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ExWhoDoesntCare

(4,741 posts)
Sun Dec 10, 2023, 03:05 PM Dec 2023

Non-Fiction of the Week 10 December2023

My non-fiction reads this week will be:

Memorial Drive. Natasha Tretheway's memoir about growing up biracial, and coping with the murder of her black mother when she was 19. One of Obama's picks for best book of 2020.

Jack Weatherford – Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

What non-fic is everyone else reading?

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Non-Fiction of the Week 10 December2023 (Original Post) ExWhoDoesntCare Dec 2023 OP
Prequel by Rachel Maddow bernieb Dec 2023 #1
criminal justice reform NJCher Dec 2023 #2
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Ponietz Dec 2023 #3
Did you mean that Sapiens was the best you read ExWhoDoesntCare Dec 2023 #4
Best I've read Ponietz Dec 2023 #5

bernieb

(69 posts)
1. Prequel by Rachel Maddow
Sun Dec 10, 2023, 03:29 PM
Dec 2023

If you love history and events that have been pushed aside or forgotten, this is the book to read. It's a great follow-up to the Ultra podcast. Rachel Maddow knows how to write to keep things moving at a fast pace, but you can still keep track of what's going on and who's involved. The parallels to today are there. It's hopeful to know Americans beat back fascism once and we can do it again.







NJCher

(38,262 posts)
2. criminal justice reform
Sun Dec 10, 2023, 04:02 PM
Dec 2023

An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America
by Edwin Raymond with Jon Sternfeld

It's an account of a black cop who calls out the police force for its practices, attitudes, prejudices, etc.

I've posted a few incidents of my criminal justice reform work at DU. I'm reading this book because I think it will help me understand police forces that I often have to take into account in my nonprofit work.

Most of all, though, when I've finished the book, I want to write this author with the hope that he'll take pride in what he did. He wrote that he hated what he had to do. That was disheartening to me.

The first part of the book, where he defines the problem, is very clear about what the problem is.

Here is a quote:

Under the banner of public safety, the police force incentivizes its officers to maintain the racial and social order. They are the most visible organization tasked with America’s subjugation of its minority citizens. Cops who won’t engage in this behavior, who want to be valuable contributors to the neighborhood, who want to help the community instead of harass it, are kept knocking.




Ponietz

(3,322 posts)
3. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Sun Dec 10, 2023, 05:28 PM
Dec 2023

by Yuval Noah Harari, first published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in English in 2014. Wikipedia

The best book this year. Recommended for everyone.

 

ExWhoDoesntCare

(4,741 posts)
4. Did you mean that Sapiens was the best you read
Mon Dec 11, 2023, 12:50 AM
Dec 2023

This year? Because it came out in 2015.

Plenty of great books as good as that have come out in 2023, like Matthew Desmond's Poverty by America, The Wager by David Grann, King (MLK bio) by Jonathan Eig, Immense World by Ed Yong, Doppleganger by Naomi Klein...

I'm sure I'm forgetting other great books of this year's vintage, but those are the one I can remember at the moment.

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