What We’re Reading on World Book Day

    Happy World Book Day! Here are a few books we’re reading right now that we highly recommend!

    We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
    Ta-Nehisi Coates

    “We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.”

    But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.

    Feel Free
    Zadie Smith

    Gathering in one place for the first time previously unpublished work, as well as already classic essays, such as, “Joy,” and, “Find Your Beach,” Feel Free offers a survey of important recent events in culture and politics as well as Smith’s own life. Equally at home in the world of good books and bad politics, Brooklyn-born rappers and the work of Swiss novelists, she is by turns wry, heartfelt, indignant, and incisive – and never any less than perfect company. This is literary journalism at its zenith.

    The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity
    Sally Kohn 

    Drawing upon cutting-edge research from psychology, sociology, and the neurosciences, and from examples in history and even today’s twitter trolls, Kohn uncovers the evolutionary and cultural roots of hate in its most subtle and obvious forms–from implicit bias to racism to genocide. At a moment when bitter partisan politics have divided Americans, The Opposite of Hate is a thought-provoking and ultimately hopeful look at one of the most pressing issues of our time.

    Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
    Steven Pinker

    Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.

    Census
    Jesse Ball

    When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son – a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son. Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers.