Reading List
Beth Macy
Journalist and Author
Beth Macy spent more than two decades as a reporter at the Roanoke Times before writing Factory Man, about a Virginia furniture maker who refused to move production offshore. Dopesick, her account of the opioid epidemic from the mountain towns where it started, became a bestseller and a Hulu series she co-produced, and Raising Lazarus followed the people trying to treat it. She reports from places national coverage tends to fly over, and reads accordingly.
One Long Night
A Global History of Concentration Camps
by Andrea Pitzer · 2017 · History
“This history of concentration camps is, alas, another prescient marvel. Through exquisite research, Pitzer documents the evolution of camps around the world, beginning with Marines landing on Cuba in the 19th century.” — via Article
Poverty, by America
by Matthew Desmond · 2023 · Nonfiction
“Desmond melds history and original reporting with fiercely eloquent arguments about how America turned its back on low-wage workers, especially women, by electing people who divide and conquer. An inspiring manifesto that urges us to do better.” — via Article
Trampoline
An Illustrated Novel
by Robert Gipe · 2015 · Fiction
“Through people who are as hilarious as their situations are dire, this illustrated novel by the bard of Appalachia makes you feel for those whose lands and bodies were exploited by corporations out to make a buck.” — via Article
The Undertow
Scenes from a Slow Civil War
by Jeff Sharlet · 2023 · Nonfiction
“A fearless reporter and one of the best living nonfiction sentence writers of our times” — via Article
The Fire Is Upon Us
James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America
by Nicholas Buccola · 2019 · History
“I listened and relistened to it in my car on my trips home to Ohio because Baldwin is a master at making you understand how hatred becomes a seductive tool for the hopeless.” — via Article
Achieving Our Country
Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
by Richard Rorty · 1998 · Nonfiction
“Rorty, a philosopher, predicted the ascent of a strongman like Trump and all the discrimination, selfish behavior, and weakening of societal institutions that followed.” — via Article
