Race and Civil Rights
🥇 01
BORN A CRIME
🖋️ Trevor Noah
🏢 Spiegel & Grau
A memoir about growing up in South Africa by the comedian, now the host of “The Daily Show,” whose birth was the result of an illegal (under apartheid) relationship between a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother.
🥈 02
HIDDEN FIGURES
🖋️ Margot Lee Shetterly
🏢 HarperCollins
The story, based in part on interviews, of the black women mathematicians who were hired as “computers” by the precursor of NASA during World War II. The basis of the forthcoming movie.
🥉 03
BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME
🖋️ Ta-Nehisi Coates
🏢 Spiegel & Grau
A meditation on race in America as well as a personal story by the national correspondent of The Atlantic, framed as a letter to his teenage son. Winner of the National Book Award.
04
THE NEW JIM CROW
🖋️ Michelle Alexander
🏢 New Press
A law professor takes aim at the “war on drugs” and its impact on black men.
05
JUST MERCY
🖋️ Bryan Stevenson
🏢 Spiegel & Grau
A law professor and MacArthur grant recipient's memoir of his decades of work to free innocent people condemned to death.
06
MARCH TRILOGY
🖋️ John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
🏢 Top Shelf Productions
All three volumes of Representative John Lewis's memoir of the civil rights movement are collected here.
07
MARCH: BOOK ONE
🖋️ John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
🏢 Top Shelf Productions
Representative John Lewis of Georgia describes his childhood and the beginning of his involvement in the civil rights movement. The first volume of a trilogy.
08
MISADVENTURES OF AWKWARD BLACK GIRL
🖋️ Issa Rae
🏢 Atria / 37 INK
Humorous essays on what it is like to be awkward in a world that glorifies cool.
09
YOU CAN'T TOUCH MY HAIR
🖋️ Phoebe Robinson
🏢 Penguin
Essays by a stand-up comic on topics like race, gender, dating and feminism.
10
STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING
🖋️ Ibram X Kendi
🏢 Nation
The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.