I read sixty-two books this year. Many many many were interesting, convicting, challenging, beautiful, or truly excellent. But there are only a few that I’m still thinking about. Here they are, ranked (but loosely):
- Educated, Tara Westover: A crazy-interesting life and crazy-good writing (recipe for a perfect memoir).
- How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi: Another good memoir, but this one is closer to an instruction manual: one I really needed. Perfect for someone who reads a lot of history about race in the United States, but is confused about race in the contemporary United States (moi).
- Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, Deborah Feldman: Probably the book I still think about most about. God, family, tradition, sexual awakening, and rebellion are all so candidly, but tenderly, handled.
- Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi’s Closed Society, Joseph Reiff: The book reads like Reiff’s own “Born of Conviction” letter and made me re-fall in love with the Methodist church.
- A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, David L. Chappell: Absolutely wrecked me and reoriented how I think about history writing, especially with this line: “I am not merely saying that the conflict between liberal and prophetic ideas complicates the standard progressive narrative of civil rights and American history in general. I am making a claim about historical significance: What makes the civil rights movement matter are the prophetic ideas it embodies– not the liberal-progressive elements it also undeniably, inescapably contains.”
- The Children, David Halberstam (December): A journalist’s history (almost always better than a historian’s history) of a few events in the civil rights movement (mostly focused on the Nashville activists under the Rev. James Lawson in the early 1960s). Beautifully written, paying particular attention to the complicated relationships between the activists.
- No Happy Endings, Nora McInerny: Another great memoir: made me laugh, gasp, and weep. A collection of seemingly-loosely-connected thoughts and stories that do come together in a satisfying and poignant arc.
- All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren: I cannot believe I had never read this before. Almost too realistic (scary!), but that’s how I like my fiction.
- God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights, Charles Marsh: Marsh writes the stories of key players in the Mississippi Freedom summer with such tremendous compassion; it’s nearly a love letter to the state and the moment. A compelling case for examining theology when writing about history.
And, the 20 books I’m most looking forward to reading in 2020 (unranked, I don’t have it in me) (these are not new releases; I’m very behind):
- The Woman’s Hour, Elaine Weiss
- The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria, Samar Yazbek
- City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert
- Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice, Alia Malek
- Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
- Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution, Priya Satia
- Leaving Atlanta, Tayari Jones
- My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, Ari Shavit
- Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race, Jennifer Ritterhouse
- Dutch House, Ann Patchett
- Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
- Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South, Talitha L. LeFlouria
- And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: Stories from the Byways of American Women and Religion, Adrian Shirk
- Jerusalem: City of the Book, Merav Mack and Benjamin Balint
- The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Frances Fitzgerald
- Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” S. Jonathan Bass
- The Quiet Voices: Southern Rabbis and Black Civil Rights, 1880s-1990s, Mark K. Bauman and Berkley Kalin, editors.
- To Stand Aside or to Stand Alone: Southern Reform Rabbis and the Civil Rights Movement, P. Allen Krause
- Making Whiteness, Grace Elizabeth Hale
love letters from mandy 