100 books like Nothing Personal

By James Baldwin,

Here are 100 books that Nothing Personal fans have personally recommended if you like Nothing Personal. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ 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.

Book cover of James Baldwin: A Biography

Magdalena J. Zaborowska Author Of James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile

From my list on James Baldwin as a Black queer exile.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born and raised in Poland during the Cold War, I learned that writers and intellectuals could be jailed, exiled, or even killed for their ideas. I came to James Baldwin over two decades ago in search of literature that told of freedom and humanism beyond national borders and simplistic binaries. As a Black queer man driven away from his homeland, Baldwin linked his personal pain, heartbreak, and torment to his public life, authorship, and activism. His art and life story have both inspired my labors as a bilingual and bicultural literary critic and biographer and provided a template for my own journey as an immigrant, mother of a Black child, teacher, writer, and scholar.

Magdalena's book list on James Baldwin as a Black queer exile

Magdalena J. Zaborowska Why did Magdalena love this book?

This is still the most comprehensive and detailed account of the writer’s life and works. Leeming worked closely with Baldwin as an assistant and secretary after first meeting him in Istanbul. 

I love this book, for it was my introduction to Baldwin and his life as an exile and one of the most powerful social and cultural critics of twentieth-century America. It’s written accessibly—the life-story narrative flows easily and one feels the author’s compassion for and understanding of the writer’s evolution, process, as well as his specific works. 

It has taught me that the best biographies both reveal and conceal their authors’ personal investment in their subject and their own life stories. And that the best biographers must skillfully and passionately play with both.

Years ago when I first read it, it was helpful in overcoming my initial terror as an immigrant from the Other Europe, the terror that I…

By David Leeming,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked James Baldwin as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"The most revealing and subjectively penetrating assessment of Baldwin's life yet published." -The New York Times Book Review. "The first Baldwin biography in which one can recognize the human features of this brilliant, troubled, principled, supremely courageous man." -Boston Globe

James Baldwin was one of the great writers of the last century. In works that have become part of the American canon-Go Tell It on a Mountain, Giovanni's Room, Another Country, The Fire Next Time, and The Evidence of Things Not Seen-he explored issues of race and racism in America, class distinction, and sexual difference.

A gay, African American writer…


Book cover of No Name in the Street

Douglas Field Author Of Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father, and Me

From my list on lesser-known books by James Baldwin.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been writing about James Baldwin for over twenty years and have been reading him since my teens. My father saw the writer debate the conservative polemicist William F. Buckley Jr. at the University of Cambridge in 1965, and I’ve been hooked since he told me about that event. I’ve written three books on Baldwin, scores of articles, and book chapters, and I co-founded the journal James Baldwin Review a decade ago. It's been wonderful to see Baldwin gain popularity over the last decade, and I hope that more people continue to read his essays, novels, plays, and poetry. 

Douglas' book list on lesser-known books by James Baldwin

Douglas Field Why did Douglas love this book?

James Baldwin recalled that he wrote this book in between the assassinations of his friends Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Medgar Evers. I have read numerous letters written by Baldwin, and this long essay, written during the 1960s, shares some of the intimacy found in his correspondence as he reflects on his role in the Civil Rights Movement.

It’s one of my favorite essays by Baldwin because it reveals his complexity and inconsistencies, giving glimpses into how he was torn between his role as a writer, artist, and activist. “[W]hat in the world was I by now,” Baldwin wonders,” but an aging, lonely, sexually dubious, politically outrageous, unspeakably erratic freak?” The writing is uneven in places, but the power and insight of Baldwin’s inimitable prose hold the essay together. 

By James Baldwin,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked No Name in the Street as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies that displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works, and powerfully speaks to contemporary conversations around racism.

"It contains truth that cannot be denied.” — The Atlantic Monthly

In this stunningly personal document, James Baldwin remembers in vivid details the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness and the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to the American South to confront a violent America…


Book cover of The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin

Magdalena J. Zaborowska Author Of James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile

From my list on James Baldwin as a Black queer exile.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born and raised in Poland during the Cold War, I learned that writers and intellectuals could be jailed, exiled, or even killed for their ideas. I came to James Baldwin over two decades ago in search of literature that told of freedom and humanism beyond national borders and simplistic binaries. As a Black queer man driven away from his homeland, Baldwin linked his personal pain, heartbreak, and torment to his public life, authorship, and activism. His art and life story have both inspired my labors as a bilingual and bicultural literary critic and biographer and provided a template for my own journey as an immigrant, mother of a Black child, teacher, writer, and scholar.

Magdalena's book list on James Baldwin as a Black queer exile

Magdalena J. Zaborowska Why did Magdalena love this book?

This book grew out of the labor of love both scholarly and personal. It brings together three generations of scholars and diverse, interdisciplinary approaches to this complex and still largely misunderstood and underappreciated Black queer writer and theorist of 20th-century US identity. Michele Elam’s introduction deftly reevaluates and situates Baldwin as a 20th-century master for contemporary readers here and now, while the essays collected here provide cutting-edge scholarship and much nuance and fresh insight. Theoretically rich and with several exquisitely written essays, it touches upon all of the major aspects of the writer’s fascinating life and works.

By Michele Elam (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This Companion offers fresh insight into the art and politics of James Baldwin, one of the most important writers and provocative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Black, gay, and gifted, he was hailed as a 'spokesman for the race', although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. Individual essays examine his classic novels and nonfiction as well as his work across lesser-examined domains: poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy, and artistic collaboration. In doing so, The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin captures the power and influence of his work during the…


Book cover of Conversations with James Baldwin

Magdalena J. Zaborowska Author Of James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile

From my list on James Baldwin as a Black queer exile.

Why am I passionate about this?

Born and raised in Poland during the Cold War, I learned that writers and intellectuals could be jailed, exiled, or even killed for their ideas. I came to James Baldwin over two decades ago in search of literature that told of freedom and humanism beyond national borders and simplistic binaries. As a Black queer man driven away from his homeland, Baldwin linked his personal pain, heartbreak, and torment to his public life, authorship, and activism. His art and life story have both inspired my labors as a bilingual and bicultural literary critic and biographer and provided a template for my own journey as an immigrant, mother of a Black child, teacher, writer, and scholar.

Magdalena's book list on James Baldwin as a Black queer exile

Magdalena J. Zaborowska Why did Magdalena love this book?

I discovered this compilation of many well- and lesser-known interviews when I began working on Baldwin in the year 2000. I love it as it gives us the writer in his own words, tracing his artistic development and views on his craft, exile, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as US politics, culture, and national identity. We follow Baldwin’s journey from 1961, with the famous Studs Terkel interview introducing “the young Negro writer,” to the “Last Interview” with Quincy Troupe, conducted in 1987, just days before Baldwin’s death in his beloved house in southern France. In between, we get a kaleidoscope of moments from his life and career and fascinating insights into his literary imaginary and humanistic philosophy. 

By James Baldwin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Conversations with James Baldwin as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This collection of interviews with James Baldwin covers the period 1961-1987, from the year of the publication of Nobody Knows My Names, his fourth book, to just a few weeks before his death. It includes the last formal conversation with him.

Twenty-seven interviews reprinted here come from a variety of sources--newspapers, radio, journals, and review--and show this celebrated author in all his eloquence, anger, and perception of racial, social, and literary situations in America.

Over the years Baldwin proved to be an easily accessible and cooperative subject for interviews, both in the United States and abroad. He frequently referred to…


Book cover of Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

Douglas Field Author Of Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father, and Me

From my list on lesser-known books by James Baldwin.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been writing about James Baldwin for over twenty years and have been reading him since my teens. My father saw the writer debate the conservative polemicist William F. Buckley Jr. at the University of Cambridge in 1965, and I’ve been hooked since he told me about that event. I’ve written three books on Baldwin, scores of articles, and book chapters, and I co-founded the journal James Baldwin Review a decade ago. It's been wonderful to see Baldwin gain popularity over the last decade, and I hope that more people continue to read his essays, novels, plays, and poetry. 

Douglas' book list on lesser-known books by James Baldwin

Douglas Field Why did Douglas love this book?

I remember reading a review of Baldwin’s fourth novel in the New York Times, which described this book as “a disaster in virtually every particular—theme, characterization, plot, rhetoric.” Ouch. For me, this novel, though uneven, is an important work in which Baldwin explores his commitments as a queer activist and artist, something that most reviewers missed at the time. 

During the Civil Rights Movement, Baldwin was nicknamed “Martin Luther Queen,” and he received vicious broadsides about his sexuality from the likes of the Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. Tell Me writes back to Cleaver and his cohort. As I’ve found with all of Baldwin’s writing, it’s worth sifting through some of the weaker writing to find passages that surprise and delight. “[If] one can live with one’s own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally,” Baldwin writes, “we can release each other from…

By James Baldwin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this tender, impassioned fourth novel, James Baldwin created one of his most striking characters: a man struggling to become himself.

'Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it'

At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, we see the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the world of the theatre lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame…


Book cover of Just Above My Head

Douglas Field Author Of Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father, and Me

From my list on lesser-known books by James Baldwin.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been writing about James Baldwin for over twenty years and have been reading him since my teens. My father saw the writer debate the conservative polemicist William F. Buckley Jr. at the University of Cambridge in 1965, and I’ve been hooked since he told me about that event. I’ve written three books on Baldwin, scores of articles, and book chapters, and I co-founded the journal James Baldwin Review a decade ago. It's been wonderful to see Baldwin gain popularity over the last decade, and I hope that more people continue to read his essays, novels, plays, and poetry. 

Douglas' book list on lesser-known books by James Baldwin

Douglas Field Why did Douglas love this book?

I remember feeling exhausted the first time I finished reading Baldwin’s last novel. In common with many novels published during the late 1970s, this is a saga, a sprawling account of interlocking families and characters across thirty years. It takes the reader to the US, South, London, Korea, Paris, and Africa. It is also a pioneering book that describes an intense sexual relationship between African American men.

As I’ve read Baldwin over the last twenty-plus years, I’ve relished seeing patterns and themes that cut across his work. One of his earliest essays, “Journey to Atlanta,” published in 1948, is an account of his brother David’s trip to the US South as part of a gospel quartet, a story that is played out in his final novel. As with much of Baldwin’s work, this novel explores love, family, and politics. 

By James Baldwin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Just Above My Head as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

James Baldwin’s final novel is “the work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers” (The New York Times Book Review).
 
“Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.”
 
The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this stunning, unforgettable novel. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, James Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the forbidden passion of Giovanni’s Room, and to the political fire that enflames his…


Book cover of Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems

Douglas Field Author Of Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father, and Me

From my list on lesser-known books by James Baldwin.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been writing about James Baldwin for over twenty years and have been reading him since my teens. My father saw the writer debate the conservative polemicist William F. Buckley Jr. at the University of Cambridge in 1965, and I’ve been hooked since he told me about that event. I’ve written three books on Baldwin, scores of articles, and book chapters, and I co-founded the journal James Baldwin Review a decade ago. It's been wonderful to see Baldwin gain popularity over the last decade, and I hope that more people continue to read his essays, novels, plays, and poetry. 

Douglas' book list on lesser-known books by James Baldwin

Douglas Field Why did Douglas love this book?

I like it when writers take risks. Baldwin’s writing is frequently poetic, and while he was one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished essay writers, a successful novelist, and playwright, he is not remembered as a poet.

Jimmy’s Blues, published in 1983, a collection of nineteen poems, intrigues me. Why, I wonder, did the writer turn to poetry towards the end of his life? Was he aware of his impending death, which might explain why many of the poems were preoccupied with time? I am ambivalent about some of the poems on the page, but there are recordings of Baldwin reading his verse on the wonderful album A Lover’s Question, produced by the Belgian jazz singer David Linx.

Listening to Baldwin read from his poem, “Inventory/on being 52,” gives me chills. It’s spellbinding and is a reminder of how important Baldwin’s delivery is when it comes to his poems. 

By James Baldwin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

All of the published poetry of James Baldwin, including six significant poems previously only available in a limited edition
 
During his lifetime (1924–1987), James Baldwin authored seven novels, as well as several plays and essay collections, which were published to wide-spread praise. These books, among them Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, Giovanni’s Room, and Go Tell It on the Mountain,brought him well-deserved acclaim as a public intellectual and admiration as a writer. However, Baldwin’s earliest writing was in poetic form, and Baldwin considered himself a poet throughout his lifetime. Nonetheless, his single book of poetry, Jimmy’s…


Book cover of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights

Frances Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant Author Of Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in Civil War America

From my list on childhood in Civil War Era America.

Why are we passionate about this?

We are two historians who have been writing together for about a decade now, first on project related to race relations after WWI, then on a book about debates over the enlistment age in nineteenth century America. Rebecca teaches at UCSD while Frances works at the University of Sydney in Australia, but we regularly meet online to write together and talk about our favorite new books.

Frances' book list on childhood in Civil War Era America

Frances Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant Why did Frances love this book?

Who gets to claim “childhood innocence” and the protections that come with this designation? Certainly not Black children in nineteenth-century America, according to Robin Bernstein. They were instead pictured as “pickaninnies”—comic figures who felt no pain, whatever mischief befell them. This book won a slew of awards for good reason: reading the racial ‘scripts’ in seemingly innocuous cultural products like children’s picture books, dolls, and knickknacks, Bernstein reveals how race-making hides in plain sight.

By Robin Bernstein,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Racial Innocence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

2013 Book Award Winner from the International Research Society in Children's Literature
2012 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education
2012 Winner of the Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies Association
2012 Runner-Up, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association
2012 Honorable Mention, Distinguished Book Award presented by the Society for the Study of American Women Writers

Dissects how "innocence" became the exclusive province of white children, covering slavery to the Civil Rights era
Beginning in the mid nineteenth century in America, childhood became synonymous…


Book cover of Black Europe and the African Diaspora

Laura Visser-Maessen Author Of Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights and Leadership at the Grassroots

From my list on Black Europe.

Why am I passionate about this?

My current research centers on the organizing strategies of 20th and 21st-century Black activists in the U.S. and western Europe and on the U.S. as a reference culture for European anti-racism movements, particularly in my native country, the Netherlands. I believe the recent Black Lives Matter protests in Europe are an example of the effectiveness of diasporic politics and the next phase in a much longer history of homegrown activism. Foregrounding ‘Black Europe’ as an independent field of study accordingly helps to create much needed critical knowledge about Black Europeans’ history, agency, and needs as we navigate further into the volatile twenty-first century, while simultaneously challenging the perimeters of diasporic meaning and the centrality of ‘Black America’ within.

Laura's book list on Black Europe

Laura Visser-Maessen Why did Laura love this book?

As one of the first scholarly attempts to investigate the Black experience on a continental scale (as opposed to in individual European nations), this edited volume presents a good introduction to the multifaceted questions and approaches that emerge when studying this topic. Offering insights from various scholarly disciplines and 20th and 21st-century case studies from individual countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Britain, and the Netherlands, it provides thoughtful essays that explore the meanings of ‘Blackness’ and belonging in Europe, and the roles the local, national, global, and metaphysical play within (imaginary) diasporic discourse and identity. As such, it invites critical thinking about the strengths and limitations of the usability of ‘Black Europe’ as a concept and unit of analysis.   

By Darlene Clark Hine (editor), Trica Danielle Keaton (editor), Stephen Small (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Black Europe and the African Diaspora as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The presence of Blacks in a number of European societies has drawn increasing interest from scholars, policymakers, and the general public. This interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary collection penetrates the multifaceted Black presence in Europe, and, in so doing, complicates the notions of race, belonging, desire, and identities assumed and presumed in revealing portraits of Black experiences in a European context. In focusing on contemporary intellectual currents and themes, the contributors theorize and re-imagine a range of historical and contemporary issues related to the broader questions of blackness, diaspora, hegemony, transnationalism, and "Black Europe" itself as lived and perceived realities.

Contributors are…


Book cover of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Susanna Ashton Author Of A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin

From my list on new discoveries in Black History.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I moved to South Carolina some 25 years ago, I found understanding all the history around me challenging. Even more than that, I found it hard to talk about! Politics and history get mixed up in tricky ways. I worked with students to understand stories about plantation sites, leading me to start reading the words of survivors of captivity. I started reading slave narratives and trying to listen to what people had to say. While sad sometimes, their words are also hopeful. I now read books about our nation’s darkest times because I look for ways to guide us to a better future. 

Susanna's book list on new discoveries in Black History

Susanna Ashton Why did Susanna love this book?

Whoa! There has been a lot of crazy controversy over this title, so I thought the book would be wild and confrontational. However, it turned out to be kinder and more careful in its claims than its opponents made it out to be. The whole thing began as a multi-media project for the New York Times to commemorate the first arrival of enslaved Africans to North America, and then it took off as a symbol of often manufactured culture wars.

I wanted to check it out for myself and found that this book is full of surprises. Ok: I expected to see essays about our strange American origin story and how race and power were entwined from our nation’s earliest days. But I was enthralled by the short essays (illustrated with gorgeous images and featuring brief works of poetry and fiction) that took on topics like Traffic, Healthcare, Fear, and…

By Nikole Hannah-Jones,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The 1619 Project as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER • A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.

FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, Marie Claire, Electric Lit, Ms. magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in race relations, civilization, and James Baldwin?

Race Relations 264 books
Civilization 224 books
James Baldwin 25 books