Monday, December 28, 2020

THE PANOPTICON REVIEW PRESENTS TWENTY OUTSTANDING BOOKS OF 2020

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 2020.

--Kofi Natambu, Editor

 

Brick City Vanguard:   

Amiri Baraka, Black Music, Black Modernity  

by James Smethurst  

University Of Massachusetts Press, 2020 


A People's History of Detroit

by Mark Jay and Phillip Conklin

Duke University Press,  2020

 

The Essential Clarence Major

The Essential Clarence Major: Prose & Poetry

by Clarence Major

The University of North Carolina Press,  2020

 

From Here To Equality:  

Reparations For Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century

by William A. Darity, Jr. & A. Kirsten Mullen

The University of North Carolina Press,  2020


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Odetta:  A Life in Music and Protest

by Ian Zack

Beacon Press, 2020

Surviving Autocracy

by Masha Gessen

Riverhead Books,  2020

Strongmen:  Mussolini To The Present

by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

W.W. Norton & Company,  2020

 

Race Man: Selected Works, 1960-2015

by Julian Bond

(Edited by Michael G. Long)

City Lights Books,  2020

 

Ornette Coleman:  The Territory and the Adventure

by Maria Golia

Reaktion Books,  2020 

 

Afropessimism

by Frank B. Wilderson III

Liveright, 2020

The Fascism This Time 


Bland Fanatics:  Liberals, Race, and Empire

by Pankaj Mishra

Farrar,  Straus and Giroux

 

 

This is What America Looks Like:  

My Journey From Refugee To

Congresswoman

by Ilhan Omar 

Dey Street Books,  2020


 

Caste:  The Origins Of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

Random House,  2020 

 

 

Begin Again:  

James Baldwin's America And Its Urgent Lessons For 

Our Own

by Eddie Glaude, Jr.

Crown Books,  2020

 

 Set The Night On Fire:  L.A. In The Sixties

by Mike Davis & Jon wiener

Verso,  2020

 

We Are Not Here To Be Bystanders 

by Linda Sarsour

37 INK  (an imprint of Simon and Schuster), 2020

 

 Separated:  Inside An American Tragedy

by Jacob Soboroff

Custom House,  2020

 

ReaganLand:  America's Right Turn:  1976-1980

by Rick Pearlstein

Simon and Schuster,  2020

Full Dissidence:  

Notes From An Uneven Playing Field

by Howard Bryant

Beacon Press,  2020

  

African American Poetry:  

250 Years of Struggle and Song

Edited by Kevin Young 

The Library of America,  2020



HONORABLE MENTIONS:

 

The Fascism This Time and the Global Future of 

Democracy

by Theo Horesh

Cosmopolis Press,  2020

 

Hiding in Plain Sight:  

The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion 

of America

by Sarah Kendzior

Flatiron Books,  2020

 

 The Purpose of Power:  

How We Come Together When We Fall Apart

by Alicia Garza

One World,  2020

 

Hatemonger:  

Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the 

White Nationalist Agenda

by Jean Guerrero

William Morrow,  2020

 

Black Power Afterlives:  

The Enduring Significance of the 

Black Panther Party

Edited by Diane C. Fujino and Matef Harmachis

Haymarket Books,  2020

 

American Oligarchs:  

The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of 

Money and Power

by Andrea Bernstein

W.W. Norton and Company,  2020

  

The Last Negroes At Harvard:  

The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who 

Changed Harvard Forever

by Kent Garrett and Jeanne Ellsworth

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,  2020


Donald Trump v. The United States:  

Inside the Struggle To Stop A President

by Michael S. Schmidt

Random House,  2020


Dorothy Day: 

Dissenting Voice of the 20th Century 

by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph

Simone and Schuster,  2020

 

Those Who Know Don't Say:  

The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom 

Movement, and the Carceral State

by  Garrett Felber

The University of North Carolina Press,  2020