New and Forthcoming Titles on Economic Inequality
The following is a list of new and forthcoming titles that examine the many forms of American economic disparity, and their impact on economic opportunity and social justice.
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ALGONQUIN
Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods
Amelia Pang, out now
Extensive interviews and firsthand reportage reveal the true cost of America’s cheap goods and urges consumers to ask questions and demand answers from the companies they patronize.
ANGRY ROBOT
Composite Creatures
Caroline Hardaker, Apr.
From PW’s review: “[The poet] explores corporate greed, health-care inequality, and the limits of human relationships in her deliciously weird fiction debut… [a] health-care company helps its members prolong and augment their lives by harvesting strange creatures called ovum organi.”
BENBELLA
Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty
Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, out now
How circumstances and public policy conspire to keep people poor, and the concrete steps we can take to end poverty for good.
BERRETT-KOEHLER
The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class
Thom Hartmann, out now
The popular progressive radio host looks at the history of the battle against oligarchy in America–-and how we can win the latest round.
BLOOMSBURY
Kin
Shawna Kay Rodenberg, June
A memoir of a wrenching Appalachian girlhood and a multilayered portrait of generations of Appalachians who have endured, harmed, and held each other through countless lifetimes of personal and regional tragedy.
CROWN
The Whiteness of Wealth
Dorothy A. Brown, Mar.
An exposé of racism in the American taxation system from a law professor and expert on tax policy.
DK
Twice as Hard: Navigating Black Stereotypes and Creating Space for Career Success
Raphael and Opeyemi Sofoluke, June
Exposes the obstacles that limit opportunity for Black professional progress, how to challenge racial stereotypes, be productive, find purpose, and ultimately design a successful career.
ECCO
Children Under Fire: An American Crisis
John Woodrow Cox, Mar.
Argues that children experiencing the trauma of neighborhood shootings and campus massacres often require lifetime therapy and medication, the costs of which dramatically stretch the incomes of their parents; and that addressing gun violence necessitates addressing poverty.
The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves
J.B. MacKinnon, May
The author draws from experts in fields ranging from climate change to economics, to investigate how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves.
HACHETTE
Miseducated: A Memoir
Brandon P. Fleming, June
One man’s transformation from a delinquent, drug-dealing dropout to an award-winning Harvard educator through literature and debate—all by the age of twenty-seven.
HARPERBUSINESS
Power Moms
Joann S. Lublin, out now
A retired Wall Street Journal editor and mother compares two generations of women—boomers and GenXers—to examine how each navigates the emotional and professional challenges involved in juggling managerial careers and families.
Fair Pay
David Buckmaster, June
The Nike Director of Global Compensation and Market Insights reveals how corporations make decisions about wages, and provides practical ways for workers to negotiate their wages using corporate language to get the best results.
HARPERCOLLINS LEADERSHIP
We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power
Rachel Rodgers, May
The attorney, business owner, and self-made Black millionaire shares the lessons she’s learned both in her own journey to wealth and in coaching hundreds of women through their own journeys to seven figures, and details a realistic, achievable, step-by-step path to become a millionaire within the next three years.
HERALD
Faithful in Small Things: How to Serve the Needy When You’re One of Them
Kevin Wiebe, Mar.
The author, a pastor of a “low-resource” church of mostly immigrants, calls readers not only to “help the needy” but to acknowledge their own need and to work with God to serve others.
MATT HOLT
Create Amazing: Turning Your Employees into Owners for Explosive Growth
Greg Graves, Apr.
The author, a retired CEO who operated one of the most successful Employee Stock Ownership Plans in American history, demonstrates how ownership can provide the ultimate competitive advantage to a growing company—and the nation.
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV.
Why Are Health Disparities Everyone’s Problem?
Lisa Cooper, June
The founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity draws from her thirty-year career as a clinician and health equity researcher to examine how differences in communication and the quality of relationships affect health outcomes, and details the actions and policies needed to reduce and eliminate the conditions that are harming us all.
HOUSE OF ANANSI
The Guardian of Amsterdam Street: A Novel
Sergio Schmucler, translated by Jessica Sayer, May
A neighborhood where the whole of the twentieth century comes alive, and an inquiry into how we shape the world, and how it transforms us in turn.
HUMAN KINDNESS FOUNDATION
Prison from The Inside Out: One Man’s Journey from a Life Sentence to Freedom
William “Mecca” Elmore and Susan Simone, out now
The authors–a black man sentenced to life imprisonment, and a white woman documentary photographer–explore incarceration, self-esteem, personal growth, survival, and the power of trust.
INDIANA UNIV.
Education without Debt
Scott MacDonald, out now
The businessman and philanthropist examines the real-life impact of crushing levels of student debt on borrowers and what can be done to fix this crisis.
JUDSON
Let the Oppressed Go Free
Marvin A. McMickle, out now
The pastor considers the contexts out of which theologies of liberation emerge and the transforming impact they have on the social and political lives of Christians today.
God in the Ghetto: A Prophetic Word Revisited by William Augustus Jones Jr.
Edited by Jennifer Jones Austin, Apr.
The reissue of the classic book, updated by the late author’s younger daughter and expanded to add several never-before-published sermons, features new essays from notable leaders reflecting on the legacy and influence of Dr. Jones and his work.
Taking Apart Bootstrap Theology: Gospel of Generosity and Justice
Terrell Carter, Apr.
The author challenges the academy and church to advance a more faithful gospel that extends a spirit of generosity and a call to social justice for all God’s people, especially those who are the most vulnerable.
NEW PRESS
Tax the Rich: How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich
Morris Pearl, Erica Payne, and The Patriotic Millionaires, Apr.
America’s wealthiest “class traitors” offer a guide to the most effective way to un-rig the economy and fix inequality.
On the Job: The Untold Story of Worker Centers and the New Fight for Wages, Dignity, and Health
Celeste Monforton and Jane M. Von Bergen, May
Uncovers the stories of hundreds of new worker-led organizations that have successfully achieved higher wages, safer working conditions, and on-the-job dignity for their members.
ONE WORLD
The Sum of Us
Heather McGhee, out now
One of today’s influential thinkers explores inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: racism has a cost for everyone, not just for people of color.
For the People
Larry Krasner, Apr.
Philadelphia’s progressive district attorney uses lessons from a life’s work as an advocate for the accused to offer a vision of how people can take back power to reform criminal justice.
My Broken Language
Quiara Alegria-Hudes, Apr.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright tells a coming of age story against the backdrop of an ailing Philadelphia barrio, with her sprawling Puerto Rican family as a collective muse.
OTHER
Forever Free: A True Story of Hope in the Fight for Child Literacy
Tracy Swinton Bailey, Aug.
A look at America’s historically rooted struggle to adequately educate vulnerable children, and a call to action to those in positions of power who can open doors of opportunity.
OXFORD UNIV.
Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide
Abdul El-Sayed and Micah Johnson, out now
Examines how Medicare for All would transform the way we give, receive, and pay for healthcare in America.
At What Cost: Modern Capitalism and the Future of Health
Nicholas Freudenberg, Mar.
Confronts how globalization, financial speculation, monopolies, and control of science and technology have enhanced the ability of corporations and their allies to overwhelm influences of government, family, community, and faith—and shows that human and planetary well-being constitute a powerful mobilizing idea for a new social movement that will restore the power of individual voice to our democracy.
Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty
Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock, Mar.
The authors, armed with the latest research, challenge the myths of poverty and inequality, explain why these myths continue to exist, and provide a blueprint for how the nation can move forward to alleviate American poverty.
PRINCETON UNIV.
Tolls of Uncertainty: How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America
Sarah Damaske, May
An investigation into the American unemployment system and the ways gender and class affect the lives of those looking for work.
The Profit Paradox: How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work
Jan Eeckhout, June
An account of the surging global tide of market power and how it stifles workers around the world.
Scripting the Moves: Culture and Control in a “No-Excuses” Charter School
Joanne W. Golann, June
An inside look at a “no-excuses” charter school that reveals this educational model’s strengths and weaknesses, and how its approach shapes students.
RANDOM HOUSE
Mutualism
Sara Horowitz, out now
The founder of the Freelancers Union looks at the crisis of work, the collapse of the safety net, and a vision for a better way forward, rooted in America’s cooperative spirit.
Ages of American Capitalism
Jonathan Levy, Apr.
A leading economic historian traces the evolution of American capitalism from the colonial era to the present—and argues that we’ve reached yet another turning point that will define the era ahead.
LYNNE RIENNER
The Trickle-Up Economy: How We Take from the Poor and Middle Class and Give to the Rich
Mark Mattern, Aug.
The author shows how the bottom subsidizes the top by documenting the everyday, institutionalized ways that income and wealth are transferred upward in the United States.
SCOUT
The Cave Dwellers: A Novel
Christina McDowell, May
A social satire about what Washington, D.C.’s blue bloods and power brokers do behind the closed doors of the Capitol building, K Street, members-only clubs, private schools, and stately homes.
Simon & Schuster
Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All
Michael Mechanic, Apr.
The journalist dives into the lives of the extremely rich, revealing the insidious effects their disproportionate affluence has on them, as well as on our society at large.
ST. MARTIN’S
The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town
Brian Alexander, Mar.
An intimate portrait of one small hospital that reveals the magnitude of America’s health care crises.
STANFORD UNIV.
Identity Capitalists: The Powerful Insiders Who Exploit Diversity to Maintain Inequality
Nancy Leong, out now
The author, a law professor, contends that our national preoccupation with diversity has turned marginalized identities into valuable commodities, and arms readers with the tools to recognize and mitigate the harms of exploitation.
Management as a Calling: Leading Business, Serving Society
Andrew J. Hoffman, Mar
Challenges future business leaders—and those who train them—to think differently about their careers and see their work as a calling or vocation done in service to society.
STATE UNIV. OF NEW YORK
America in Denial: How Race-Fair Policies Reinforce Racial Inequality in America
Lori Latrice Martin, May
Examines how race-neutral programs and policies harm, rather than improve, the lives of blacks in the United States.
TYNDALE MOMENTUM
Canary in the Coal Mine: A Forgotten Rural Community, a Hidden Epidemic, and a Lone Doctor Battling for the Life, Health, and Soul of the People
William Cooke, May
The author recounts his experience as a doctor battling prejudice, political resistance, and entrenched bureaucracy as he dealt with a national opioid epidemic and the worst drug-fueled HIV outbreak ever seen in rural America.
VERSO
The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An Intersectional Political Economy
Nancy Folbre, out now
The MacArthur Award–winning economist examines the contradictory effects of capitalist development.
Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown
Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton, Apr.
A radical manifesto for how to deal with environmental breakdown.
We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire
Ian Sanjay Patel, Apr.
Drawing on new archival material from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the author reveals how, in a series of post-war immigration laws, Britain’s colonial and Commonwealth citizens from the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa were renamed immigrants.
Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, June
The author’s essays, articles and interviews from over the past two decades analyze the origins of mass incarceration and racial violence.
VIKING
The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown
Michael Patrick F. Smith, out now
Explores the lives of migrant workers in America who travel to oil boomtowns to build better lives for themselves and their families, and exposes the societal frameworks that put them in certain situations.
WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX
The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive
Patrick B. Reyes, Mar.
Practical guidance and advice on creating safe space for failure, nurturing networks that support young people of color, and professional guidance for how to implement these strategies in one’s congregation, school, or community organization.
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