New nonfiction that lands with force
Some great nonfiction for spring about race, politics and adversity. Locking Up Our Own Crime and Punishment in Black America James Forman Jr.
James Foreman Jr. — a Yale Law School professor and onetime public defender in Washington, D.C. — is a child of the civil rights movement. His parents met on the front lines of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and his father became one of the movement’s most prominent leaders. While Foreman appreciates what was accomplished in that era, his new book focuses on what was left undone. “The nation’s prison population was growing darker,” he writes. “In 1954, the year of Brown v. Board of Education, about one-third of the nation’s prisoners were black.” Four decades later, that number approached 50%. Foreman digs down deep on the racial politics of crime and punishment in Washington,
D.C., and notes a stark reality: A large percentage of the lawmakers and law enforcement officials were themselves black. In this important book, Foreman asks, “How did a majority-black jurisdiction end up incarcerating so many of its own?” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 320 pp., $27) A Colony in a Nation Chris Hayes
In this smart history, the host of MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” provides a new perspective to the fight for social justice. His last book, “Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy,” was about the implosion of powerful American institutions; now Hayes takes on criminal justice in America, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate. He draws from his own experiences — he was caught with marijuana, for instance, with no consequences — and blends them with the political commentary and social analysis for which he is known. Hayes argues that America can be divided into two parts: the “Nation,” the affluent, white elite, and the “Colony,” largely urban, overwhelmingly
black, brown and poor, with an increasing number of poor white people mixed in, who lead lives of discrimination and subjugation. (W.W. Norton: 256 pp., $26.95) Option B Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
“Grief is a demanding companion,” Sheryl Sandberg reflects in “Option B,” written after the sudden death of her husband, the father of her two children. “Simmering, lingering, festering. Then like a wave, it would rise up and pulse through me, as if it were going to tear my heart right out of my body.” Sandberg, the COO of Facebook and author of the bestseller “Lean In,” has teamed with Wharton professor of psychology Adam Grant. Their book transcends the how-to shelf and grief shelves. “Option B” combines Sandberg’s experience and Grant’s research on surviving tragedy and resilience to create a book “about the capacity of the
human spirit to persevere.” The book discusses, in Sandberg’s brassy voice, how to regain confidence, speak about tragedy, comfort suffering friends and rediscover joy. (Knopf: 240 pp., $25.95) The Gatekeepers How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency Chris Whipple
The chief of staff is the power in front of the throne — controlling which people and what information reaches the president. The influence of the position began during the Nixon administration, when H.R. Haldeman established the protocols that prevail today. In “The Gatekeepers” Whipple, a Peabody- and Emmy Awardwinning documentary filmmaker, chronicles how the role has shifted in the last half-century and what it has meant for the successes and failures of each administration. Moving beyond the written record, Whipple interviewed living chiefs of staff, and their insights make “The Gatekeepers” an unusually candid and illuminating study of presidential power. (Crown: 384 pp., $28)