Here are 100 books that Blood in the Water fans have personally recommended if you like
Blood in the Water.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I am a history professor at the University of Rhode Island who specialized in the labor and environmental history of the United States. I have dedicated my life to writing histories that people can read for inspiration in the fight for justice. We cannot change the present and future if we do not understand the systems of oppression that have created how we live today. I hope to continue contributing to shattering myths, providing hope, and charting paths for change through my writing.
Once you’ve read Zinn, you are going to want to know more about the workers’ struggle. Among recent books, you can’t do better than Ahmed White’s book on this iconic struggle of the 1930s, when the steel companies massacred strikers and even the Roosevelt administration did nothing about it. Powerful story and very well-written.
In May 1937, seventy thousand workers walked off their jobs at four large steel companies known collectively as "Little Steel." The strikers sought to make the companies retreat from decades of antiunion repression, abide by the newly enacted federal labor law, and recognize their union. For two months a grinding struggle unfolded, punctuated by bloody clashes in which police, company agents, and National Guardsmen ruthlessly beat and shot unionists. At least sixteen died and hundreds more were injured before the strike ended in failure. The violence and brutality of the Little Steel Strike became legendary. In many ways it was…
I began my academic career working on political history until a chance conversation and a serendipitous find in an archive changed the direction of my doctoral research. Since then, I have become increasingly enmeshed in Business History, interested predominantly in the people that were at the heart of commercial activity. It is my belief that the landscape of business was – and is – shaped more by the people directly involved in it than by those making policy and devising international treaties. My current work – funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellowship – explores the ways in which information was created, disseminated, and utilised in early modern business networks.
While perhaps not ‘business history’ in the strictest of senses, Empire of Cotton explores themes relevant to any business history – those of power, hierarchy, capitalism, and consumption, to name a few, and does so in a global context. This is a book not just about history, but about how this history has shaped the world we live in today. In places, it is a sobering story of power struggles and exploitation, of conflict between humans as well as between humans and the natural world. While not one for the faint-hearted, this award-winning tome is worth the effort it requires.
WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE • A Pulitzer Prize finalist that's as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.
“Masterly … An astonishing achievement.” —The New York Times
The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today.
I am a history professor at the University of Rhode Island who specialized in the labor and environmental history of the United States. I have dedicated my life to writing histories that people can read for inspiration in the fight for justice. We cannot change the present and future if we do not understand the systems of oppression that have created how we live today. I hope to continue contributing to shattering myths, providing hope, and charting paths for change through my writing.
One of Zinn’s great insights that still inspires readers today is that there are all these histories of struggle that do not get taught. Not even Zinn could explore all of them. In the last four decades, historians have uncovered amazing tales of struggle in the face of incredible oppression.
Today, even as we pay more attention to the history of American racism than ever before, we do not learn nearly enough about Native American history. What we do learn is often far in the past. But Native Americans continue to fight for their rights today. Blansett’s biography of Richard Oakes, who led the Alcatraz takeover in 1969, will open up an entirely new history for you, one that demonstrates that we cannot understand modern American history without placing the Native struggle for sovereignty and power at the center of it.
The first book-length biography of Richard Oakes, a Red Power activist of the 1960s who was a leader in the Alcatraz takeover and the Indigenous rights movement
"A powerful contribution to our understanding of Native American sovereignty, community, human rights, and identity."-Sarah Eppler Janda, American Historical Review
"The nonfiction complement to Tommy Orange's best-selling novel There There. . . . An exemplary work that recovers an important period in modern California history and casts it in a new, richer light."-Randall A. Lake, California History
A revealing portrait of Richard Oakes, the brilliant, charismatic Native American leader who was instrumental in…
I first learned about Fannie Lou Hamer more than a decade ago, and I have been deeply inspired by her life story and her words. I didn’t initially think I would write a book about her. But the uprisings of 2020 motivated me to do so. Like so many people, I struggled to make sense of everything that was unfolding, and I began to question whether change was possible. The more I read Hamer’s words, the more clarity I found. Her vision for the world and her commitment to improving conditions for all people gave me a renewed sense of hope and purpose.
This is a book that inspired me as a historian and in my approach to activism. Barbara Ransby’s biography of Ella Baker excavates the activist’s life, placing the reader at the nexus of some of the most important moments in civil rights history. Ella Baker’s life also provides a blueprint for local activism and group-centered leadership. It’s a compelling story of how Ella Baker became a mentor, inspiring, listening to, and supporting local activists.
One of the most important African American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903-1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned fifty years and touched thousands of lives. In this deeply researched biography, Barbara Ransby chronicles Baker's long and rich political career as an organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher, from her early experiences in depression-era Harlem to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Ransby paints a vivid picture of the African American fight for justice and its intersections with other progressive struggles worldwide across…
I am an Associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis who is primarily interested in crime, illicit leisure, masculinity, American cities, and imprisonment. I grew up both in New York City and Orlando, Florida, and I received a PhD from the University of Rochester. Most of the books I read have to do with understanding the American criminal justice system, criminality itself, and the part societies play in constructing crime. Currently I am researching and writing a book about African American men and the carceral state, tentatively entitledJim Crow Prison.
Muhammad’s study of ideas and discourse about real and imagined crime among African Americans is a touchstone for anyone seeking to understand this history.
He has painstakingly assembled the intellectual, pseudo-scientific, and popular conversations Americans had about the subject from the end of slavery until well into the 20th century.
This work has been particularly important for me because he brings our attention to the urban North and the use of census data, statistics, eugenics, etc., to condemn blackness as a dangerous threat to be contained.
There is no way to truthfully understand race and crime in America without consulting this essential text.
Winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize A Moyers & Company Best Book of the Year
"A brilliant work that tells us how directly the past has formed us." -Darryl Pinckney, New York Review of Books
How did we come to think of race as synonymous with crime? A brilliant and deeply disturbing biography of the idea of black criminality in the making of modern urban America, The Condemnation of Blackness reveals the influence this pernicious myth, rooted in crime statistics, has had on our society and our sense of self. Black crime statistics have shaped debates about everything from…
I am an Associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis who is primarily interested in crime, illicit leisure, masculinity, American cities, and imprisonment. I grew up both in New York City and Orlando, Florida, and I received a PhD from the University of Rochester. Most of the books I read have to do with understanding the American criminal justice system, criminality itself, and the part societies play in constructing crime. Currently I am researching and writing a book about African American men and the carceral state, tentatively entitledJim Crow Prison.
I first read Hick’s history of black women in New York’s criminal justice system while I was in graduate school, and I was fascinated by how she brought stories to life in a city I was so familiar with.
Along with Kali Gross’s Colored Amazons, which looks at black women in Philadelphia, it inspired me to imagine what a similar study on black men could look like.
Hicks masterful use of the New York State prison archives and her attention to the details in the lives of the women in her work makes this an essential book for anyone interested in race, gender, and the carceral state.
With this book, Cheryl Hicks brings to light the voices and viewpoints of black working-class women, especially southern migrants, who were the subjects of urban and penal reform in early-twentieth-century New York. Hicks compares the ideals of racial uplift and reform programs of middle-class white and black activists to the experiences and perspectives of those whom they sought to protect and, often, control. In need of support as they navigated the discriminatory labor and housing markets and contended with poverty, maternity, and domestic violence, black women instead found themselves subject to hostility from black leaders, urban reformers, and the police.…
I’m a law professor at Boston University who has studied and written about constitutional law, democracy, and inequality for over 20 years. I’m troubled by America’s rise to become the world’s leader in imprisoning its own citizens and the continued use of inhumane policing and punishment practices. These trends must be better understood before we can come up with a form of politics that can overcome our slide into a darker version of ourselves.
I loved this book about the War on Crime for its deep research and historical sweep.
Hinton amasses a great deal of material about federal laws and agency priorities to go with changes in policing strategy on the ground (e.g., stop and frisk, militarization of policing equipment) to tell a disturbing story about how mass incarceration was developed as a national priority and carried out. Haunting.
Co-Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A Wall Street Journal Favorite Book of the Year A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year A Publishers Weekly Favorite Book of the Year
In the United States today, one in every thirty-one adults is under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men. How did the "land of the free" become the home of the world's largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the…
I am an Associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis who is primarily interested in crime, illicit leisure, masculinity, American cities, and imprisonment. I grew up both in New York City and Orlando, Florida, and I received a PhD from the University of Rochester. Most of the books I read have to do with understanding the American criminal justice system, criminality itself, and the part societies play in constructing crime. Currently I am researching and writing a book about African American men and the carceral state, tentatively entitledJim Crow Prison.
Kali N. Gross innovated many aspects of thinking about, researching, and writing about African Americans and the criminal justice system in Colored Amazons.
Released in 2006, this work forged a path for subsequent scholars, including myself, to look squarely at crime and race while also breaking down racial stereotypes. Gross brings the experiences of black women to life through brilliant sources and tells a complex story of violence and crime that is at times beautiful and emotional.
Colored Amazons is a groundbreaking historical analysis of the crimes, prosecution, and incarceration of black women in Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century. Kali N. Gross reconstructs black women's crimes and their representations in popular press accounts and within the discourses of urban and penal reform. Most importantly, she considers what these crimes signified about the experiences, ambitions, and frustrations of the marginalized women who committed them. Gross argues that the perpetrators and the state jointly constructed black female crime. For some women, crime functioned as a means to attain personal and social autonomy. For the state, black…
As the mother of four children, I have observed over the last twenty years how women are viewed and often judged under a stifling patriarchal lens. Writing about motherhood in all its glorious colours has been one way for me to channel my frustrations. Stories that reach out to women and give them a voice when they feel unheard are vital. In a world where appearances and facades are taking over our social media feeds, where filters blur out the rough edges of our lives, I’m more determined than ever to write female characters who are raw and flawed but also valued as an integral part of an evolving society.
From the very first page, I was intrigued by Shriver's exploration of maternal complexities. It shone a light on motherhood that I’d never seen before. I found the raw emotion and psychological depth unparalleled and loved how the narrative really delved into nature versus nurture and went so far as to question: are people born evil?
Being a mother myself, I couldn’t imagine living through the horror of my child becoming withdrawn and that disengagement resulting in such devastation in a community. The dismissal of the mother’s concerns by the father was also an interesting social commentary.
Finally, Shriver’s writing is beyond beautiful yet so accessible for the readers.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to…
I arrived in New York City from Germany thirty years ago with two suitcases and a typewriter. Since then, I try to combine my background as an art historian – I hold a M.A. in Art History and Anthropology from the University of Tübingen, Germany – with my experiences travelling around the world for seven years, and my love for writing. After a career in museum education (at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Mingei, and the Athenaeum) I founded Konstellation Press, an indie publishing company for genre fiction. The first of my four novels, Spring of Tears, an art mystery set in France, won the San Diego Book Award.
Siri Hustvedt is one of my favorite writers. Her characters are so complex and believable, I always feel I know them personally after I finish a book by her. What I Loved is not strictly a mystery, even though there is violence, murder, and erotic tension. It is an urban thriller, a love story, and a deep dive into an artist’s soul over his 30-year career.
This is the story of two men who first become friends in 1970s New York, of the women in their lives, and of their sons, born the same year. Both Leo Hertzberg, an art historian, and Bill Weschler, a painter, are cultured, decent men, but neither is equipped to deal with what happens to their children -- Leo's son drowns when he's 12, while Bill's son Mark grows up to be a delinquent, and the acolyte of a sinister, guru-like artist who spawns murder in his wake. Spanning the hedonism of the eighties and the chill-out nineties, this multi-layered novel…
