2017 Books for the Holidays: Politics and Activism Must-Reads

In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.” We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America.

In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. Andersen explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails.

In a bold act of conscience, Republican Senator Jeff Flake takes his party to task for embracing nationalism, populism, and xenophobia. The book is an urgent call for a return to bedrock conservative principle and a cry to once again put country before party.

The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. On Tyranny traces how our political order today faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century.

From Solmaz Sharif and Eileen Myles to Kevin Young and Juan Felipe Herrera, American poets of diverse styles and strategies have contributed their truths: scenes from the front lines of resistance, and from the interior of our collective conscience.

In fewer than three hundred words, Khizr Khan electrified viewers around the world when he took the stage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. An American Family shows us who Khizr Khan and millions of other American immigrants are, and why—especially in these tumultuous times—we must not be afraid to step forward for what we believe in when it matters most.

On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died on a Staten Island sidewalk. The final moments of Garner’s life were captured on video and seen by millions. A narrative of urban America and a scathing indictment of the perverse incentives built into our penal system, I Can’t Breathe drills down into the particulars of one case to confront us with the human cost of our broken approach to dispensing criminal justice.

Luke Harding,  Guardian reporter and former Moscow bureau chief, takes the reader through every bizarre and disquieting detail of the “Trump-Russia” story. Drawing on new material and his expert understanding of Moscow and its players, he uncovers international espionage, off-shore banks, sketchy real estate deals, mobsters, money laundering, poisoned dissidents, and computer hacking.