Love Redefining Rape? Readers share 100 books like Redefining Rape...

By Estelle B. Freedman,

Here are 100 books that Redefining Rape fans have personally recommended if you like Redefining Rape. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistanceā€”A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

Why am I passionate about this?

I started my career teaching high school. I attended amazing professional development institutes, where scholars showed me how the stories Iā€™d learned and then taught to my own students were so oversimplified that they had become factually incorrect. I was hooked. I kept wondering what else Iā€™d gotten wrong. I earned a Ph.D. in modern US History with specialties in womenā€™s and gender history and war and society, and now Iā€™m an Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University and the Coordinator of ISUā€™s Social Studies Education Program. I focus on historical complexity and human motivations because they are the key to understanding change.

Amy's book list on books about twenteith-century U.S. History that make you rethink something you thought you already knew

Amy J. Rutenberg Why did Amy love this book?

We live in a time when personal convenience seems to trump everything else. So how is it that virtually the entire Black community of Montgomery, Alabama, stayed off the city buses for over a year in the mid-1950s?

The first three chapters of this book answer that question in a completely new way that made the realities of the Jim Crow South and the dangers of the struggle for racial justice snap into focus for me. The boycott was tangentially about segregation on buses, but really, argues McGuire, it was a fight for bodily integrity, safety, and self-respect.

Because it deals with rape and sexual assault, this can be a hard book to read, but it literally gave me a different understanding of what ā€œequalityā€ means.

By Danielle L. McGuire,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked At the Dark End of the Street as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Here is the courageous, groundbreaking story of Rosa Parks and Recy Taylorā€”a story that reinterprets the history of America's civil rights movement in terms of the sexual violence committed against Black women by white men.

"An important step to finally facing the terrible legacies of race and gender in this country.ā€ ā€”The Washington Post

Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomeryā€™s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth ofā€¦


Book cover of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger

Kim Imas Author Of Beast Mom

From my list on women and anger.

Why am I passionate about this?

We talk a lot about the big public events that expanded the #MeToo movement so astronomically, like the election to the US presidency of a man who bragged about assaulting women, and the allegations made against Harvey Weinstein. But I think most American women have other, more personal beefs that originate from their being a woman. I, for one, was shocked at how unnecessarily difficult it was to be a new mother in the US. Other places support this vulnerable group much more than we do here, and living that disparity angered meā€”like, for example, when my husband exhausted what little parental leave he had available before our twins were even released from the NICU.

Kim's book list on women and anger

Kim Imas Why did Kim love this book?

This 2018 release had particularly good timing: By the end of the previous year, the #MeToo movement had exploded into a global phenomenon and women the world over were pissed. I was one of them, and I was doing a lot of soul-searching about the growing rage inside of me.

Good and Mad helped me understand the broader context of what I was feeling: why and how women have been taught that anger is unbecoming and unacceptable, how society holds us to that standard, and how some brave womenā€”like Mamie Tillā€”have turned this reality into an opportunity to create change.

By Rebecca Traister,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Good and Mad as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Journalist Rebecca Traister's New York Times bestselling exploration of the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement is "a hopeful, maddening compendium of righteous feminine anger, and the good it can do when wielded efficiently-and collectively" (Vanity Fair).

Long before Pantsuit Nation, before the Women's March, and before the #MeToo movement, women's anger was not only politically catalytic-but politically problematic. The story of female fury and its cultural significance demonstrates its crucial role in women's slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when itā€¦


Book cover of Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray

Kimberly A. Hamlin Author Of Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener

From my list on women fighting for bodily and political autonomy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born in 1974 and grew up in a time when, at least on paper, women had equal rights. I also grew up not far from Harriet Tubmanā€™s home, not far from Seneca Falls, not far from Susan B. Anthonyā€™s house. I became a historian of womenā€™s rights and, I sometimes joke, a secular evangelical for womenā€™s history. Writing Free Thinker was, professionally, the most fun I have ever had. I can think of no better time than right now to study the histories of women who understood that bodily autonomy and political autonomy are two sides of the same coin and who dedicated their lives to securing both. 

Kimberly's book list on women fighting for bodily and political autonomy

Kimberly A. Hamlin Why did Kimberly love this book?

People often ask me who is the most important yet least known woman in U.S. history. Of course I am partial to Helen Hamilton Gardener, the woman whose biography I wrote, but overall I think the woman we all need to know about is Pauli Murray. We love to love RBG, but RBG credited Pauli Murray with some of her most effective legal strategies. In fact, Murry was the legal mastermind behind landmark civil rights and sex discrimination cases, including Brown v. Board of Education. And she bravely lived her life on her own terms (as what today we would likely understand as a trans man). Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, I think we could use a refresher on the 14th Amendment and how Americans, none more so than Pauli Murray, have used it to champion equality for all. 

By Rosalind Rosenberg,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channeling her outrage at the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country. In this definitive biography, Rosalind Rosenberg offers a poignant portrait of a figure who played pivotal roles in both the modern civil rights and women's movements.

A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where herā€¦


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorā€”and only womanā€”on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route upā€¦

Book cover of The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service

Kimberly A. Hamlin Author Of Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener

From my list on women fighting for bodily and political autonomy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born in 1974 and grew up in a time when, at least on paper, women had equal rights. I also grew up not far from Harriet Tubmanā€™s home, not far from Seneca Falls, not far from Susan B. Anthonyā€™s house. I became a historian of womenā€™s rights and, I sometimes joke, a secular evangelical for womenā€™s history. Writing Free Thinker was, professionally, the most fun I have ever had. I can think of no better time than right now to study the histories of women who understood that bodily autonomy and political autonomy are two sides of the same coin and who dedicated their lives to securing both. 

Kimberly's book list on women fighting for bodily and political autonomy

Kimberly A. Hamlin Why did Kimberly love this book?

In the aftermath of the Supreme Courtā€™s ruling in Dobbs, I think it is imperative to remember what life was like before Roe v. Wade and what women did to survive and to live their lives on their own terms. Kaplanā€™s book tells the story of the Jane Collective in the words of the women who made Jane work, which makes for powerful reading. And, I think it is important to ask ourselves what about todayā€™s post-Roe era is ā€œlike beforeā€ and what is very different. For example, pre-Roe, most state restrictions on abortion contained exceptions for rape and incest. Post-Roe, nearly all state abortion bans contain no exceptions for rape or incest. The Story of Jane also chronicles, in some ways, a freer time in which oneā€™s every query and movement was not tracked by oneā€™s phone. 

By Laura Kaplan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Story of Jane as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An extraordinary history by one of its members, this is the first account of Jane's evolution, the conflicts within the group, and the impact its work had both on the women it helped and the members themselves. This book stands as a compelling testament to a woman's most essential freedom--control over her own body--and to the power of women helping women.


Book cover of Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power

Mark Robert Rank Author Of The Poverty Paradox: Understanding Economic Hardship Amid American Prosperity

From my list on understanding the paradox of American inequality.

Why am I passionate about this?

For much of my career as a sociologist and professor of social welfare, Iā€™ve focused my research and teaching on the issue of economic and social inequality in America. Why should the United States have both great wealth and yet at the same time extreme poverty and inequities? This question has motivated much of my scholarly and popular writing over the years. For me, this represents the fault line of America. We profess the importance that all are created equal, and yet our actions undermine such a belief. Why should this be the case, and how can we change the reality to reflect the ideal? 

Mark's book list on understanding the paradox of American inequality

Mark Robert Rank Why did Mark love this book?

Author Jefferson Cowie focuses on Barbour Country, Alabama to illustrate how over the last 200 years, white Americans have used the battle cry of freedom to seize ā€œNative lands, championed secession, overthrew Reconstruction, questioned the New Deal, and fought against the civil rights movement.ā€ 

Barbour Country was also the home of George Wallace, who lead the charge of freedom and stateā€™s rights. An insightful and eye-opening book, Freedomā€™s Dominion won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in history.

By Jefferson Cowie,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Freedom's Dominion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

American freedom is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom-their freedom to dominate others.

In Freedom's Dominion, historian Jefferson Cowie traces this complex saga by focusing on a quintessentially American place: Barbour County, Alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand George Wallace. In a land shaped by settler colonialism and chattel slavery, white people weaponized freedom to seize Native lands, champion secession, overthrow Reconstruction, question the New Deal, and fight against theā€¦


Book cover of Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy

Pam Kelley Author Of Money Rock: A Family's Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South

From my list on that explain Americaā€™s systemic racism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in a mostly white town in Ohio, where, as a White woman, I didnā€™t have to think much at all about race. During college in North Carolina, I first began to consider racism. As a journalist, Iā€™ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that you canā€™t write in a meaningful way about social justice issues without connecting them to history. The books Iā€™ve recommended provide that connection. Once you make it, youā€™ll never be able to see the world the same way. 

Pam's book list on that explain Americaā€™s systemic racism

Pam Kelley Why did Pam love this book?

Wilmingtonā€™s Lie, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, documents one of the darkest episodes in North Carolinaā€™s history ā€“ the violent overthrow of an elected government in the Black-majority city of Wilmington. It was a massacre that left at least 60 Black men dead. I lived in North Carolina for decades before I heard about this history. And Iā€™m hardly alone. Until recently, this coup had been described as a ā€œrace riotā€ and largely omitted from textbooks, while its White supremacist organizers had been revered as great North Carolinians. If you want to understand what people mean when they talk about the ā€œwhitewashingā€ of American history, this book is the ultimate case study.

By David Zucchino,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Wilmington's Lie as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NONFICTION

From Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino comes a searing account of the Wilmington riot and coup of 1898, an extraordinary event unknown to most Americans

By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolinaā€™s largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. It was a bustling port city with a burgeoning African American middle class and a Fusionist government of Republicans and Populists that included black aldermen, police officers and magistrates. There were successful black-owned businesses and an African American newspaper, The Record. But across the stateā€”and the Southā€”white supremacist Democrats wereā€¦


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Book cover of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

Who Is a Worthy Mother? by Rebecca Wellington,

I grew up thinking that being adopted didnā€™t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Courtā€™s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over womenā€™s reproductive rights placesā€¦

Book cover of Notes of a Native Son

Duncan Jepson Author Of All the Flowers in Shanghai

From my list on about protest.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been an activist working on issues relating to human rights and youth protection for over fifteen years and during that time I worked as a lawyer and was lucky enough to make films and write two novels. Eventually, I would concentrate solely on activism and my reading would become very specific and as the focus of my activism changed and I directed my energies to corporate accountability my reading changed course again. The list I offer is from talented writers on important subjects, all write extremely well about things that matter to a human rights activist.  

Duncan's book list on about protest

Duncan Jepson Why did Duncan love this book?

Baldwin writes both fiction and non-fiction beautifully and intimately and if you donā€™t know his non-fiction work then this is a very good place to start. Across a number of essays, he elegantly sets out the deep struggle faced by Black Americans and articulates how a different humanity, in America and beyond, and a different future can be realized. 

By James Baldwin,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Notes of a Native Son as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#26 on The Guardian's list of 100 best nonfiction books of all time, the essays explore what it means to be Black in America

In an age of Black Lives Matter, James Baldwin's essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. With films like I Am Not Your Negro and the forthcoming If Beale Street Could Talk bringing renewed interest to Baldwin's life and work, Notes of a Native Son serves as a valuable introduction.

Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin wasā€¦


Book cover of The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Rashad Harrison Author Of Our Man in the Dark

From my list on thrillers and mysteries inhabited by history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I read history to better understand myself, others, and the world around me; I write historical fiction to share what I have learned. At New York University, I was the Jacob K. Javits Fellow in fiction. In addition to Our Man in the Dark, I am the author of The Abduction of Smith and Smith, one of Huffington Post's 25 Necessary Books By Black Authors (2015), and Huffington Post's 50 Amazing Books By Black Authors from the Past Five Years (2019).

Rashad's book list on thrillers and mysteries inhabited by history

Rashad Harrison Why did Rashad love this book?

In the late ā€™60s, Dan Freeman, a Black token hire at the CIA shares spy-craft with Black revolutionaries. The book may claim to be a satire, but it demands to be taken seriously. The historical implications of the novel are obvious; there are plenty of exhilarating thrills, and the writing bops with a jazz-like cool. The mystery, however, is subterranean and internal. Freeman has perfected many masks to survive in America, to infiltrate the CIA, and to earn the respect of revolutionaries. The amazing thing is that there is so much suspense in discovering which identity will truly take hold.

By Sam Greenlee,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Spook Who Sat by the Door as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A classic in the black literary tradition, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is both a comment on the civil rights problems in the United States in the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of black militancy.

Dan Freeman, the ""spook who sat by the door,"" is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program. Upon mastering agency tactics, however, he drops out to train young Chicago blacks as ""Freedom Fighters"" in this explosive, award-winning novel.

As a story of one man's reaction to ruling-class hypocrisy, the book is autobiographical and personal. As a taleā€¦


Book cover of Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor

Rebecca DeWolf Author Of Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920-1963

From my list on how gender has shaped citizenship in the US.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian with a PhD in history from American University. My research has focused on the changing nature of U.S. citizenship after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. In particular, my newly released book, Gendered Citizenship, sheds light on the competing civic ideologies embedded in the original conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from the 1920s through the 1960s. My research has won recognition through several grants and fellowships and my writing has appeared in the Washington Post, History News Network, New America Weekly, Gender on the Ballot, and Frontiers

Rebecca's book list on how gender has shaped citizenship in the US

Rebecca DeWolf Why did Rebecca love this book?

In Unequal Freedom, Nakano Glenn provides a brilliant analysis of how the multiple axes of power relations, including race, gender, and labor, have shaped the terms of citizenship in the United States. In the process, Glenn unpacks how the history of the concept of citizenship is a powerful tool for understanding the various ways power dynamics have influenced the terms of belonging to a national community. Glennā€™s book is an inspiring study that has pushed me to think more deeply about the notion of citizenship and to understand that the concept of citizenship involves more than just indicating oneā€™s nationality status. As Glenn shows, citizenship denotes a system of deeply entrenched boundaries that have determined not only who is allowed to be a member of a certain community, but also who is allowed to be an active participant in governing that community. 

By Evelyn Nakano Glenn,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The inequalities that persist in America have deep historical roots. Evelyn Nakano Glenn untangles this complex history in a unique comparative regional study from the end of Reconstruction to the eve of World War II. During this era the country experienced enormous social and economic changes with the abolition of slavery, rapid territorial expansion, and massive immigration, and struggled over the meaning of free labor and the essence of citizenship as people who previously had been excluded sought the promise of economic freedom and full political rights.

After a lucid overview of the concepts of the free worker and theā€¦


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Book cover of Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS

Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS by Amy Carney,

When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies ā€“ admittedly, that is a catchy title, but thatā€™s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly moreā€¦

Book cover of From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality

Joseph A. Ranney Author Of Bridging Revolutions: The Lives of Chief Justices Richmond Pearson and John Belton O'Neall

From my list on the role states played in American law and history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a retired trial lawyer and a legal history professor and fellow at Marquette Law School in Wisconsin. As a young lawyer, I was struck by how much Americans focus on federal lawmakers and judges at the expense of their state counterparts, even though state law has a much greater effect on people's daily lives than federal law. The scholar Leonard Levy once said that without more study of state legal history, ā€œthere can be no ā€¦ adequate history of [American] civilization.ā€ I want to help fill that need through my books and articles, and I enjoy sharing this fascinating world with my readers.  

Joseph's book list on the role states played in American law and history

Joseph A. Ranney Why did Joseph love this book?

This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to fully understand the century-long struggle after the Civil War to end legally-sanctioned discrimination against Black Americans. Prof. Klarman provides a richly detailed account of that century-long struggle, an account that describes the legal battles that took place in individual states and puts them in the context of the larger national debate. The book requires some effort on the reader's part, but the story that Klarman tells of the U.S. Supreme Court's gradual turn against segregation and its clashes with Southern state lawmakers and courts is ultimately a deeply moving one. 

By Michael J. Klarman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked From Jim Crow to Civil Rights as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A monumental investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow To Civil Rights spells out in compelling detail the political and social context within which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of their decisions for American race relations. In a highly provocative interpretation of the decision's connection to the civil rights movement, Klarman argues that Brown was more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial change than for encouraging direct-action protest. Brown unquestioningly had a significant impact-it brought race issues to public attention and it mobilized supporters of the ruling. It also, however, energizedā€¦


Book cover of At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistanceā€”A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power
Book cover of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger
Book cover of Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray

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Interested in civil rights, women's rights, and rape?

Civil Rights 114 books
Women's Rights 69 books
Rape 77 books