The Power of Identity

What can we learn about ourselves from memoirs detailing Patti Smith’s year of solitary travel, Jesseyln Silva’s goal of becoming an Olympic boxer, and Nikki Giovanni’s career as a poet? How do the biographies of abolitionist Fredrick Douglass, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and poet Gwendolyn Brooks serve as examples of leadership in our own time? What is the power in reading about lives that are different from our own? How do books help shape our understanding of identity?

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists by Mikki Kendall

Do You Mind If I Cancel: (Things That Still Annoy Me) by Gary Janetti

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David Blight

A Good Cry: What We Learn From Tears and Laughter by Nikki Giovanni

And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?: A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks by Ren Weschler

Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between by Meg John Barker

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry

Make It Scream, Make It Burn: Essays by Leslie Jamison

Monument Man: The Life & Art of Daniel Chester French by Harold Holzer

My Corner of the Ring by Jesselyn Silva

A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life & Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks by Angela Jackson

The Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

The Power of the Novel

What can the rise and fall of George R. R. Martin’s fictitious Targaryen dynasty tell us about the cyclical nature of power? What happens when the Odyssey, traditionally read as the archetype of a male-dominated hero’s journey, is rewritten into a feminist-centric narrative about the powerful goddess Circe? How can Ta-Nehisi Coates’s debut novel, The Water Dancer, set in the antebellum South, inform America’s current discussion of race, racism, and reparations?

Circe by Madeline Miller

Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones (A Targaryen History) by George R. R. Martin

The Great Believers: A Novel by Rebecca Makkai

Gun Island: A Novel by Amitav Ghosh

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

Quichotte: A Novel by Salman Rushdie

The Topeka School: A Novel by Ben Lerner

The Water Dancer: A Novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Power of the Environmentally Conscious Citizen

What really happened at Chernobyl and what can we do to prevent another nuclear disaster of such magnitude? What do photographs of nuclear test sites illuminate about humans relationship to our environment? How has the oil industry caused environmental and political disasters? And what can environmentally conscious citizens do to change the course of history?

Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth by Rachel Maddow

Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator by Gregory B. Jaczko

Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future by Kate Brown

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham

The Nevada Test Site by Emmet Gowin

We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Power of Journalism

Has journalism pushed the world to change too much, or not enough? How has a crisis in trust threatened the free press? What is the responsibility of journalism in a “post-truth” world? Do reporters pay a price for exposing corruption and is there a cost to staying silent?

Chicago Defender by Myiti Sengstacke-Rice

Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts by Jill Abramson

Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords And Their Godfathers by Anabel Hernández

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

The Power of Restorative Justice

How would America’s criminal justice system look different if its central focus was restorative justice? How does incarceration affect the identity of prisoners? What factors have contributed to the increased criminalization of immigration?

Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty that Sparked a National Debate by Sister Helen Prejean

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy

Felon: Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts

This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto by Suketu Mehta

The Power of Reparations

What would an antiracist society look like, and how can we play an active role in building it? How can America push back against white supremacist ideologies and repair the harm they cause? How have states and the supreme court used their power to undermine the rights to equality guaranteed in constitutional amendments? What form might reparations for slavery take?

Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition by Katherine Franke

Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by Eric Foner

The Power of Hidden Stories

Have you heard of America’s hidden stories: from the role US territories have played turning America into a global superpower to Nazi collaborators living anonymously in the US after WWII? What are the untold triumphs and failures of American progressive ideals? How have cyberweapons transformed 21st century geopolitics, and how have quantum mechanics changed science as we know it?

Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler’s Hidden Soldiers in America by Debbie Cenziper

Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America by Sherrod Brown

Give Me Liberty: A History of America's Exceptional Idea by Richard Brookhiser

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell

The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making by Jared Yates Sexton

Medallion Status: True Stories of Secret Rooms by John Hodgman

Mother Is a Verb: An Unconventional History by Sarah Knott

Ornamentalism by Anne Anlin Cheng

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age? By David E. Sanger

Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime by Sean Carroll

The Power of Middle Class America

How do the neighborhoods we grow up in shape our future? How has the pressure of rising college costs transformed family life in America? Who comprises the workforce that keeps the Internet running smoothly, and why are there no labor laws governing their industry? What systems of power benefit from the class divide in America?

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh

Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost by Caitlin Zaloom

The World Is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart In a Chicago Neighborhood by Carlo Rotella

The Power of Belief

In an era of increasing secularization, can religion maintain its power over public and private spheres? What is the lore, and the science, about what happens to our bodies after we die? Is their power in memorializing the lives of people history has forgotten? Why is the search for meaning central to human life? And what can a long-dead civilization, Ancient Greece, illuminate about modern life?

For Small Creatures Such As We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World by Sasha Sagan

Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving by Mo Rocca

Religion: What Is It, How it Works, and Why It Matters by Christian Smith

Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us by Simon Critchley

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty

The Power of Creativity

What is the power of having people over for a really good meal? Does the history of clothing tell a story? How can cooks use their creativity to push back against the racism and elitism ingrained in the fine dining industry? Why is it important to increase age diversity in the fashion industry? In what ways are clothes political; How do clothes function as a “powerful social skin”? Does music have the power to shape self and society?

Advanced Love by Ari Seth Cohen

Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion by Tanisha C. Ford

Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir by Kwame Onwuachi

Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over By Alison Roman

Pick Up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music by John Corbett

Revenge of the She-Punks: A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot by Vivien Goldman

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