Please Note: The following list of books is not organized according to any personal hierarchy of the relative value of each individual book. Rather it is a list that seriously considers ALL of the books listed here to be of equal intellectual and cultural value and interest, albeit for different reasons. The bottomline on this list is that each one of these books is extraordinary and invaluable in their own right and represents some of the very best writing published in the United States in 2011.
--Kofi Natambu, Editor
My Song: A Memoir
by Harry Belafonte (with Michael Shnayerson)
Alfred Knopf, 2011
by Harry Belafonte (with Michael Shnayerson)
Alfred Knopf, 2011
Nica's Dream: The Life and Legend of the Jazz Baroness
by David Kastin
W.W. Norton, 2011
W.W. Norton, 2011
Woody Guthrie: American Radical
by Will Kaufman
University Of Illinois Press. 2011
by Will Kaufman
University Of Illinois Press. 2011
Bob Dylan: Like A Complete Unknown
by David Yaffe
Yale University Press. 2011
by David Yaffe
Yale University Press. 2011
The World As It Is: Dispatches On the Myth of Human Progress
by Chris Hedges
Nation Books, 2011
by Chris Hedges
Nation Books, 2011
Roi Ottley's World War II: The Lost Diary of An African American JournalistEdited by Mark A. Huddle
University Press of Kansas, 2011
Conversations With Scorsese
by Richard Schickel
Alfred Knopf, 2011
by Richard Schickel
Alfred Knopf, 2011
Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations With Radical Thinkers In A Time Of Tumult
Interviews by Sasha Lilley PM Press, 2011
Interviews by Sasha Lilley PM Press, 2011
The Black History of the White House
by Clarence Lusane
City Lights Books, 2011
by Clarence Lusane
City Lights Books, 2011
by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts
Little Brown and Company, 2011
by Brian Kellow
Viking, 2011
Malcolm X: A Life Of Reinvention
by Manning Marable
Viking, 2011
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and The Education of A President
by Manning Marable
Viking, 2011
by Ron Suskind
HarperCollins, 2011
The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World
by John Carlos (with Dave Zirin)
Haymarket Books, 2011
HarperCollins, 2011
The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World
by John Carlos (with Dave Zirin)
Haymarket Books, 2011
Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of An American Director by Patrick McGilligan
It Books, 2011
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
by Melissa Harris-Perry
Yale University Press, 2011
Why Marx Was Right
by Terry Eagleton
Yale University Press, 2011
by Melissa Harris-Perry
Yale University Press, 2011
by Terry Eagleton
Yale University Press, 2011
The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
by Randall Kennedy
Pantheon, 2011
by Randall Kennedy
Pantheon, 2011
Fatal Invention:
How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century
by Dorothy Roberts
The New Press, 2011
How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century
by Dorothy Roberts
The New Press, 2011
News For All The People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Mediaby Juan Gonzalez and Joseph TorresVerso, 2011
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Age of Greed: The Triumph Of Finance And The Decline Of America, 1970 To The Present
by Jeff Madrick
Alfred Knopf, 2011
EyeMinded: Living And Writing Contemporary Art
by Kellie Jones
Duke University Press, 2011
On History
Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone In Conversation
Haymarket Books, 2011
Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life
by Michael Moore
Grand Central, 2011
33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs From Billie Holiday To Green Day
by Dorian Lynskey
Ecco, 2011
The Speech: A Historic Filibuster On Corporate Greed and the Decline of Our Middle Class
by Senator Bernie Sanders
Nation Books, 2011
