Starting the Conversation: Adult Nonfiction

In our commitment to serve our community and foster the pursuit of knowledge, we offer these resources to help begin important conversations.

Showing 1 - 20 of 25  There are a total of 82 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The accident of color"
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Description:
"A history of the first civil rights movement and the origins of black and white in America. When we hear "civil rights," we tend to think of the 1950s and 1960s activism that put an end to Jim Crow segregation laws. In The Accident of Color, Daniel Brook takes us to New Orleans and Charleston, where before the Civil War, free, biracial people-- sometimes referred to as "browns"-- exercised many rights of citizenship. During Reconstruction, as a black-...
Book cover for "Ain't I a woman"
Star rating for Ain't I a woman
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"A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of Black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on Black women during slavery, the devaluation of Back womanhood, Black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the Black woman's involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions. The result is nothing short of groundbreaking, giving this...
Book cover for "Between the world and me"
Star rating for Between the world and me
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT
Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary...
Book cover for "Black is the body"
Star rating for Black is the body
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"A collection of essays on race"--
Book cover for "Chokehold"
Star rating for Chokehold
Description:
"Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread--all with the support of judges and politicians. In his no-holds-barred style,...
Book cover for "Democracy in black"
Star rating for Democracy in black
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"A polemic on the state of black America that argues that we don't yet live in a post-racial society"--
Book cover for "The end of policing"
Star rating for The end of policing
Description:
Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists, and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or in combination. The core of the problem must be addressed: the nature of modern policing itself.
This book...
Book cover for "The fire this time"
Star rating for The fire this time
Author:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this ... collection of essays and poems about race from ... voices of her generation and our time"--
Book cover for "Five days"
Star rating for Five days
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Description:
"When Freddie Gray was arrested for possessing an 'illegal knife' in April 2015, he was, by eyewitness accounts that video evidence later confirmed, treated 'roughly' as police loaded him into a vehicle. By the end of his trip in the police van, Gray was in a coma he would never recover from. In the wake of a long history of police abuse in Baltimore, this killing felt like a final straw--it led to a week of protests and then five days described alternately...
Book cover for "How we fight white supremacy"
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Average Rating:
5 stars
Book cover for "Jackson, 1964"
Star rating for Jackson, 1964
Book cover for "Negroland"
Star rating for Negroland
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An extraordinary look at privilege, discrimination, and the fallacy of post-racial America by the renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning cultural critic

Jefferson takes us into an insular and discerning society: “I call it Negroland,” she writes, “because I still find ‘Negro’ a word of wonders, glorious and terrible.”
 
Margo...
Book cover for "The new Jim Crow"
Star rating for The new Jim Crow
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, and public benefits create a permanent under caste based largely on race.
Book cover for "Not quite not white"
Star rating for Not quite not white
Book cover for "The other Wes Moore"
Star rating for The other Wes Moore
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Traces the parallel lives of two youths with the same name in the same community, describing how the author grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar and promising business leader while his counterpart suffered a life of violence and imprisonment.
Book cover for "Some of my best friends are Black"
Star rating for Some of my best friends are Black
Description:
Chronicles America's troubling relationship with race through four interrelated stories: the transformation of a once-racist Birmingham school system; a Kansas City neighborhood's fight against housing discrimination; the curious racial divide of the Madison Avenue ad world; and a Louisiana Catholic parish's forty-year effort to build an integrated church.
Book cover for "Stamped from the beginning"
Star rating for Stamped from the beginning
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
 The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society.
Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America — it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every...
Book cover for "Tears we cannot stop"
Star rating for Tears we cannot stop
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
Fifty years ago Malcolm X told a white woman who asked what she could do for the cause, 'Nothing.' Michael Eric Dyson believes he was wrong. Now he responds to that question. If society is to make real racial progress, people must face difficult truths, including being honest about how Black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.
Book cover for "They can't kill us all"
Star rating for They can't kill us all
Average Rating:
2.5 stars
Book cover for "They were her property"
Star rating for They were her property
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often...