Good Progressive Reads:

Recently Published Books for Understanding and Action

Ronald L. Krannich, Ph.D.*

 

The following collection of 355 books should be of special interest to individuals who welcome progressive thinking and action related to deeply felt political, social, and economic issues. Since most of these books are recently published (2017-2022) nonfiction titles, they reflect many progressive issues dominating public discourse today: climate change, inequality, justice, activism, presidential power, health care, voter suppression, gerrymandering, corruption, poverty, homelessness, technology, mental health, espionage, race, women, partisan politics, alienation, criminal justice reform, and Donald J. Trump.

 

Much of America’s progressive movement can be traced to the role of poverty, immigrants, race, war, the industrial revolution, and technology in a democracy ostensibly noted for free speech, anti-elitist traditions, and a relatively free and competitive press acclaimed for investigative reporting and muckraking traditions. Classical works of both fiction and nonfiction, such as Breecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, (1890), Ida Tarbell’s The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939), George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) influenced a great deal of progressive thinking and public policy during the first half of the 20th century. Other memorable progressive works included Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Manufacturing Consent, To Kill a Mockingbird, A People’s History of the United States, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, The Age of Reform, The Conscience of a Liberal, War Is a Racket, The Handmaid’s Tale, Understanding Power, The Feminine Mystique, and The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. In 1962 Rachel Carson releases Silent Spring; it soon becomes responsible for launching the environmental moment of the sixties. In 2006 Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has a similar impact on the climate change movement. These books also generate movie productions and television specials that make a world of difference in the lives of millions of people who call for more progressive political action.

 

The progressive literature includes thousands of volumes focused on race, war, environment, corruption, inequality, corporate greed, workplace conditions, workers’ rights, public health, conservation, public safety, and more – issues that exacerbate the political turbulence, anger, violence, protest, and nastiness in American public life. This long tradition of progressive thinking and action continues today and is centered on many old and new issues.

 

Several book-friendly groups periodically compile lists of popular progressive books. Goodreads, for example, offers one of the most extensive lists (2,800 + titles) of such books in the progressive section of its website

 

However, be careful what you wish for – some of their so-called progressive titles best belong on conservative and far-right booklists (Donald Trump, Dinesh D’Souza, Phyllis Schlafly, Ann Coulter, Thomas Sowell, David Horowitz, and Regnery Publishing). Goodreads does include one convenient section for those interested in books published by nearly 40 candidates vying for the 2020 presidential election.

 

All of the following titles can be reviewed at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Goodreads.com. All but one title (From Generosity to Justice) has been hyperlinked to Amazon.com where you can quickly read descriptions, reviews, and excerpts as well as purchase the books in paper, electronic (Kindle), or audio formats.

 

Similar to my other two lists (Progressive Opportunities and Progressive Media), please note that this recommended list is a “work in progress” of recently published progressive titles (see note at end of this list). I welcome additional recommendations and comments for enhancing this special reading list: rkrannich@gmail.com. If anyone is interested in forming a lively and intellectually engaging progressive book club with these as starter titles, I welcome your initiative. Go for it!

 

The following materials are divided into 2 lists with a total of 355 books. The first list (#1) includes 185 recently identified titles — most published between 2020 and 2022. The second list (#2) is my original list of 170 titles compiled in 2019 and includes books published prior to 2020.

 

LIST #1 — MOST TITLES PUBLISHED BETWEEN 2020 AND 2022: 

INDEX TO THIS COLLECTION OF 185 TITLES:

• Capitalism, Socialism  & Corporations
• Career Change, Happiness, Aging & Language
• Cities and Towns
• Climate & the Environment
• The Courts & Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Drugs, Addiction, Crime & Corporate Greed
• Economics & Politics
• Government
• International, Foreign Policy & Intelligence
• Leadership, Character & Trust
• Pandemic & Public Health
• Politics & Democracy
• Race & Inequality
• Science & the Future
• Violence, Guns & Politics
• Women

 

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & CORPORATIONS

• Adrift: America in 100 Charts, Scott Galloway (2022)
• Break ‘Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom From Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money, Zephyr Teachout (2020)
• Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer (2020)  
• Had I Known: Collective Essays, Barbara Ehrenreich (2021)
• Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman (2021)
• The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America―and How to Undo His Legacy, Jack Gelles (2022)
• Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, Rebecca Henderson (2021)
• Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, Rutger Bregman (2018)

CAREER CHANGE, HAPPINESS, AGING & LANGUAGE

• Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, Brene Brown (2021)
• From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, Arthur C. Brooks (2022)
• Life is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age, Bruce Feiler (2021)

CITIES & TOWNS

• Five Days: The Fiery Reckoning of an American City, Wes Moore (2020)
• The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World, Rahm Emanuel (2020)

CLIMATE & THE ENVIRONMENT

• How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, Bill Gates (2021)
• The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, Michael E. Mann (2021) 
• No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, Greta Thunberg (2019)
• Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, John Doerr (2021)
• Superman’s Not Coming: Out National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It,  Erin Brockovich (2020)
• What Can I Do? My Path From Climate Despair to Action, Jane Fonda (2020)

THE COURTS & JUSTICE

• Saving Justice: Truth, Transparency, and Trust, James Comey (2021)
• Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America, Adam Cohen (2020)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

• Corrections in Ink: A Memoir, Keri Blakinger (2022) 
• I Know This to be True: Bryan Stevenson, Geoff Blackwell and Ruth Hobday (2020)
• Profit and Punishment: How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice, Tony Messenger (2021)
• Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal, Alexandra Natapoff (2018)

DRUGS, ADDICTION, CRIME & CORPORATE GREED

• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou (2020)
• Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom, Katherine Eban (2020)
• Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, Patrick Radden Keefe (2021)
• Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of Opioid Epidemic, Ben Westhoff (2019)
• Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic, Barry Meier (2018)

ECONOMICS & POLITICS

• The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, Christopher Caldwell (2020)
• Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future, Paul Krugman (2020) 
• Economic Dignity, Gene Sperling (2020)
• Economics for a Fragile Planet: Rethinking Markets, Institutions and Governance, Edward Barbier (2022)
• The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society, Binyamin Appelbaum (2020)
• The Riches of This Land: The Untold, True Story of America’s Middle Class, Jim Tankersley (2020)
• The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, Robert B. Reich (2020)
• Trade Is Not a Four-Letter Word, Fred P. Hochberg (2020)
• The Velvet Economy: How Inequality Became Big Business, Nelson D. Schwartz (2021)
• The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future, Andrew Yang (2019)

GOVERNMENT

• Zero Fail: Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, Carol Leonnig (2022)

INTERNATIONAL, FOREIGN POLICY & INTELLIGENCE

• The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of War, Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post, et. al. (2021)
• Agent Sonya: Moscow’s Most Daring Wartime Spy, Ben Macintyre (2020)
• America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, Robert B. Zoellick (2021)
• Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World, Bradley Hope and Tom Wright (2019)
• Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East, Kim Ghattas (2020)
• Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power Paperback, Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck (2020)
• Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Timothy Snyder (2022)
• The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, Fred Kaplan (2021)
• The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump, William J. Perry and Tom Z. Collina (2020)
• Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country, E. J. Dionne Jr. (2020)
• Deep State: Trump, the FBI, and the Rule of Law, James B. Stewart (2019)
• The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare 1945–2020, Tim Weiner (2020) 
• Four Ages of American Foreign Policy: Weak Power, Great Power, Superpower, Hyperpower, Michael Mandelbaum (2022)
• Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath, Bill Browder (2022)
• The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century, Parag Khanna (2019)
• How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, Jason Stanley (2020)
• The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World, Barry Gewen (2020)
• Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir, Marie Yovanovitch (2022)
• Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, George Packer (2019)
• Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail, Ray Dalio (2021)
• The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War – a Tragedy in Three Acts, Scott Anderson (2021)
• The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Timothy Snyder (2019)
• The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future, Chris Whipple (2021)
• To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq, Robert Drapper (2021)
• The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning, Dan P. McAdams (2020)
• There’s Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century, Fiona Hill (2021)
• Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2020)
• Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, Anne Applebaum (2021)
• Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House, April Ryan and Tamron Hall (2018)
• The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (2020)
• The World: A Brief Introduction, Richard Haass (2021)

LEADERSHIP, CHARACTER & TRUST

• The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism, Hubert Joly and Caroline Lambert (2021)
• Hearts Touched with Fire: How Great Leaders are Made, David Gergen (2022)
• Here, Right Matters: An American Story, Alexander Vindman (2022)
• His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life, Jonathan Alter (2020) 
• The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America, Charlotte Alter (2020)
• A Promised Land, Barack Obama (2020)
• A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, Mark T. Espeer (2022)
• The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, David Brooks (2020)
• To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision, Admiral James Stavridis (2022) 
• Trust: America’s Best Chance, Pete Buttigieg (2020)

PANDEMIC & PUBLIC HEALTH       

• An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back, Elisabeth Rosenthal (2018) 
• Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live, Nicholas A. Christakis (2020)
• The Gene: An Intimate History, Siddhartha Mukherjee (2017)
• How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, Bill Gates (2022)
• Moonshot: Inside Pfizer’s Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible, Dr. Albert Bourla (2022)
• Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick, J. David McSwane (2022)
• The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, Michael Lewis (2021)
• The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care – and How to Fix It, Marty Makary, MD (2021)
• A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of The Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine, Gregory Zuckerman (2021)
• The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic, Joe Miller, Oxlem Tureci, and Ugur Sahin (2022)
• Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care?, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel (2022)

 POLITICS & DEMOCRACY

• After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, Ben Rhodes (2021)
• All the President’s Men (50^th Anniversary Edition), Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (2014/Preface © 2022)
• American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, Tim Alberta (2019)
• The American Crisis: What Went Wrong, How We Recover, Writers of The Atlantic, Cullen Murphy, Editor (2020)
• Big Dirty Money: The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime, Jennifer Taub (2020)
• Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America, Dan Pfeiffer (2022)
• Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Jonathan Karl (2021)
• The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family, David Cay Johnston (2021)
• Bringing Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party, Julian E. Zelizer (2021)
• A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump, Norman Eisen (2020)
• Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation, John Lewis and Kabir Sehgal (2021)  
• Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump, Peter Strzok (2020)
• The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World, Peter Bergen (2022)
• Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, David Enrich (2020)
• The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, Tom Nichols (2018)
• The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, Ross Douthat (2020)
• Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump, Michael D. Cohen (2020)
• Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President, Michael S. Schmidt (2020)
• Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President’s Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies, The Washington Post Fact Checker Staff (2020)
• Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History, Kurt Andersen (2020) 
• Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward, Valerie Jarrett (2019)
• Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, Michael C. Bender (2021)  
• Front Row at the Trump Show, Jonathan Karl (2020) 
• Great Society: A New History, Amity Shlaes (2019)
• Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic, Abdul El-Sayed (2020)
• Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth, Brian Stelter (2020)
• I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker (2021) 
• Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, Larry Diamond (2019)
• In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth About America’s “Deep State”, David Rohde (2020)
• It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, Stuart Stevens (2020)
• The Imposters: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics, Steve Benen (2020)
• Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency, Michael Wolff (2021) 
• Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, George Packer (2022)
• Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (2020)
• Liberalism and Its Discontents, Francis Fukuyama (2022)
• Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie — And Why Trump Is Worse, Eric Alterman (2020)
• The Madman Theory: Trump Takes On the World, Jim Sciutto (2020)
• Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With the First Lady, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff (2020)
• Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could, Adam Schiff (2021)  
• Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason, William Davies (2020)
• No, You Shut Up: Speaking Truth to Power and Reclaiming America, Symone D. Sanders (2022)
• One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, William P. Barr (2022) 
• Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, Stacey Abrams (2020)  
• Peril, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa (2021)
• The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, Thomas Frank (2020)
• Piety & Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House, Tom LoBianco (2019)
• The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter (2020)
• Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change, Eitan Hersh (2020)
• The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars, Meghan Daum (2019)
• Rage, Bob Woodward (2020)
• The Reckoning: Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal, Mary L. Trump (2021) 
• Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference, David Shimer (2020)
• Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump – and Democrats From Themselves, Rick Wilson (2020)
• The Securitarian Personality: What Really Motivates Trump’s Base and Why It Matters for the Post-Trump Era, John R. Hibbing (2020)
• Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, Jacob Soboroff (2020)
• The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It, Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague (2022)
• Surviving Autocracy, Masha Gessen (2021)
• Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, Fareed Zakaria (2020)
• They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency, Malcolm Nance (2022)
• This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns (2022)  
• Tío Bernie: The Inside Story of How Bernie Sanders Brought Latinos Into the Political Revolution, Chuck Rocha (2020)
• The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency, Daniel W. Drezner (2020)
• Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, Mary L. Trump (2020)
• The Trump Women: Part of the Deal, Nina Burleigh
• Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind, Sarah Posner (2021)
• Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy, Jamie Raskin (2022)
• The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party With Racism and the Rest of Us With Coronavirus, S. V. Date (2020)
• We Are Called to Be a Movement, Rev. Dr. William Barber, II (2020)
• We Should Have Seen It Coming: From Reagan to Trump — A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution, Gerald F. Seib (2020) 
• Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, Tim Miller (2022)
• Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein (2021)
• Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury, Evan Osnos (2021)
• You’re Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump, Paul Begala (2020)

RACE & INEQUALITY

• Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution, Elie Mystal (2022)
• The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, Nikole Hannah-Jones (2021)
• Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. (2020)
• A Brief History of Equality, Thomas Piketty and Steven Rendall (2022)
• Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US. Poverty, Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox (2021)
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson (2020)
• Combating Inequality: Rethinking Government’s Role, Olivier Blanchard and Dani Rodrik (2021)
• The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide, Zerlina Maxwell (2020)
• The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened, Bill McKibben (2022)
• Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, Sarah Smarsh (2019)
• His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, Jon Meacham and John Lewis (2020)
• Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty, Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock (2021)
• Rise Up: Confronting a Country at the Crossroads, Reverend Al Sharpton (2020)
• South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, Imani Perry (2022)
• These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore (2019)
• Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior, Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird (2021)

SCIENCE & THE FUTURE

• The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher (2021)
• The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race, Walter Isaacson (2021)  
• Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, Jamie Metzl (2020)
• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari (2018)
• The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats – and Our Response – Will Change the World, Ian Bremmer (2022)

VIOLENCE, GUNS & POLITICS

WOMEN

• Untamed, Glennon Doyle (2020)

 

LIST #2 — MOST TITLES PUBLISHED PRIOR TO 2020:

INDEX TO THIS COLLECTION OF 170 TITLES:

• Activism, Resistance, Human Rights & Values
• Communities of Hope
• Courts
• Criminal Justice, Prison Reform & Poverty
• Democracy, Corruption & Russia
• The Disaffected & Pissed Off in Today’s Polarized Politics
• Economics, Capitalism, Corporate Greed & Money in Politics
• Environment & Climate Change
• Gerrymandering & Voter Suppression
• Gun Safety & Mass Shootings
• Health Care
• Homelessness & Affordable Housing
• Immigrants & Refugees
• Inequality, Justice & Philanthropy
• Intelligence, Information Wars & Technology
• International Espionage
• Mental Health, Institutions & Psychiatry
• Partisan Politics
• Predators, Power & Justice
• Presidential Power, Leadership & Abuse
• Race & Racism
• Religion, Evangelicals & Politics
• Truth, Falsehood & the Media
• Women, Anger & Justice

 

ACTIVISM, RESISTANCE, HUMAN RIGHTS & VALUES

• The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir, Samantha Power (2019)
• How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics, Laura Duca (2019)
• I Can’t Breathe: The Killing That Started a Movement, Matt Taibbi (2017)
• Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America’s Fifty-Year Fall – and Those Fighting to Reverse It, Steven Brill (2019)
• Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For, Susan Rice (2019)
• We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin (2019)
• Where We Go From Here: Two Years in the Resistance, Bernie Sanders (2018)

COMMUNITIES OF HOPE 

• The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism, Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak (2018)
• Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, James Fellows and Deborah Fallows (2019)

COURTS

• The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, Thom Hartmann (2019)
• Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover, Ruth Marcus (2019)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE, PRISON REFORM & POVERTY

• American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment, Shane Bauer (2019)
• Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law, Preet Bharara (2019)
• From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: Making of Mass Incarceration in America, Elizabeth Hinton (2017)
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson (2015)
• Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Real Reform, John Pfaff (2017)
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age or Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander and Cornel West (2012)
• Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America, Peter Edelman (2019)

DEMOCRACY, CORRUPTION & RUSSIA 

• American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, Tim Alberta (2019)
• Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth, Rachel Maddow (2019)
• Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Nancy MacLean (2018)
• Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright (2018)
• How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky (2019)
• How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, Jason Stanley (2018)
• On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder (2017)
• The Politics of Petulance: America in an Age of Immaturity, Allan Wolfe (2018)
• The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West, Malcolm Nance (2018)
• The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election, Malcolm Nance (2016)
• They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy, Laurence Lessig (2019)
• The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, Andrew G. McCabe (2019)

THE DISAFFECTED & PISSED OFF IN TODAY’S POLARIZED POLITICS  

• Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse, Timothy P. Carney (2019)
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond (2017)
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J. D. Vance (2018)
• Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Small-Town America, Robert Wuthnow, Robert Wuthnow (2019)
• Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People, Thomas Frank (2017)
• The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, John B. Judis (2016)
• Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, Arlie Russell Hochschild (2018)
• These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore (2019)
• The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, George Packer (2014)
• White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg (2017)

ECONOMICS, CAPITALISM, CORPORATE GREED & MONEY IN POLITICS

• Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer (2017)
• Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against Dupont, Robert Bilott (2019)
• The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties, Paul Collier (2018)
• Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, Matt Stoller (2019)
• The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets, Thomas Philippon (2019)
• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Edward E. Baptist (2016)
• Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, Christopher Leonard (2019)

ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE CHANGE

• All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, Michael T. Clare (2019)
• An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power: Your Action Handbook to Learn the Science, Find Your Voice, and Help Solve the Climate Crisis, Al Gore (2017)
• The Case for the Green New Deal, Anne Pettifor (2019)
• Chesapeake Requiem: A Year With the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, Earl Swift (2018)
• Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, Paul Hawkins and Tom Steyer (2017)
• Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Bill McKibben (2019)
• The Geography of Risk: Epic Storms, Rising Seas, and the Cost of America’s Coasts, Gilbert M. Gaul (2019)
• The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth, Jeremy Rifkin (2019)
• In Search of the Canary Tree: The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World, Lauren E. Oakes (2018)
• The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy, Michael Mann and Tom Toles (2018)
• Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Orestes and Erik m. Conway (2011)
• Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present, Philipp Blom (2019)
• On: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, Naomi Klein (2019)
• A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal, Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, et al. (2019)
• Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore, Elizabeth Rush (2019)
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert (2015)
• This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook, Extinction Rebellion (2019)
• The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, David Wallace-Wells (2019)
• The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, Jeff Goodell (2018)

GERRYMANDERING & VOTER SUPPRESSION 

• The Embattled Vote in America: From the Founding to the Present, Allan J. Lichtman (2018)
• The Fight to Vote, Michael Waldman (May 2017)
• Gerrymandering in America: The House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Popular Sovereignty, Anthony J. McGann (2016)
• Lead From the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change, Stacey Abrams (2019)
• One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy, Carol Anderson and Dick Durbin (2019)
• Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Court, David Daley  (2017)
• Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America, Gilda R. Daniels (2020)
• Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy, David Daley (2020)

GUN SAFETY & MASS SHOOTINGS

• After Gun Violence: Deliberation and Memory in the Age of Political Gridlock, Craig Hood (2019)
• After Virginia Tech: Guns, Safety, and Healing in the Era of Mass Shootings, Thomas Kapsidelis (2019)
• Enough! Solving America’s Gun Violence Crisis, Thomas Gabor (2019)
• How America Got Its Guns: A History of the Gun Violence Crisis, William Briggs (2017)
• Parkland: Birth of a Movement, Dave Cullen (2019)
• Tragedy in Aurora: The Culture of Mass Shootings in America, Tom Diaz and Lonnie Phillips (2019)

HEALTHCARE

• America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix a Broken Healthcare System, Steven Brill (2015)
• An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back, Elisabeth Rosenthal (2018)
• Code Blue: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex, Mike Magree, MD (2019)
• Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Companies That Addicted America, Beth Macy (2018)
• The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care – and How to Fit It, Marty Makery, MD (2019)
• Priced Out: The Economic and Ethical Costs of American Health Care, Uwe E. Reinhardt (2019)

HOMELESSNESS & AFFORDABLE HOUSING

• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein (2018)
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond (2017)

IMMIGRANTS & REFUGEES

• Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, Jose Antonio Vargas (2019)
• Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, Viet Thanh Nguyen (2019)
• This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto, Suketu Mehta (2019)
• The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You, Dina Nayeri (2019)

INEQUALITY, JUSTICE & PHILANTHROPY

• Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, Edgar Villanueva (2018)
• The Givers: Money, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, David Callahan (2018)
• From Generosity to Justice: A New Gospel of Wealth, Darren Walker (free PDF and audio downloads of book from FordFoundation.org) (2019)
• Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count, Phil Buchanan (2019)
• Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better, Robert Reich (2018)
• The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay, Emmanual Saez (2019)
• Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, Anand Giridharadas (2019)

INTELLIGENCE, INFORMATION WARS & TECHNOLOGY 

• The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies, Michael V. Hayden (2018)
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, Cal Newport (2019) 
• Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence, James R. Clapper (2018)
• Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation, Richard Stengel (2019)
• Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America, Christopher Wylie (2019)
• Permanent Record, Edward Snowden (2019)
• Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, Thomas L. Friedman (2017)

 INTERNATIONAL ESPIONAGE

• Betrayal in Berlin: The True Story of the Cold War’s Most Audacious Espionage Operation, Steve Vogal (2019)
• The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal, David E. Hoffman (2016)
• From Russia With Blood: The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West, Heidi Blake (2019)
• Kremlin Winter: Russia and the Second Coming of Vladimir Putin, Robert Service (2019)
• The Moscow Rules: The Secret CIA Tactics That Helped America Win the Cold War, Antonio J. Mendez (2019)
• The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, Ben Macintyre (2019)
• A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, Sonia Purnell (2019)

MENTAL HEALTH, INSTITUTIONS & PSYCHIATRY

• Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum, Mab Segrest (2020)
• The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, Brandy K. Lee (2017)
• The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness, Susannah Cahalan (2019)
• Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness, Alisa Roth (2018) 

PARTISAN POLITICS

• The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, John Meacham (2018)

PREDATORS, POWER & JUSTICE

• Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, Ronan Farrow (2019)
• Know My Name: A Memoir, Chanel Miller (2019)
• She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (2019)

PRESIDENTIAL POWER, LEADERSHIP & ABUSE

• Commander and Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, Rick Reilly (2019)
• The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control, Steven Hassan (2019)
• The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump, Michiko Kakutani (2019)
• Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever, Rick Wilson (2018)
• Fear: Trump in the White House, Bob Woodward (2018)
• The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis (2018)
• Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Michael Wolff (2018)
• A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, James Comey (2019)
• House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, Craig Unger (2019)
• Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump, Neal Katyal (2019)
• It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America, David Cay Johnston (2018)
• Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin (2018)
• The Mueller Report, The Washington Post (2019)
• The Man Who Sold America, Joy-Ann Reid (2019)
• The Plot to Betray America: How Team Trump Embraced Our Enemies, Compromised Our Security, and How We Can Fix It, Malcolm Nance (2019) 
• Presidents of War: The Epic Story, From 1807 to Modern Times, Michael Beschloss (2018)
• Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump’s International Collusion is Threatening American Democracy, Seth Abramson (2019)
• Seige: Trump Under Fire, Michael Wolff (2019)
• This Ends Badly: How Donald Trump Conned America, Joe Scarborough (2020)
• The Truth About Trump, Michael D’Antonio (2016)
• A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, Philip Rucker (2020) 
• A Warning, Anonymous (2019)

RACE & RACISM

• Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein (2018)
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age or Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander and Cornel West (2012)
• So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo (2019)
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAngelo (2018)

RELIGION, EVANGELICALS & POLITICS

• Evangelicals: The Struggle To Shape America, Frances FitzGerald (2018)
• The Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power Over Christian Values, Ben Howe (2019)
• Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters Who Elected Donald Trump, Angela Denker (2019)

TRUTH, FALSEHOOD & THE MEDIA

• The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump, Michiko Kakutani  (2019)
• Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Steven Pinker (2019)
• Everyone Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What The Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (2018)
• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, Hans Rosling (2018)
• The Field Guide to Lies, Critical Thinking With Statistics, and the Scientific Method, Daniel J. Leviten (2019)
• The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts From Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks, Bruce Bartlett (2017)
• The United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America, Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff (2019)

WOMEN, ANGER & JUSTICE

• The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton (2019)
• Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne (2019)
• Educated: A Memoir, Tara Westover (2018)
• Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals, Rachel Hollis (2019)
• Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, Rebecca Traister (2018)
• Lean Out: The Truth About Women, Power, and the Workplace, Marissa Orr (2019)
• Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead – My Life Story, Cecile Richards and Lauren Peterson (2018)
• Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed, Lisa Duggan (2019)
• The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World, Melinda Gates (2019)
• On Becoming, Michelle Obama (2018)
• Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, Soraya Chemaly (2019)
• The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! Thoughts on Life, Love, and Rebellion, Gloria Steinem (2019)

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* This is proprietary, copyrighted (©) material (December 2019) by the author, Ronald L. Krannich, Ph.D. (Political Science). All rights reserved. No part of this material may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author: rkrannich@gmail.com or Tel. 703-298-8128. However, we welcome opportunities to share these unique resources with fellow progressives via open linkages to this website or through contractual arrangements.

This review article is the third in a trilogy of hyperlinked articles developed by Ron for individuals and organizations interested in progressive ideas and action. His two other related articles focus on progressive opportunities (advocacy groups) and progressive media. Both are available through these sections of the Skidaway Hamiltons’s website:

• Progressive Opportunities
• Progressive Media

Taken together, these three important resource review articles go a long way to defining what it means to be a concerned and active progressive in today’s America.