non-fiction books

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Kristin Kobes Du Mez · 2021

Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

Cat Bohannon · 2023

Orientalism

Edward W. Said · 1979

People's History of the United States, A

Howard Zinn · 2015

Hostile Homelands The New Alliance Between India and Israel

Azad Essa · 2023

Empire of Pain

Patrick Radden Keefe · 2021

<b><i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER • A <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin. From the prize-winning and bestselling author of <i>Say Nothing.</i></b><br><br><b>"A real-life version of the HBO series <i>Succession</i> with a lethal sting in its tail…a masterful work of narrative reportage.” – Laura Miller, <i>Slate</i> </b><br><br>The history of the Sackler dynasty is rife with drama—baroque personal lives; bitter disputes over estates; fistfights in boardrooms; glittering art collections; Machiavellian courtroom maneuvers; and the calculated use of money to burnish reputations and crush the less powerful. The Sackler name has adorned the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, but the source of the family fortune was vague—until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst for the opioid crisis.<br><br><i>Empire of Pain</i> is the saga of three generations of a single family and the mark they would leave on the world, a tale that moves from the bustling streets of early twentieth-century Brooklyn to the seaside palaces of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Cap d’Antibes to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. It follows the family’s early success with Valium to the much more potent OxyContin, marketed with a ruthless technique of co-opting doctors, influencing the FDA, downplaying the drug’s addictiveness. <i>Empire of Pain</i> chronicles the multiple investigations of the Sacklers and their company, and the scorched-earth legal tactics that the family has used to evade accountability.<br><br>A masterpiece of narrative reporting, <i>Empire of Pain</i> is a ferociously compelling portrait of America’s second Gilded Age, a study of impunity among the super-elite and a relentless investigation of the naked greed that built one of the world’s great fortunes.

Woman at Point Zero

Nawal El Saadawi · 2015

The Barefoot Woman

Scholastique Mukasonga · 2018

Assata An Autobiography

Assata Shakur · 2001

Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves

Sophie Gilbert · 2025

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Kimmerer · 2013

Eve’s Hollywood

Eve Babitz · 2018

Perfect Victims

Mohammed El-Kurd · 2025

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

Angela Y. Davis · 2016

In this collection of essays, interviews, and speeches, the renowned activist examines today’s issues—from Black Lives Matter to prison abolition and more.   Activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis has been a tireless fighter against oppression for decades. Now, the iconic author of Women, Race, and Class offers her latest insights into the struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.   Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism, 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.”   This edition of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle includes a foreword by Dr. Cornel West and an introduction by Frank Barat.

Savage Inequalities

Jonathan Kozol · 2012

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children.”—The New York Times Book Review In 1988, Jonathan Kozol set off to spend time with children in the American public education system. For two years, he visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington, D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. In Savage Inequalities, Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools. Praise for Savage Inequalities “I was unprepared for the horror and shame I felt. . . . Savage Inequalities is a savage indictment. . . . Everyone should read this important book.”—Robert Wilson, USA Today “Kozol has written a book that must be read by anyone interested in education.”—Elizabeth Duff, Philadelphia Inquirer “The forces of equity have now been joined by a powerful voice. . . . Kozol has written a searing exposé of the extremes of wealth and poverty in America’s school system and the blighting effect on poor children, especially those in cities.”—Emily Mitchell, Time “Easily the most passionate, and certain to be the most passionately debated, book about American education in several years . . . A classic American muckraker with an eloquent prose style, Kozol offers . . . an old-fashioned brand of moral outrage that will affect every reader whose heart has not yet turned to stone.”—Entertainment Weekly

On Palestine

Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé · 2015

On Photography

Susan Sontag · 2001

Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence

Adrienne Cecile Rich · 1981

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge Classics)

Judith Butler · 2006

Women, Race & Class

Angela Y. Davis · 1983