Books You Should Read for This Current Moment (Part 1)
The Authors Who Have the Most to Teach Us About Our History and Ourselves
I’ve spent the last few months in reflection—trying to process recent world events and attempting to articulate those thoughts for everyone here.1 These are difficult times for many of us and I want to express the importance of both taking time to step away from everything for a bit and the even more important task of getting yourself back in the fight when you’re ready. This piece is how I intend to do that.
During this period of reflection, I’ve found myself returning to the works of a select few authors. In trying to understand this current moment, I have sought the wisdom of those who have faced similar moments as we have today.
These individuals are historians and philosophers, journalists and commentators, activists and idea shapers. These are people who devoted their lives, not only to the documentation of historical events but also have been formative in shaping our understanding of those events.
This list will be released in two parts with the next part being released next week.
Covering events from the last three centuries up to the present day, here are the authors you should explore to try to make sense of current times.
Hannah Arendt
“Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being.” - Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition2
Hannah Arendt was a 20th-century German-American historian and philosopher best known for her contributions to the realm of political theory. Among her most seminal works is her comprehensive study on totalitarian regimes, The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Arendt’s inclusion on this list, particularly as the first author mentioned, paints a rather bleak but appropriate picture. We have witnessed, over the past few years, a rise in autocratic regimes across the world, bringing with it a rising tension in international relations. Arendt’s work serves as a barometer by which we can measure and assess this tension, giving us the guidance we need to navigate these times for ourselves.
Selected Works
On Civil Disobedience by Hannah Arendt & Henry David Thoreau
The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
On Lying and Politics by Hannah Arendt
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
On Violence by Hannah Arendt
James Baldwin
“The principle on which one had to operate was that the government which can force me to pay my taxes and force me to fight in its defense anywhere in the world does not have the authority to say that it cannot protect my right to vote or my right to earn a living or my right to live anywhere I choose. Furthermore, no nation, wishing to call itself free, can possibly survive so massive a defection.” - James Baldwin, A Report from Occupied Territory3
James Baldwin was an African-American writer, civil rights activist, and social commentator during the mid-to-late 20th century. A prolific essayist and novelist, Baldwin is best known for his works, Go Tell It On the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Notes of a Native Son, and The Fire Next Time.
Baldwin is a figure I continue to write about at length because his times—particularly his later years—are very much like our own. Baldwin witnessed a historic period of social change and progress and also lived to see a national backlash against that progress in the 1980s.
While the vast library of Baldwin’s work would provide insight into today’s events, I believe three of his essay collections deserve specific attention. Among these are Notes of a Native Son, his first essay collection published shortly after his first novel, The Fire Next Time, which opens with a letter on the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and ends with a navigation of the civil rights environment of the early 1960s, and finally, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, an account of the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-1981, a reflection of the national climate at the dawn of the 1980s.
Selected Works
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
“We cannot be concerned solely with the future as if the past is not present in our current living. If we do, hubris will hollow out our dreams. Any struggle for the world as it could be must be imagined close to the ground in the world as it is and as it came to be.” - Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For4
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. is an American professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and a political commentator. Glaude’s work provides us with a contemporary view of race relations in the United States.
A preeminent scholar of the American Civil Rights Movement, Glaude grants us an analytical perspective by which we can assess some of the other historical figures featured on this list. Like all living figures on this list, Glaude is an individual who encourages me to stop whatever it is that I am doing and listen when he makes a public appearance.
Of his works, I’ve selected Glaude’s three most recent historical and political commentaries, discussing the legacies of Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Ella Baker, Barack Obama, Malcolm X, and others.
Selected Works
We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
“Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly… More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.” - Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die5
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are American political science professors at Harvard University. Levitsky’s areas of expertise include the study of competitive authoritarian regimes, the nature of political institutions, and the politics of Latin American countries. Ziblatt’s specialties include European and American political institutions and the formation and evolution of political parties.
In recent years, Levitsky and Ziblatt have written two books together on the decline of democratic institutions, utilizing their combined knowledge of international politics to analyze the political climate of the United States. One cannot read either of these works and not see the warning signs that have been placed along the way to where we are today.
Selected Works
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
Tyranny of the Minority by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
James W. Loewen
“Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we arrived at this point.” - James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me6
James W. Loewen was an American sociologist, historian, and author. Over his career, Lowen taught lectures on the impact of systemic and non-systemic racism in the United States and how it manifests in different parts of our cultural identity. These are subjects that Loewen’s books explore in extremely comprehensive detail.
Lies My Teacher Told Me addresses the mythologization of certain aspects of American history and how our academic textbooks often paint a distorted image of the United States, its faults, and the flawed individuals who made that history. Lies Across America gives a more sweeping view of how this act of mythologizing impacts the symbols we’ve placed across the country, from statues to monuments.
Selected Works
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen
If any of you are interested in building a literary community around any of these works, please let me know in the comments of this post or message me on one of the social media platforms below.
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Thank you so much for your time. Happy reading!
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Sources:
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago, Illinois, United States of America: The University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Baldwin, James. The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985. 1985. Reprint, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America: Beacon Press, 2021.
Glaude, Eddie S., Jr. We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For. Kindle. Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America: Harvard University Press, 2024.
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. New York, New York, United States of America, Crown, 2018.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. The New Press, 2018.
That is the essence of what we do here at What’s On My Mind.
Arendt, The Human Condition, 3.
Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket, 423.
Glaude, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, 12.
Levitsky & Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 3.
Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, 2.