71 books like The Case for Loving

This creative book showcases Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her frequent dissents from the Court's majority opinions. Beginning as a girl, Ruth often disagreed with other people's expectations. Using her strong-mindedness and intelligence and hard work, she excelled in college and law school, eventually overcoming prejudices against her as a woman and a Jew to become a law professor, a lawyer, and a judge. Author Debby Levy describes Ruth Bader Ginsburg's groundbreaking work as a lawyer seeking equality for men and women, including her numerous arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. And in discussing Justice Ginsburg's own tenure on the Supreme Court, Levy highlights Ruth's friendship with her political opposite, Justice Antonin Scalia. This book offers readers a three-dimensional profile of an iconic Justice.

Written by sitting United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Turning Pages tells the inspiring story of the author's early life. Justice Sotomayor's beautiful spirit shines through as she recounts her early struggles to learn English, her fear of the daily injections needed to control her diabetes, and how she overcame these and other challenges. Sotomayor credits her love of books and reading for her many accomplishments. As an added bonus, the book includes plenty of personal photographs, showing scenes and people from the author's childhood, family, and friends. This is a lovely, personal, uplifting work—and not at all the celebrity book you might expect.

This picture book tells the story of Hamilton v. Alabama, a lesser-known U.S. Supreme Court ruling on behalf of Miss Mary Hamilton. Mary Hamilton, a Black civil rights activist arrested for her protests against segregation, demanded in a court hearing that she be addressed as "Miss Hamilton," rather than by her first name. This courtesy was extended to white people but often not to Blacks. When she refused to respond to "Mary," the judge held her in contempt. The NAACP took the case to the United States Supreme Court, which reversed in a 1964 order. Powerful poetic text and art by the talented mother-son Boston Weatherford team puts Mary's demand for respect into its historical and social context.

The through-line in this picture book biography is Thurgood Marshall's quest for change, which the author says started early in his life. Marshall grew up in Baltimore under segregation. His parents wanted greater opportunities for their children. Marshall pushed against racial boundaries in college and beyond. As a young lawyer he won an early court order desegregating a school, and went on to argue a series of landmark desegregation cases before the Supreme Court. After becoming the first Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice, he continued to push for change by persuading his colleagues on the bench. This book highlights the Court's ability to make change and honors a trailblazing man who left a lasting legacy. Helpful back matter includes a timeline and list of important Supreme Court cases.

You don’t necessarily have to like an author to admire their grasp of the subject matter and few writers have a better slab-side manner than Cornwell. She knows her stuff and you can perhaps forgive her the smartarsery that she can’t resist. But she does go out of her way to give the victims and their families closure. 

If you like your scary stories mixed with a dash of science fiction, Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers is highly recommended. Set in fictional Haven, ME, the book revolves around the discovery of a spaceship buried in the woods. As Bobbi Anderson, a local writer, uncovers the ship, both she and the rest of the townspeople are physically and mentally transformed by it. Not all of the changes are welcome – Bobbi loses interest in food and starts losing hair and teeth, but in turn becomes part of a shared consciousness that makes her capable of the most amazing inventions, including a telepathic typewriter. Only Jim Gardner is immune due to a steel plate in his head, and it is up to him to stop the hypnotic spell of The Tommyknockers.

Though I felt too raw after George Floyd’s death in the summer of 2020 to read about the shattered dreams of an enslaved woman, there was something about Pheby Brown’s story that I found intriguing.

I had spent the last few weeks reading various novels about wives. Enslaved at birth, Pheby is promised her freedom on her 18th birthday but instead is forced to become the mistress to the jailer at a place where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day.

I loved how Phebe’s ability to create these beautiful designs with her sewing enabled her to protect her heart and those she loved. I was inspired by her strength and perseverance in the face of the brutality of slavery.

For centuries, Virginians have told, retold, and embellished terrific stories of their history, some based on truth, others more folklore than reality. As someone who has written her own myths and legends book, it was refreshing to read about them from another author’s viewpoint. Plus, I got to learn some new angles about the lore of Virginia.

Sometimes called the female version of Tom Jones, Moll loses her mother (who is a convict) and eventually suffers the complications of being female when she falls in love and becomes pregnant by someone who can’t marry. Things go from bad to worse when she marries someone she doesn’t love, and faces instability all over again when she becomes a widow.

Thus begins her adventuring to find a husband who will give her the security she needs to survive. She burns through a bevvy of men who disappoint her on many accounts and has—and abandons—children at a remarkable rate as she learns the tricks of a con artist’s ways.

This book would be interesting to read in tandem with Tom Jones to consider why Moll is a less enamouring character than Tom.

I read Life on the Color Line as a junior in high school. I was amazed by William’s intimate account of having lived, first as a white boy in America, and then, as a Black boy in America. His life story illuminates not only the fiction that “race” is biological and immutable, but the powerful reality of white supremacy. Little did I know when reading Williams’s book that I would one day give birth to a son this society deems to be white. This is, in many ways, a painful book, but it is also one about the power of love and community. The love and community Williams found is what led him to share his story, which is a necessary and crucial reminder to challenge racism at its root.