In the rush to finish my dissertation, I was sad to miss writing my annual book review post (see 2017 and 2018), so I’m just going to do it now…in May.
This year I read 37 books. Nowhere near the high mark of 67 books from last year; I didn’t even get to my goal of 40 books. But that’s ok, because the trade-off was, you know, finishing my dissertation.
So here, without further delay, is my reading list from 2019. As usual, some favorites are called out on top, and the rest are listed below in the order I read them.
Top Picks
Fiction
Octavia E. Butler. Yes, yes, I know Octavia Butler is not a book, but I discovered her last year and read three of her novels and one short story collection. If you haven’t read anything of hers, you should. From Kindred, the story of a woman who has to literally navigate the brutal injustices of her family tree as she jumps back and forth in time, to Earthseed a prescient series set in a near-future America troubled by climate change, unchecked corporatization, designer drugs, and theocratic power-grabs, Butler’s writing perceptively explores many of the disturbing undercurrents that plague American society and culture and brings them to life in gripping narrative.
Non-Fiction
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch
This book on education policy came out in 2012, so some of the information is a bit dated. Nevertheless, its core message is still alarmingly relevant. Movements toward school privatization have continued in force since the book was written, and are only intensifying during the Coronavirus pandemic. Reign of Error gives important background and useful, data-backed arguments against privatization and charter and voucher school programs. Once an advocate for charter schools herself, Ravitch became disillusioned by their consistent failure to deliver on their grandiose promises and now offers clear and convincing arguments for revitalization and reinvestment in public education.
I first heard Diane Ravitch speak on the Pitchfork Economics podcast, She and host Nick Hanauer discussed their former advocacy for school privatization and the process by which their views changed. It is rare to witness people who have, by evidence and experience, become disillusioned with positions for which they have advocated strongly and systems which benefit them personally. I was impressed by the intellectual honesty and personal integrity they showed as they adjusted their beliefs, acknowledged their error, and worked to make amends.
Atlas of Moral Psychology, edited by Kurt Gray
This colossal edited volume presents a current state-of-the-field survey of moral psychology. Unlike the field of ethics, moral psychology does not attempt to ascertain what is actually right and wrong; instead, it attempts to identify the psychological and socio-cultural processes by which humans decide what is right or wrong, and how to act and react morally in specific circumstances. It is a new and messy field, but it already offers valuable insights into many foibles of human morality, from the ethical systems we create down to the inconsistency with which we embody them. I was especially happy to see that this volume made a strong effort to include investigations across class, gender, and culture, the lack of which has historically been a weakness of psychological research.
The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
Tisby presents an excellent historical survey of the shortcomings of the American church as it relates to issues of race. Even when white Christians were not explicitly championing racist views or defending the institutions of slavery and segregation, their advocacy for equal rights and protections under the law were muted and weak. Few and far between were those who gave full-throated support to the liberation of Black, Asian, and Hispanic people, here or abroad. This book focuses only on the Christian church’s role in the history of racism in America, and may work best as a supplement to Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning and/or Paul Ortiz’s An African American and LatinX History of the United States.
The Whole List
- Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories that Shaped Early Judaism by Malka Z. Simkovich.
- Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orisha #1) by Tomi Adeyemi
- Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis
- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
- The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
- A Brief History of Everyone who Ever Lived: The Stories in our Genes by Adam Rutherford
- The New Cambridge History of the Bible: Volume 1. From the Beginnings to 600 edited by James Carleton Paget
- Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
- This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies edited by Hector Avalos
- The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book by Timothy Beal
- The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory by Jesse Walker
- Sex, Mom, and God: How the Bible’s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics and How I learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway by Frank Schaeffer
- The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1) by Jasper Fforde
- Atlas of Moral Psychology edited by Kurt Gray
- A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielsen
- Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement by Rich Karlgaard
- The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green
- Beyond Orality: Biblical Poetry on Its Own Terms by Jacqueline Vayntrub
- The Emily Series by L. M. Montgomery (Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily’s Quest)
- Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
- Blood Child and Other Stories by Octavia E Butler
- Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1) by Octavia E. Butler
- Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2) by Octavia E. Butler
- The Big Disruption by Jessica Powell
- Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland by Jonathan Metzl
- Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch
- What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden? by Ziony Zevit
- Moses Among the Idols: Mediators of the Divine in the Ancient Near East by Amy L. Balogh
- Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
- White Fragility: Why it’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin D’Angelo
- A Short History of Iraq by Thabit Abdullah
- Divine Bodies: Resurrecting Perfection in the New Testament and Early Christianity by Candida R. Moss
- Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature by Rebecca Raphael
- The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom by Candida R. Moss
- The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy
