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 2016.
--Kofi Natambu, Editor
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
by Jane Mayer
Doubleday, 2016
In Love And Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs
by Stephen M. Ward
The University Of North Carolina Press, 2016
NOBODY: Casualties of America's War On the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond
by Marc Lamont Hill
Atria Books, 2016
Murray Talks Music: Albert Murray on Jazz and Blues
by Albert Murray
University of Minnesota Press, 2016
America At War With Itself
by Henry A. Giroux
City Lights Books, 2016
Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader
by Greg Tate
Duke University Press, 2016
The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America
by Ethan Michaeli
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016
Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul
by James McBride
Spiegel and Grau, 2016
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
by Ibram X. Kendi
Nation Books, 2016
Music in the Air: The Selected Writings of Ralph J. Gleason
by Ralph J. Gleason; edited by Toby Gleason
Yale University Press, 2016
From #BlackLivesMatter To Black Liberation
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Haymarket Books, 2016
Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History
by Stuart Hall
Duke University Press, 2016
Freedom is A Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations Of A Movement
by Angela Y. Davis
Haymarket Books, 2016
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul
by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Crown Publishers, 2016
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
by Carol Anderson, Ph.D.
Bloomsbury, 2016
Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter
Edited by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton
Verso, 2016
Who Can Afford to Improvise?: James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners
by Ed Pavlic
Fordham University Press, 2016
A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism
by Paul Youngquist
University of Texas Press, 2016
Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond
by Langston Hughes; edited by Evelyn Louise Crawford and Mary Louise Patterson M.D.
University of California Press, 2016
by Paul Youngquist
University of Texas Press, 2016
by Langston Hughes; edited by Evelyn Louise Crawford and Mary Louise Patterson M.D.
University of California Press, 2016
Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers
by Stephen Shames and Bobby Seale
Abrams, 2016
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X
by Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith
Basic Books, 2016 
The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
Doubleday, 2016
HAMILTON: The Revolution
by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
Grand Central Publishing, 2016
Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
by Margot Lee Shetterly
William Morrow, 2016by Margot Lee Shetterly
Known and Strange Things: Essays
by Teju Cole
Random House, 2016
"They Can't Kill Us All": Ferguson, Baltimore, and A New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement
by Wesley Lowery
Little, Brown, and Company, 2016
by Steve Phillips
The New Press, 2016
by Jules B. Farber
Pelican Publishing Company, 2016
by Robyn C. Spencer
Duke University Press, 2016
by Jack Hamilton
Harvard University Press, 2016
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
by Heather Ann Thompson
Pantheon, 2016
by Christina Sharpe
Duke University Press, 2016
