Dive deeper into the issues this political season with these book suggestions
Want to read more about economics, health care and immigration before you vote? Here & Now‘s go-to book expert, Traci Thomas of “The Stacks” podcast, joins host Scott Tong with some book suggestions.
Though it’s hard to narrow down her recommendations, Thomas says that books on complex political topics can offer a unique understanding of issues.
“Reading one or two articles is still barely going to scratch the surface,” Thomas says. “Even if you just read one book, you will get a lot of information, and many books — nonfiction books especially — have bibliographies … So you are getting multiple voices even if you’re reading just one book on a topic.”
Book recommendations
Economy
- “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland“ by Jonathan Metzl
- “Poverty by America” by Matthew Desmond
- “In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work” by Kyla Scanlon
Health care
- “The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine” by Ricardo Nuila
- “The Social Transformation of American Healthcare: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry” by Paul Starr
- “How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability and Doom” by Johanna Hedva
Immigration
- “Everyone Who is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis” by Jonathan Blitzer
- “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling” by Jason De Leon
- “Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration“by Alejandra Oliva
Abortion
- “Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win” by Jessica Valenti
- “Undue Burden: A Black, Woman Physician on Being Christian and Pro-Abortion in the Reproductive Justice Movement” by DeShawn Taylor
- “The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having or Being Denied an Abortion” by Diana Greene Foster
Middle East
- “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” by Nathan Thrall
- “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” by Rashid Khalidi
- “The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism” by Marjorie N. Feld
Climate change
- “What If We Get It Right: Visions of Climate Futures” by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
- “Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science” by Jessica Hernandez
- “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert
Education
- “School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education” by Laura Pappano
- “Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal” by Bettina L. Love
- “The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America” by Cara Fitzpatrick
Gun violence
- “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America” by Carol Anderson
- “Children Under Fire: An American Crisis” by John Woodrow Cox
- “American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15″ by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
