100 books like The Broken Heart of America

Wilkerson’s scholarship on race and injustice is certainly not a secret, but I still find some colleagues who have not yet read this book.

To convince people to pick it up, I promise that its language is poetic and imminently accessible, and I share the two pieces that have remained top of mind for years: first, Wilkerson’s research about the lessons Nazi Germany took from the racial caste system of Jim Crow United States, and second, the way she crafts an analogy of a crumbling house to make the case for reparations for racist harm, which—like cracks in the foundation of a house you just bought—may not be your fault but are still your problem.

I am forever grateful to Wilkerson for gifting us her insights and rhetorical tools, conveyed so skillfully in this tremendous contribution.

For starters an absolutely brilliant book title: beautifully capturing the complexities of American culture, at once compelled by soaring social aspirations while tending to act out of pure individualism often with disdain for social impact. The narrative abounds in identifying seemingly contradictory national impulses – imported vs. Indigenous traditions, socialism vs. libertarianism, utopian vs. prosaic undertakings, the welcoming of and resisting of others – with the author arguing that through the interaction of such opposite impulses over time the particular genius of American society evolved. Kammen delights in reminding Americans of our “unstable pluralism,” and supports William James’ conclusion that “Americanism” continues to be a “volatile mixture of hopeful good and curable bad.”  Overall impressive scholarship and a delightful read.   

Enormous insight from one of the great scholars of America’s Revolutionary Era, especially as to the complex ruminations and motivations of the nation’s founders as they set out to invent a new society. At the core of their inspiration, ironically resulting from their very provincialism, being separated from European society by an ocean, was their ability to combine a deep sense of pragmatic realism with “a pervasive air of utopian idealism.” From this was formed a nation consistently looking to a better future. A sensibility perhaps best expressed by Thomas Jefferson: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” 

The book explores the complicated historic interaction among what for many are understood to be opposing tendencies of American life. On the one hand, the promise of the ‘American Dream,’ long held as an ethos of America and associated with expectations of liberty, equality, and access to opportunity. While the phrase ‘America First’ is more often associated with isolationist and nativist campaigns, intolerance of others, and even supremacist ideology. 

Yet, as Churchwell reveals, during times of economic, social, or international crisis the appeal of demagoguery would enable the twisting of the meaning of these two phrases for particular and sometimes less noble purposes.   

The sociologist Arlie Hochschild visited Louisiana many times in the years she spent researching this book, about Tea Party Christians in the small town south.

Hochschild is determined to cross what she calls the “empathy wall,” and she listens closely to residents’ resentments, which she records in ways that allow her subjects to reveal themselves and their thinking. I’ve heard arguments against this book, and most of them are less nuanced than the ones Hochschild leaves me with.

What better than a book that takes disagreements seriously and leaves you with some of your own? A book of scope and scholarship and humanity of the sort I wish there were more of.

Thomas Piketty’s earlier book, Capitalism, was one of those books that many people purchased but only wound up reading the first 20 pages because of its dense argument and writing style. 

A Brief History of Capitalism is much more accessible, and in my opinion, useful. The book takes a long-term perspective for examining inequalities among social classes in human societies. Piketty’s argument is that since the end of the 18th century, there has been a long-term movement toward more social, economic, and political equality.

The book provides an excellent overview of inequality across time.

One of the most enduring stereotypes about poverty and welfare, has been that of the welfare queen – someone living the good life on welfare and grossly abusing the system. 

Ronald Reagan used the example of Linda Taylor in the 1970s to epitomize and capitalize on this myth in order to score political points. Josh Levin tracked down the actual story of Linda Taylor. As is so often the case, the truth is much stranger than fiction. 

A riveting biography of the individual who was at ground zero of the welfare queen myth.

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 “Native lands, championed secession, overthrew Reconstruction, questioned the New Deal, and fought against the civil rights movement.” 

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

This book was my first Beverly Jenkins novel, and it made me fall in love with her historical romance novels. Before I read it, all the historicals I’d read were Regencies. I was thrilled to find a historical romance with black characters in the United States, which opened my eyes to a part of history I didn’t know much about.

But, the historical aspects were not the only thing that captured my attention. Galen, the Creole hero and free Black man who worked as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, is the reason I recommend this book. There is plenty of chemistry and sensuality between the couple, but his gentleness and love for Hester, a former slave, is unmatched. Galen is one of the best kinds of heroes, and Hester deserves all the love he showers her with. 

All my selections capture unheralded activists undertaking the “social learning” at the core of movement building. Inevitably, a movement against one injustice will uncover larger and denser fabrics of inequality and disempowerment. Lipsitz and Perry collaborated in producing an incredible synthesis of personal biography and broad social and historical analysis. This book opened my eyes to the forgotten history of a northern freedom movement that challenged entrenched and enduring structures of big city inequality. Lipsitz follows Perry from a campaign to open up jobs for St. Louis bank tellers in 1963, to an “unviolent” campaign organizing Louisiana timber workers for voting rights and labor rights in 1965. Perry's subsequent efforts as a St. Louis war on poverty housing coordinator were educations in themselves: most memorably, he organized rent strikes and coordinated an unprecedented campaign to remedy the devastating effects of lead paint poisoning on children.