refugees, and America At Its Best by Susan Eaton
Integration Nation travels across the country into communities that, rather than deporting or targeting immigrants and refugees, are making them welcome, showing that xenophobia and hostility is not the only option in the United States and reminding readers that part of America’s greatness is its long tradition of welcoming outsiders.
The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail by Oscar Martinez
Martinez, a young writer from El Salvador, spent two years traveling up and down the so-called migrant trail from Central America to the United States, documenting the harrowing conditions and hazards faced by the thousands of people who travel the route every year.
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki
This history, beginning with the colonization of the New World, it recounted the history of America in the voice of the non-Anglo peoples of the United States, including Native Americans but also the variety of waves of immigrants from around the globe that have helped create the United States’ unique culture. An important reminder that the United States has always been a nation of immigrants, and that immigrants have always been necessary for the vitality and vibrancy of the nation.
