Social Issues

How people live together and who gets left out: race and civil rights, gender, poverty, prisons and the courts. Hear real stories from these books and the arguments behind them.

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Editor's Picks

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Eric Schlosser

How to Be an Antiracist

Ibram X. Kendi

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Caroline Criado Perez

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Bryan Stevenson

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About

Robin DiAngelo

Latest from Social Issues

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

bell hooks

All About Love: New Visions

bell hooks

“You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People

Aubrey Gordon

A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion

Fay Bound Alberti

A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama's Vision for Our World

Daniel Goleman

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present

Howard Zinn

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf

Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis

Tracy Rosenthal

Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to

Jessica Valenti

Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America

John Lewis

Adrift: 100 Charts that Reveal Why America is on the Brink

Scott Galloway

Afropean: Notes From Black Europe

Johny Pitts

Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World

Matthieu Ricard

American Savage: Insights, Slights and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love and Politics

Dan Savage

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Neil Postman

Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way

Nicholas A. Christakis

Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture – and What We

Kate Harding

Bad Feminist: Essays

Roxane Gay

Bad Friend: How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship

Tiffany Watt Smith

Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Eddie S. Glaude

Race

Bad Feminist: Essays

Roxane Gay

The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America

Coleman Hughes

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in

Morgan Jerkins

The Wretched of the Earth

Frantz Fanon

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

Akala

So You Want to Talk About Race

Ijeoma Oluo

Social Justice Fallacies

Thomas Sowell

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

Emmanuel Acho

The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

Dolly Chugh

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Michelle Alexander

I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual

Luvvie Ajayi

Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging

Afua Hirsch

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Solitary: A Biography

Albert Woodfox

Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim “Other”

Francis Wade

The Autobiography Of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Patrisse Khan-Cullors

I Am Not Your Baby Mother

Candice Brathwaite

Four Hundred Souls: A COMMUNITY HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICA, 1619–2019

Ibram X. Kendi

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

Cathy Park Hong

Gender

Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture – and What We

Kate Harding

The Greater Freedom: Life as a Middle Eastern Woman Outside the Stereotypes

Alya Mooro

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Vagina: A Re-education

Lynn Enright

Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work

Melissa Gira Grant

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement

Jodi Kantor

She/He/They/Me: An Interactive Guide to the Gender Binary

Robyn Ryle

When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt

Kara Cooney

The Witches Are Coming

Lindy West

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot

Malala Yousafzai

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Bad Friend: How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship

Tiffany Watt Smith

Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible

Elizabeth Uviebinené

Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women

Ellen Atlanta

The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Women, Race and Class

Angela Y. Davis

How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Live a

Regan Penaluna

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Judith Butler

Of Boys and Men: Why Modern Men Struggle, Why It Matters, and How to

Richard Reeves

Inequality

Adrift: 100 Charts that Reveal Why America is on the Brink

Scott Galloway

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die

Keith Payne

The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate

Phil Gramm

The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois

Wildland: The Making of America's Fury

Evan Osnos

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Reni Eddo-Lodge

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Bryan Stevenson

Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People

Frances Ryan

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum

Katherine Boo

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

Heather McGhee

The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman

Trust First: A True Story About the Power of Giving People Second

Bruce Deel

JAY-Z: Made in America

Michael Eric Dyson

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Social Justice Fallacies

Thomas Sowell

Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Thick: And Other Essays

Tressie McMillan Cottom

Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net

Jessica Calarco

Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis

Tracy Rosenthal

Sociology

Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

Anne Helen Petersen

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson

Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation

Eva Illouz

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Arlie Russell Hochschild

Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea

Mitchell Duneier

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century

Alice Wong

The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of

Amy Chua

Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising that Changed

Martin Duberman

Inheritocracy: It's Time to Talk About the Bank of Mum and

Eliza Filby

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir

Purity and Danger

Mary Douglas

Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way

Nicholas A. Christakis

The Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord

The Burnout Society

Byung-Chul Han

Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Michel Foucault

Status Anxiety

Alain de Botton

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center

Rhaina Cohen

Gang Leader For A Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets

Sudhir Venkatesh

Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever

John McWhorter

Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times

Jonathan Sacks

Criminal Justice

Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a

Gilbert King

Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Justice

Adam Benforado

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

Clint Smith

Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of

Preet Bharara

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

Emmanuel Acho

Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work

Melissa Gira Grant

The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld

Jamie Bartlett

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

Johann Hari

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies

The Secret Barrister

This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism

Don Lemon

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Solitary: A Biography

Albert Woodfox

So You Want to Talk About Race

Ijeoma Oluo

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum

Katherine Boo

Walk the Blue Line: Real Cops, True Stories

James Patterson

Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture – and What We

Kate Harding

Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country

Patricia Evangelista

Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Michel Foucault

Know My Name: A Memoir

Chanel Miller

Global Development

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

Nicholas D. Kristof

The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence

Gary A. Haugen

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters

Rose George

Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose

Melanne Verveer

The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality

Angus Deaton

The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty

Peter Singer

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

Siddharth Kara

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum

Katherine Boo

Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day

Daryl Collins

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

Melinda Gates

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

John Green

The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality

Branko Milanović

Diversity & Inclusion

Lean Out: The Truth about Women, Power, and the Workplace

Marissa Orr

The End of Bias: A Beginning

Jessica Nordell

Indivisible: How to Forge Our Differences Into a Stronger Future

Denise Hamilton

The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America

Coleman Hughes

The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

Dolly Chugh

Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace: A Guide for Equity and Inclusion

Janice Gassam Asare

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley

Emily Chang

Radical Inclusion: Seven Steps to Help You Create a More Just Workplace,

David Moinina Sengeh

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

Austin Channing Brown

The Likeability Trap: How to Break Free and Succeed as You Are –

Alicia Menendez

Social Issues Library

“You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People

A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion

A Force for Good: The Dalai Lama's Vision for Our World

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present

A Room of One’s Own

Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis

Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win

Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America

Adrift: 100 Charts that Reveal Why America is on the Brink of Change

Afropean: Notes From Black Europe

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

All About Love: New Visions

Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World

American Savage: Insights, Slights and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love and Politics

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture – and What We Can Do about It

Bad Feminist: Essays

Bad Friend: How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship

Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum

Between the World and Me

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

Black and British: A Forgotten History

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family

Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity

Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley

Brown Girl Dreaming

Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News

Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

Capital and Ideology

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People

Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

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