a list of books to educate yourself on social and political topics
created by abookishweekend
last updated August, 2026
Why We're Polarized
Ezra Klein
Sincerely, Your Autistic Child
Sharon daVanport
Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global
Sian Norris
We Are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride In The History of Queer Liberation
Matthew Riemer
Revolution Is Love: A Year of Black Trans Liberation
Qween Jean
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions
Larry Mitchell
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
There Are Trans People Here
H. Melt
The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps
Heinz Heger
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
Rachel Louise Snyder
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
Jon Krakauer
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
Stephanie Foo
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Matthew Desmond
Nevada
Imogen Binnie
He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters
Schuyler Bailar
Stonewall
Martin Duberman
Bad Gays: A Homosexual History
Huw Lemmey
In the Dream House: A Memoir
Carmen Maria Machado
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
Carol Anderson
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)
Maya Angelou
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Bryan Stevenson
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander
Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont
Robert Bilott
The Three Ages of Water: Prehistoric Past, Imperiled Present, and a Hope for the Future
Peter H. Gleick
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet
Hannah Ritchie
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Elizabeth Kolbert
Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture
Roxane Gay
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
Mikki Kendall
I think Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein fits well in this list.
added to the list and my tbr! thanks for the rec :)
Any time! 👍🏻
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