The Best Political Books To Read This Year

From Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, a shocking investigation of unparalleled depth into the subversion of the Justice Department over the last decade, culminating in President Donald Trump upending this cornerstone of democracy and threatening America’s rule of law as we have long known it.

Attacks on schools and teachers have long been a hallmark of fascist regimes: Throughout history, as many dictators rose to power they began banning books and controlling curriculum. Fascists fear teachers because teachers foster an educated and empowered population that can see past propaganda and scare tactics. Fascists fear teachers because they teach young people to think for themselves. A manifesto for our time, Why Fascists Fear Teachers is necessary reading for every American worried about the future of our democracy.

From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman’s OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and MSNBC and podcast host, a powerful wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society. The Sirens’ Call is the book that snaps everything into a single holistic framework so that we can wrest back control of our lives, our politics, and our future.

The National Book Award-winning historian of Stamped from the Beginning charts how “great replacement theory” has moved from the margins to become the most dominant political theory of our time — and what we can do to safeguard democracy from this insidious threat.

The inspiring story of how we overcame a history of infectious disease, poisonous environments, and early death and unlocked an explosion in human potential — and a vision for the work ahead to optimize human flourishing in the twenty-first century.

A rallying cry to fight the commodification of human attention, with the tools we need to reclaim our humanity, by a group of writers, artists, and activists in the vanguard of the movement.

A former public defender takes us behind the closed doors of America’s criminal courts, revealing how the institutions that claim to protect us are doing the exact opposite — and offering a blueprint for finally fixing it. Provocative and eye-opening, The Price of Mercy lifts the curtain on the way our laws really operate and presents a path forward for true transformation of the American criminal court system. Justice, and the law itself, is not some static thing. It is something enacted together, decision by decision, in acts of inhumanity or mercy.

The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone. Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them in a special in-depth series for The Washington Post. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, and each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.

A “bracing” (Vox) guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism, from “a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present” (The New York Times). On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.

The renowned author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell — and the ones we don’t — shape our realities. Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world — and our own souls — and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

From America’s favorite government teacher, a “fascinating and fun” (Adam Grant) portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country. In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them.

A “gripping” (The Washington Post) account of how the major transformations in history — from the rise of Homo sapiens to the birth of capitalism — have been shaped not by humans but by germs. By placing disease at the center of this wide-ranging history of humankind, Kennedy challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions about our collective past — and urges us to view this moment as another disease-driven inflection point that will change the course of history. Provocative and brimming with insight, Pathogenesis transforms our understanding of the human story.

An award-winning journalist’s exploration of how race, identity, and political trauma have influenced the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, and how this group can shape American politics.

Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: To maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.

The essential new book by CNN anchor and chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto, identifying a new, more uncertain global order with reporting on the frontlines of power, from existing wars to looming ones across the globe.

An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer.

A brilliant exploration of freedom — what it is, how it’s been misunderstood, and why it’s our only chance for survival — by the acclaimed Yale historian and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller On Tyranny. Intimate yet ambitious, this books helps forge a new consensus rooted in a politics of abundance, generosity, and grace.