This month, we’re looking at Current Events, with a healthy consideration of many poignant issues of the past 3-4 years as our “current” timeline. As politics, public health and technology rapidly evolve, here are some of the newest ideas, perspectives, and stories you might want to read about! If you have other titles to share, head over to our Facebook group and let us know!
The Coddling of The American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation For Failure, by Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt (2018)
“First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: what doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people.”
Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could, by Adam B. Schiff (2021) “From the congressman who led the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump, the vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour, and a warning that the forces of autocracy unleashed by Trump remain as potent as ever.”
Restart: Designing a Healthy Post-Pandemic Life, by Doreen Dodgen-Magee (2021)
“Restart prepares readers to do the hard work of reentering an in-person post-pandemic world by examining the relationships we have formed with ourselves, our devices, and others in quarantine.”
There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity In the 21st Century, by Fiona Hill (2021)
“Foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness Fiona Hill reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia--and shows how we can return hope to our forgotten places. In this deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and explains that only by expanding opportunity can we save our democracy.”
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, by Malcolm Gladwell (2019)
“In this thoughtful treatise spurred by the 2015 death of African-American academic Sandra Bland in jail after a traffic stop, New Yorker writer Gladwell (The Tipping Point) aims to figure out the strategies people use to assess strangers-to "analyze, critique them, figure out where they came from, figure out how to fix them, " in other words: to understand how to balance trust and safety.”
More Than One Child: Memoirs of an Illegal Daughter, by Shen Yang (2021)
“In the late 1980s, Shen Yang was born during the fiercest years of China’s One-Child Policy. As the second daughter of the family, she was a massive liability – an excess child, a product of illegal birth.”
Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend The Free World, by H.R. McMaster (2020)
“In Battlegrounds, H.R. McMaster describes efforts to reassess and fundamentally shift policies while he was National Security Advisor. And he provides a clear pathway forward to improve strategic competence and prevail in complex competitions against our adversaries.”
Republican Rescue: Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden, by Chris Christie (2021)
“Here’s Chris Christie’s urgent guide for recapturing Republican glory and winning elections again, told with all the New Jersey frankness and news-breaking insights that have made the two-term governor, Trump early endorser, and presidential candidate an indispensable voice and instant New York Times bestselling author.”
How The Word is Passed: A Reckoning With The History Of Slavery In America, by Clint Smith (2021)
“Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks - those that are honest about the past and those that are not - that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nations collective history, and ourselves.”
Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World, by Annie Lowery (2018)
“Imagine if every month the government deposited $1,000 into your bank account, with nothing expected in return. It sounds crazy. But it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time.”
The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste into Wealth and Health, by Lina Zeldovich (2021)
“Grossly ambitious and rooted in scientific scholarship, The Other Dark Matter shows how human excrement can be a life-saving, money-making resource—if we make better use of it.”
