A rigorously researched history of the 1920s Klan in Indiana, where the organization reached its greatest political power, briefly controlling state government. Madison examines how ordinary citizens joined and normalized an explicitly white supremacist organization, with urgent contemporary relevance. Winner of the 2020 Meridian Award for History.
Percival Everett’s savage, formally inventive racial satire places two Black detectives in Money, Mississippi to investigate murders tied to the legacy of Emmett Till. A Booker Prize shortlisted masterwork of dark comedy and historical reckoning. 2021 Meridian Award winner, rated 5.0.
Judith Heumann’s definitive memoir of the disability rights movement covers her childhood with polio, her fight to become a teacher in New York, the Section 504 sit-in of 1977, and the passage of the ADA. Essential civil rights history told by its most important protagonist. Winner of the 2020 Meridian Award for Biography.
William Still kept records when keeping records was dangerous. As a free Black man working in Philadelphia in the 1850s, he maintained meticulous documentation of nearly one thousand freedom seekers who passed through the city on their way north, gathering names, physical descriptions, family histories, and the stories of escape that the individuals entrusted to…
Lee McIntyre attends a flat-earth convention, talks with climate deniers and anti-vaxxers, and develops practical strategies for productive conversations with science deniers. Drawing on cognitive science, philosophy of science, and social psychology, this MIT Press book applies rigorous epistemology to one of democracy’s most pressing problems.
AJ Harper’s definitive guide to nonfiction craft argues that a truly effective book must place the reader’s transformation at its center. Widely adopted by writing coaches and editors, the book provides concrete frameworks for designing manuscripts around what readers need rather than what authors know. The most practically useful book on nonfiction writing in years. Rated 5.0/5.
Karolyn Smardz Frost’s transnational archival history traces what happened after freedom seekers crossed into Canada, revealing how Black communities in Upper Canada became hubs of radical antislavery thought and action, and how Canada drew American abolitionists, reformers, and Black activists into a sustained fight for freedom. A landmark work of Black freedom history. Rated 5.0/5.
Natalie Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection is one of the essential American poetry books of the decade. Rooted in Mojave identity, the Colorado River, and queer desire, Postcolonial Love Poem is formally brilliant, politically urgent, and deeply human in equal measure. A 5.0 without qualification.
Book 17 in the beloved series sends Greg Heffley onto Rodrick’s heavy metal band tour. Tightly plotted, visually inventive, and genuinely funny, Diper Overlode is Jeff Kinney at his most technically confident, and a reminder that no franchise in children’s publishing has put more books into more hands over the past two decades.
A queer horror novel set at a summer camp where Mars, a nonbinary teen, investigates his twin sister’s mysterious breakdown. Ryan La Sala delivers the most original YA voice of its award year, using bees, gender systems, and genuine atmospheric dread to make visible what comfort keeps hidden.
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