One of the best new book
releases of this week is …
I Can’t Breathe:
A Killing on Bay Street
Matt Taibbi
Hardback: Spiegel & Grau, 2017
Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
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One of the best new book
releases of this week is …
Hardback: Spiegel & Grau, 2017
Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
We’ve ordered this list in the order that we think the books should be read, and we offer a brief explanation of why each book was included. We’ve included excerpts of most the books via Google Books.
The Puzzle Box Top:
Seeing the Big Picture of Racism and American Evangelicalism
A Feature Review of
Hardback: IVP, 2017.
Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Reviewed by Cynthia Beach
My puzzle pieces were disparate. My African American student who overnighted with us and who, when he wandered the grocery aisles in my small (white) town, perspired heavily—as if he was distressed. Or that essay by Brent Staples, the African American who, when he roamed midnight sidewalks, would whistle Vivaldi to lessen the fears others had assigned his skin color. Or Hidden Figures when a smart woman’s heels click-clacked as she rushed out one building and into another to use the colored ladies restroom. I held the pieces, but not the picture until I read Ken Wytsma’s The Myth of Equality.
This Oregon pastor’s fourth book handed me the proverbial puzzle box lid that helped me fit together pieces to the disturbing puzzle, our American racism and white privilege. Finally, the picture was clear. When I finished this potent book, I thought, Now I get it. Now I see it.
A Review of
Hardback: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Reviewed by Jordan Kellicut
My first memory of race was the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots. Growing up in a white family, in a white community, in a white school, race was not a thing I ever considered. I do, however, remember watching King being beaten on the evening news. I always assumed that the four police officers who perpetrated this act of racially charged violence were charged, convicted, and jailed for the crime. I was shocked to learn, in Michael Eric Dyson’s Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, that these men were found innocent (though two were later convicted in Federal court). This likely illustrates the very issue of race in America – namely many white Americans (like myself) are oblivious to the experience of people of color, and as we have seen in the past few years, often hostile to their story.
Seven Societal Lessons
We Need to Learn
A Review of
Hardback: Pantheon, 2016
Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Reviewed by John Hawthorne
This review originally appeared on
the reviewer’s blog,
and is reprinted here with permission.
I tell my students that there were five radicalizing events that led to me being a sociologist, although I didn’t know it at the time. It started with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968. I was old enough to have been following the civil rights movement and understood how the killing was a reaction to a quest for justice. That was followed just two months later by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. Because I was Kennedy campaign chairman in my eighth grade history class, I’d gotten my Very-Republican grandmother to drive me to Kennedy headquarters to pick up campaign paraphernalia. And now he was dead. In May of 1970, four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard during a Vietnam War Protest. That introduced me to the idea that government officials might act badly. Between 1972 and 1974, I watched in fascination as the President of the United States had his illegality exposed and resigned the presidency in disgrace.
One of this week’s best new book releases is:
Hardback: Liveright, 2017
Buy now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Watch for our review of his new commentary on Acts in our Fall 2017 magazine issue…
Hardback: WJK Books, 2017.
Buy Now: [ Amazon ]
One of this week’s best new book releases is:
Hardback: FSG Books, 2017
Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Listen to an NPR interview with the author from All Things Considered…
Continue Reading…
In honor of its release, we’re giving away
FIVE copies of this new book…
Enter now to win (It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!) :