THE PANOPTICON REVIEW PRESENTS TWENTY OUTSTANDING BOOKS OF 2023

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 2023.

--Kofi Natambu, Editor

The Man Who Cried I Am
by John A. Williams
Library Of America, 2023

The Wounded World:
W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War
by Chad L. Williams
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023

 

 

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism
by Rachel Maddow
Crown, 2023

Black Folk:
The Roots of the Black Working Class
by Blair LM Kelley
Liveright, 2023

Against Racial Capitalism:
Selected Writings
by Neville Alexander
Pluto Press, 2023

Easily Slip Into Another World: A Life in Music
by Henry Threadgill
Alfred A. Knopf, 2023



Tyranny Of The Minority
by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Crown, 2023



Spoken Word: A Cultural History
by Joshua Bennett
Alfred A. Knopf, 2023



The Lumumba Plot:
The Secret History of the CIA
and a Cold War Assassination
by Stuart A. Reid
Alfred A. Knopf, 2023

Until Our Lungs Give Out:
Conversations on Race, Justice, and the Future
by George Yancy
Rowman & Littlefield, 2023


Writers and Missionaries:
Essays on the Radical Imagination
by Adam Shatz
Verso, 2023

Serving Herself:
The Life and Times of Althea Gibson
by Ashley Brown
Oxford University Press, 2023

 
 

Democracy Awakening:
Notes on the State of America
by Heather Cox Richardson
Viking, 2023

 

The Black Reparations Project:
A Handbook For Racial Justice
Edited by William A. Darity, Jr.,
A. Kirsten Mullen, and Lucas Hubbard
University of California Press, 2023

 

Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton
by Calvin Hernton
Edited by David Grundy and Lauri Scheyer
Wesleyan University Press, 2023

 

 

Black Scare/Red Scare:  Theorizing Capitalist
Racism in the United States
by Charisse Burden-Stelly
University of Chicago Press, 2023

No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era
by Jacqueline Jones
Basic Books, 2023

In the Company of Radical Women Writers
by Rosemary Hennessy
University of Minnesota Press, 2023

 

Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary
Reflections on a Century of American Poetry
by Terrance Hayes
Penguin Books, 2023

The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church

by Rachel L. Swarns
Random House, 2023

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

An Army Afire:
How the U.S. Army Confronted Its
Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era
by Beth Bailey
University of North Carolina Press, 2023

 

Punished For Dreaming:
How School Reform Harms
Black Children and How We Heal
by Bettina L. Love
St. Martin's Press, 2023 

Black Ball:
Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA
by Theresa Runstedtler
Bold Type Books, 2023

Beyond the Shores:
A History of African Americans Abroad
by Tamara J. Walker
Crown, 2023

American Whitelash:
A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress
by Wesley Lowery
Mariner Books, 2023

 

 

The Sisterhood:
How a Network of Black Women Writers
Changed American Culture
by Courtney Thorsson
Columbia University Press, 2023

  

Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography
by Staci Robinson
Crown, 2023

 

Althea: The Life Of Tennis Champion
Althea Gibson
by Sally H. Jacobs
St. Martin's Press, 2023

 

 

Sing a Black Girl's Song:
The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange
Edited by Imani Perry
Legacy Lit, 2023

 

Revolting Capital:
Racism and Radicalism in Washington D.C., 1900-2000
by Gerald Horne
International Publishers, 2023

 

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War
by Jeff Sharlet
W. W. Norton & Company, 2023

 

MAGIC: The Life of Earvin "Magic" Johnson
by Roland Lazenby
Celladon Books, 2023

 

All the Sinners Bleed
by S.A. Cosby
Flatiron Books, 2023

 

The Upcycled Self:
A Memoir On the Art of Becoming Who We Are
by Tariq Trotter (aka Black Thought)
One World, 2023

Death's Futurity: The Visual Life of Black Power
by Sampada Aranke
‎Duke University Press, 2023

 

NOTE: THE PANOPTICON REVIEW HAS THUS FAR PRESENTED TWENTY OUTSTANDING BOOKS ANNUALLY FROM 2010-2023

PLEASE CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING INDIVIDUAL LINKS TO ACCESS THE LISTINGS OF EACH CALENDAR YEAR:

• 2022
• 2021 
• 2020 
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017
• 2016
• 2015
• 2014
• 2013
• 2012
• 2011
• 2010