Essential Reads

The books listed on the Essential Reads section of this Guide to Anti-Racist Books are ones that have been particularly important and influential to members of Moving Circles and Not in Our Town, anti-racism groups based in Carlisle, PA. The guide is a collaboration between Dr. Kirk Moll, Associate Professor and Reference and Research Librarian at Shippensburg University and members of Moving Circles and Not in Our Town.

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History of Race and Racism

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Publication Date: New York: HarperPerennial, 2005
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen
Publication Date: New York: Touchstone, 2007; The New Press, 2018. [first published in 1996, revised in 2007; new preface added in 2018)
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
Publication Date: New York: Bold Type Books, 2017
The Invention of the White Race by Theodore W. Allen
Publication Date: 1994-1997 (2nd ed. with a new introduction published in 2012)
The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
Publication Date: New York: W. W. Norton, 2011
American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise by Eduardo Porter
Publication Date: New York: Knopf, 2020
On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st CenturyOn the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century by Sherrilyn A. Ifill
Publication Date: 2018 (10th Anniv. Ed., 2018, includes new forward by Bryan Stevenson and a new afterword by the author.)
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Publication Date: New York: Random House, 2010
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
Publication Date: New York: Doubleday, 2008
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
Publication Date: New York: Liveright, 2017
When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson
Publication Date: New York: W. W. Norton, 2005
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary ed. by Michelle Alexander
Publication Date: New City Press, 2010, 2020.
Democracy in Black by Eddie S. Glaude
Publication Date: New York: Broadway Books, 2017
A Promise and a Way of Life by Becky W. Thompson
Call Number:

Publication Date: Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001

Indigenous Peoples

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Publication Date: Boston: Beacon Press, 2015
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
Publication Date: New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston, 1921

Classic Works

Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies. Library of America. Contains his three autobiographies. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881). by Frederick Douglass; Henry Louis Gates (Editor).
Publication Date: New York: Penguin, 1994
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois; Henry Louis Gates (Editor); Terri Hume Oliver (Editor)
Publication Date: New York: W. W. Norton,1999
Collected Essays. Library of America. by James Baldwin
Publication Date: 1998
The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison
Publication Date: New York: Vintage, 2020
Race Matters, 25th Anniv. ed. by Cornel West
Publication Date: Boston: Beacon Press, 2017
Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West
Publication Date: New York: Penguin Books, 2005

Racism and Anti-Racism

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Publication Date: New York: One World, 2019
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
Publication Date: New York: Bloomsbury, 2017
How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi
Publication Date: New York: Penguin, 2008
So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Publication Date: New York, Seal Press, 2019
Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
Publication Date: New York: St. Martin's, 2017
What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and our Unfinished Conversation about Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson
Publication Date: New York: St. Martin's Press, 2018
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Tatum
Publication Date: New York: Basic Books, 1997, 2003
Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, 5th ed. by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
Publication Date: Lanham, MD: Rowen & Littlefield, 2017
Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice - 4th ed. by Paul Kivel
Publication Date: Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2017
Racing to Justice by John A. Powell
Publication Date: Bloomington: University of Indiana, 2012
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Publication Date: Minneapolis: Greywolf Press, 2014
Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide by Barbara Trepagnier
Publication Date: Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2010

Personal Accounts & Memoirs

The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian by W. Kamau Bell
Publication Date: New York: Dutton, 2018
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Publication Date: New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015
How to Make White People Laugh by Negin Farsad
Call Number: Essential Read

Publication Date: New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
Publication Date: New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014
Waking up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving
Publication Date: Cambridge, MA: Elephant Room Press, 2014
In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu
Publication Date: New York: Penguin Books, 2019
Memoir of a Race Traitor: Fighting Racism in the American South, Rev. ed. by Mab Segrest
Call Number: Essential Read

Publication Date: New York: The New Press, 2019; First ed., published, Boston: South End Press, 1994
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, Rev. ed. by Tim Wise
Publication Date: Berkeley, CA : Soft Skull Press, 2011 (First ed., 2005)

White Privilege & Whiteness Studies

White Fragility: Why it’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo
Publication Date: Boston: Beacon Press, 2018
Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority by Tim Wise
Publication Date: San Francisco: City Light Books, 2012
The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege by Robert Jensen
Publication Date: San Francisco: City Light Books, 2005
Privilege, Power, and Difference, 3rd ed. by Allan G. Johnson
Publication Date: New York: McGraw-Hill, 2017
Witnessing Whiteness, 2nd ed. by Shelly Tochluk
Publication Date: Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2010

Race and Religion

America's Original Sin by Jim Wallis
Publication Date: Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2017
Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Reconciliation, 2nd ed. by Jennifer Harvey
Publication Date: Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014. 2nd ed. will be published Sept. 2020.

Biographies

Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol by Nell Irvin Painter
Publication Date: New York: W. W. Norton, 1996
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
Publication Date: New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis
Publication Date: Boston: Beacon Press, 2013
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
Publication Date: New York: Penguin, 2011

Guide to Anti-Racist Books - Essential Reads