Social Justice

In the tradition of Just Mercy, an inspirational memoir by WNBA star Maya Moore Irons and her husband, Jonathan Irons, who she helped free from a wrongful conviction.

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century - but they've never been as intense as they are today. In this eye-opening narrative of the efforts to raise, preserve, protest, and remove Confederate monuments, Karen L. Cox depicts what these statues meant to those who erected them.

Do Better is a revolutionary offering that addresses racial justice from a comprehensive, intersectional, and spirit-based perspective. This actionable guidebook illustrates how to engage in the heart-centered and mindfulness-based practices that will help us all fight white supremacy from the inside out, in our personal lives and communities alike. It is a loving and assertive call to do the deep - and often uncomfortable - inner work that precipitates much-needed external and global change.

In a world that is “woke”, how many Christians are actually awake? This short theologically sound primer is a resource for pastors, ministry leaders, community leaders, and other thinking Christians that explains carefully and clearly what critical race theory and wokeness truly are, what the Bible teaches about race and ethnicity, why wokeness is distinct from Christianity and should be rejected, and how the church can work for unity based in the gospel of grace.

It’s the summer of 2019, and Professor Pi Suleman is a Black man from Memphis with a lot to endure - not only as a Black man in Trump’s America but in his hard-earned career as an adjunct professor. Pi is constantly forced to bite his tongue in the face of one of his tenured colleague’s prejudices and microaggressions. At the same time, he’s being blackmailed by a powerful professor who threatens to claim he has assaulted her, when in fact the truth is just the opposite, trapping him in a he-said-she-said with a white woman that, in this society, Pi knows he will never win.

After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism, political philosopher Serene Khader advocates for another feminism—one that doesn’t overwhelmingly serve white, affluent #girlbosses. With empathy, passion, and wit, Khader invites the listener to join her as she excavates the movement’s history and draws a blueprint for a more inclusive and resilient future.

In Woke, Titania McGrath demonstrates how everybody can play their part in the pursuit of social justice. As a millennial icon on the forefront of online activism, Titania is uniquely placed to guide her listeners through the often bewildering array of terminology and concepts that constitute 21st-century 'wokeness'. These new ideas often leave the general public bemused, particularly if they don't read the Guardian. Being woke is actually much easier than people think. As Titania demonstrates, anyone can be an activist.

From dolphins to crows, elephants to octopuses, Nussbaum examines the entire animal kingdom, showcasing the lives of animals with wonder, awe, and compassion to understand how we can create a world in which human beings are truly friends of animals, not exploiters or users. All animals should have a shot at flourishing in their own way. Humans have a collective duty to face and solve animal harm. An urgent call to action and a manual for change, Nussbaum’s groundbreaking theory directs politics and law to help us meet our ethical responsibilities as no book has done before.

Here Rebecca Nagle recounts the generations-long fight for tribal land and sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma. By chronicling both the contemporary legal battle and historic acts of Indigenous resistance, By the Fire We Carry stands as a landmark work of American history. The story it tells exposes both the wrongs that our nation has committed and the Native-led battle for justice that has shaped our country.

Hailed by Time as one of the world's hundred most influential people, Jeffrey D. Sachs is renowned for his work around the globe advising economies in crisis. Now a classic of its genre, The End of Poverty distills more than 30 years of experience to offer a uniquely informed vision of the steps that can transform impoverished countries into prosperous ones. Sachs lays out a clear conceptual map of the world economy. In this 10th anniversary edition, Sachs presents an extensive new foreword assessing the progress of the past decade.

Black Snake is the story of four leaders - LaDonna Allard, Jasilyn Charger, Lisa DeVille, and Kandi White - and their fight against the pipeline. It is the story of a new generation of environmental activists, galvanized at Standing Rock, becoming the protectors of America's natural resources.

Rulers throughout history have used laws to impose order. But laws were not simply instruments of power and social control. They also offered ordinary people a way to express their diverse visions for a better world. Oxford scholar Fernanda Pirie traces the rise and fall of the sophisticated legal systems underpinning ancient empires and religious traditions, while also showing how common people - tribal assemblies, merchants, farmers - called on laws to define their communities, regulate trade, and build civilizations.

As a child, Joseph Beck heard the stories - when other lawyers came up with excuses, his father courageously defended a Black man charged with raping a White woman. Now a lawyer himself, Beck reconstructs his father's role in State of Alabama vs. Charles White, Alias, a trial that was much publicized when Harper Lee was 12 years old.

As a street chaplain, activist, and cofounder of Open Table Nashville, Lindsey Krinks takes us on an unforgettable spiritual journey to tent cities, alleys, slums, and the front lines of movements for justice. Praying with Our Feet challenges preconceptions about people who live on the streets, calling us to move from charity to justice and to get our hands dirty in the struggle for a better world.

Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brian’s recounting of his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect.

Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color, Dr. Christopher Emdin has merged his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America. He takes to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning.

Financial activism is how everyday people radically reimagine money as a tool for widespread well-being, instead of a weapon of absurdly increasing inequality. It's how we—the underestimated—collectively resist systems that cause harm to people and the planet for the sake of profit, reclaim wealth that's been stolen, and redesign our relationships with capital and one another, in ways big and small. The Financial Activist Playbook offers eight accessible, actionable, "choose-your-own-adventure" strategies for listeners to experiment with.

In Arguing for a Better World, philosopher Arianne Shahvisi shows us how to work through thorny moral questions by examining their parts in broad daylight, equipping us to not only identify our own positions but to defend them as well. This book demonstrates the relevance of philosophy to our everyday lives, and offers some clear-eyed tools to those who want to learn how to better fight for justice and liberation for all.

In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus thirty years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. Syed has maintained his innocence, and Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, has always believed him. By 2013, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, Rabia contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life, in hopes of finding a journalist who could shed light on Adnan’s story. In 2014, Koenig's investigation turned into Serial, a Peabody Award-winning podcast with more than 500 million international listeners.

In this fresh look at trauma-informed practice, Alex Shevrin Venet urges educators to shift equity to the center as they consider policies and professional development.