These are some of the books that have made my reading list this year. They are not the only ones on the list, but they have all been published in 2014. What have you been reading this year?
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class
by Ian Haney López
Published by Oxford University Press, USA
January 13, 2014
304 pages
For those who don't have the time to read all of the current books that address colorblindness and racism in our politics, this is a must read. Haney Lopez covers the use both parties have made of racist appeals and how destructive it has become for all Americans. Much of what is included can be found in Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, Douglas Blackmon's Slavery by Another Name and Ira Katznelson's Fear Itself, but this book neatly ties it all together.
There are plenty more below the fold.
A Fighting Chance
by Elizabeth Warren
Published by Metropolitan Books
April 22, 2014
Hardcover, 384 pages
Elizabeth Warren is a polished writer who is able to make personal the most complex of financial transactions. Her book, A Fighting Chance, was thought, by many, to be the first step in her 2016 presidential campaign. Or at least many hoped it would be her first step.
I reviewed it earlier this year. Hint: I liked it. She says she is not running in 2016, but if she changes her mind, this book should be of help.
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
By Edward E. Baptist
Published by Basic Books
September 9, 2014
528 pages
Even though I was led to this book by the controversy surrounding The Economist's review of it, it was well worth the read. A fascinating look at how our nation, and the industrial revolution itself, rested on the backs of those who worked in slave labor camps in the South. Although Baptist never comes out and asks for reparations, he makes a solid case that our debt, as a nation, to the descendants of these Americans is great. Here's the full review.
Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War
By James Risen
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
October 14, 2014
304 pages
In Pay Any Price, James Risen condenses the last 13 years of the war on terror, what it has cost us, and who has profited from it into a big, fast-paced, eminently readable book. Using the stories of the individuals involved, he gives the war, and its price, a human face.
In 2009, when the new Obama administration continued the government’s legal campaign against me, I realized, in a very personal way, that the war on terror had become a bipartisan enterprise. America was now locked into an endless war, and its perverse and unintended consequences were spreading.
And so my answer—both to the government’s long campaign against me and to this endless war—is this new book, Pay Any Price.
And although Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that James Risen will not be forced to reveal his source for an earlier book, there is nothing to stop the defense attorneys for Mr. Sterling from
asking Risen about his sources.
Latino America: How America's Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation
by Matt Barreto and Gary M. Segura
Published by PublicAffairs
September 30, 2014
304 pages
In Latino America, Barreto and Segura don't merely present a lot of data, they provide a lucid analysis of that data and a glimpse of what our shared future will look like, beginning with:
Sometime in April 2014, somewhere in a hospital in California, a Latino child was born who tipped the demographic scales of California’s new plurality. Latinos displaced non-Hispanic whites as the largest racial /ethnic group in the state. And so, 166 years after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo brought the Mexican province of Alta California into the United States, Latinos once again became the largest population in the state.
Surprised? Texas will make the same transition sometime before 2020, and Latinos have had a plurality in New Mexico for some time. Latinos are already over 17% of the population of the United States, and that number will grow toward a national plurality over the course of this century. The America that today’s infants will die in is going to look very different from the nation in which they were born. Oh, and by the way, more than half of today’s children under age five are nonwhite.
Here is the rest of the review.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
by Bryan Stevenson
Published by Spiegel & Grau
October 21, 2014
352 pages
I just finished this remarkable book and hope to write about it soon. From Random House:
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machinations, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.
Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
by Matt Taibbi
Published by Spiegel & Grau (Random House)
April 8, 2014
416 pages
Matt Taibbi takes a look at how the income inequality has carried over to our justice system. Using anecdotes and data, he shows how the poor have been penalized simply for being poor while the wealthy face no penalties regardless of the laws they break.
Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers, using institutions like the courts to speed the process. Winners get rich and get off. Losers go broke and go to jail. It isn’t just that some clever crook on Wall Street can steal a billion dollars and never see the inside of a courtroom; it’s that, plus the fact that some black teenager a few miles away can go to jail just for standing on a street corner, that makes the whole picture complete.
Hard Choices
by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Published by Simon & Schuster
June 10, 2014
635 pages
Hard Choices is the type of book that one would expect to be written by a woman who is going to run for president. Safe and centrist, loaded with diplomatic language reflecting her four years and one million miles as Secretary of State. Even her rough handling by the GOP and the right-wing media over Benghazi is discussed in very mild, sedate terms:
While there has been a regrettable amount of misinformation, speculation, and flat-out deceit by some in politics and the media, more than a year later in-depth reporting from a number of reputable sources continues to expand our understanding of these events.
That is a far cry from the terms used by Hillary Clinton when her husband was attacked by a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Of course, she wasn't running for president in those days.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
by Thomas Piketty
Published by Belknap Press
March 10, 2014
685 pages
This book is remarkable for how easy it is to understand. A reader needs no deep background in economics to follow the arguments that Piketty puts forth.
Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.
Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty
by Daniel Schulman
Published by Grand Central Publishing
May 20, 2014
432 pages
I have had neither the time nor a very strong desire to get into this one, but it is on the kindle for that day when I am in a miserable mood anyway. Meanwhile, this is from Goodreads:
SONS OF WICHITA traces the complicated lives and legacies of these four tycoons, as well as their business, social, and political ambitions. No matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum, the Kochs are one of the most influential dynasties of our era, but so little is publicly known about this family, their origins, how they make their money, and how they live their lives. Based on hundreds of interviews with friends, relatives, business associates, and many others, SONS OF WICHITA is the first major biography about this wealthy and powerful family--warts and all.
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
by Michael Lewis
Published by W. W. Norton & Company
March 31, 2014
274 pages
I was all set to read this one earlier this year but got sidetracked by Ta-Nehisi Coates' Atlantic article "A Case for Reparations" which led me off into books that focused more on social justice and history. I plan on returning to it soon.
The light that Lewis shines into the darkest corners of the financial world may not be good for your blood pressure, because if you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you. But in the end, Flash Boys is an uplifting read. Here are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don’t get paid for that; they have perceived an institutionalized injustice and are willing to go to war to fix it.
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson
Published by Riverhead Hardcover
September 30, 2014
256 pages
In this illustrated volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences. Filled with surprising stories of accidental genius and brilliant mistakes—from the French publisher who invented the phonograph before Edison but forgot to include playback, to the Hollywood movie star who helped invent the technology behind Wi-Fi and Bluetooth—How We Got to Now investigates the secret history behind the everyday objects of contemporary life.