Sponsored by Henry Holt and Company.
From award-winning journalist Jamie Thompson, Standoff offers a nuanced look at race and policing in America. On the evening of July 7, 2016, protesters gathered across the nation after police shot two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. As officers patrolled a march in Dallas, a man carrying a rifle killed five officers and wounded eleven others. A small group of cops cornered the shooter, where a fierce gun battle was followed by a stalemate. Crisis negotiator Larry Gordon bonded with the gunman while his colleagues devised an unprecedented plan to bring the night to its dramatic end.
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A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Remarkable Story of an Italian Mother, Her Two Sons, and Their Fight Against Fascism by Caroline Moorehead
After World War I, right-wing nationalism slowly grew in popularity across the world, but particularly in Europe. In Italy, the fascist dictator Mussolini held sway. This book focuses on the Rosselli family, and “pays tribute to heroes who fought to uphold our humanity during one of history’s darkest chapters.”
All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life by Winona LaDuke
An Anishinaabe writer and economist, LaDuke shares stories of “Native resistance to environmental and cultural degradation,” highlighting Native activists from the Buffalo Nations, Seminoles, Hawai’i, and more, and the racist opposition they encounter.
March by John Lewis
If you haven’t started March yet, now is a good time. Recently passed Congressman Lewis tells, in three volumes, his lifelong struggle on behalf of civil rights for all. Book One is about his childhood in rural Alabama, his first meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., “the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins.” We miss you, Congressman.
The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan
It’s 1969. Your husband or boyfriend can order you not to use contraception. Or you’ve been assaulted. Or any one of a myriad of reasons has led to you getting pregnant when you do not want to or cannot be. In Chicago, an organization known as Jane began. Started by women, some of them students at the University of Chicago, Jane initially provided anonymous referrals to doctors willing to perform abortions. Eventually, the women in the organization learned to do them themselves. They did this to save women from hurting themselves or being hurt by others. This is what was necessary until 1973, and what we hope will not be necessary ever again.
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis
Activist-for-decades and scholar Davis “discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today’s struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine. Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build a movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that “freedom is a constant struggle.””