THE PANOPTICON REVIEW PRESENTS TWENTY OUTSTANDING BOOKS OF 2014

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 2014.

--Kofi Natambu, Editor

The Half Has Never Been Told:  Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
by Edward E. Baptist
Basic Books
2014

The Counter-Revolution of 1776:  Slave Resistance And the Origins of the United States of America
by Gerald Horne
New York University Press
2014
 

The Other Blacklist:  The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s
by Mary Helen Washington
Columbia University Press
2014

Just Mercy:  A Story Of Justice and Redemption
by Bryan Stevenson
Spiegel & Grau
2014

The Divide:  American Injustice In the Age of the Wealth Gap
by Matt Taibbi
Spiegel & Grau
2014

This Changes Everything:  Capitalism vs. The Climate
by Naomi Klein
Simon and Schuster
2014

Malcolm X At Oxford Union:  Racial Politics In A Global Era
by Saladin Ambar
Oxford University Press
2014

Stokely:  A Life
by Peniel E. Joseph
Basic Civitas Books
2014

Black Prophetic Fire:  In Dialogue with and Edited by Christa Buschendorf
by Cornel West
Beacon Press
2014

Masters Of Mankind:  Essays and Reviews,  1969-2013
by Noam Chomsky
Haymarket Books
2014

This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed:  How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible
by Charles E. Cobb, Jr.
Basic Books
2014
 

A Fighting Chance
by Elizabeth Warren
Metropolitan Books  (Henry Holt and Company)
2014
 

SOS--Calling All Black People:  A Black Arts Movement Reader
Edited by John H. Bracey, Jr., Sonia Sanchez, and James Smethurst
University of Massachusetts Press
2014
 

Louis Armstrong:  Master of Modernism
by Thomas Brothers
W.W, Norton and Company
2014

Herbie Hancock:  Possibilities
by Herbie Hancock  (with Lisa Dickey)
Viking 2014

 

The Universal Tone:  Bringing My Story To Light
by Carlos Santana   (with Ashley Kahn and Hal Miller) 
Little, Brown, and Company 2014
 

Becoming Richard Pryor
by Scott Saul
Harper
2014
 

Brando’s Smile:  His Life, Thought, and Work
by Susan L. Mizruchi
W.W. Norton and Company
2014

Gil Scott-Heron:  Pieces Of A Man
by Marcus Baram
St. Martin’s Press
2014
 
Citizen:  An American Lyric
by Claudia Rankine
Greywolf Press
2014


HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Death Of A King:  The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King's Final Year

by Tavis Smiley

Little, Brown and Company

2014 
 
Brothers Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You?:  A Memoir
by George Clinton
Atria Books
2014 
 
The Invisible Bridge:  The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
by Rick Pearlstein
Simon and Schuster
2014

Redemption Songs:  Suing For Freedom Before Dred Scott
by Lea Vandevelde
Oxford University Press
2014

The Night Malcolm X Spoke at Oxford Union:  A Transatlantic Story of Antiracist Protest
by Stephen Tuck
University of California Press
2014

Losing Our Way:  An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America
by Bob Herbert
Doubleday
2014

New Groundbreaking Book On Malcolm X At Oxford Union by Historian and Political Scientist Saladin Ambar

Malcolm X: Oxford Union Debate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3H2eul-50k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo91MeMq8JE&list=PLF76752C8FBC7C6F7

December 3rd, 1964:   Malcolm X speaks in Oxford Union debate titled " Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is No Vice,  Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice is No Virtue.":

   

Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era by Saladin Ambar

Hardcover
$26.96

Series: Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

ISBN-10: 0199975477
ISBN-13: 978-0199975471

In 1964 Malcolm X was invited to debate at the Oxford Union Society at Oxford University. The topic of debate that evening was the infamous phrase from Barry Goldwater's 1964 Republican Convention speech:"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." At a time when Malcolm was traveling widely and advocating on behalf of blacks in America and other nations, his thirty minute speech at the Oxford Union stands out as one of the great addresses of the civil rights era.

Delivered just months before his assassination, the speech followed a period in which Malcolm had traveled throughout Africa and much of the Muslim world. The journey broadened his political thought to encompass decolonization, the revolutions underway in the developing world, and the relationship between American blacks and non-white populations across the globe-including England.

Facing off against debaters in one of world's most elite institutions, he delivered a revolutionary message that tackled a staggering array of issues: the nature of national identity; US foreign policy in the developing world; racial politics at home; the experiences of black immigrants in England; and the nature of power in the contemporary world. It represents a moment when his thought had advanced to its furthest point, shedding the parochial concerns of previous years for an increasingly global and humanist approach to ushering in social change.

Set to publish near the fiftieth anniversary of his death, Malcolm X at Oxford Union will reshape our understanding not only of the man himself, but world politics both then and now.

http://global.oup.com/academic/product/malcolm-x-at-oxford-union 9780199975471;jsessionid=D165D5C39D28F9CE4E66E3393B477A13?cc=us&lang=en&

Malcolm X at Oxford Union

Racial Politics in a Global Era

Saladin Ambar

Transgressing Boundaries: Studies in Black Politics and Black Communities

The first book to place the Oxford Address in the canon of great civil rights speeches of the 20th Century

Makes the case that Malcolm X was seeking to organize a black human rights movement not only in America, the Middle East, or Africa, but in cities such as Paris, London, and Amsterdam as well

Shows Malcolm X moving beyond Black Nationalism, while at the same time rejecting the notion of 'color-blindness'

Makes the case that the racial, religious, and political difficulties associated with immigration in both Europe and the United States today owe their origins to the time of Malcolm X's address; and some of the more difficult solutions to those challenges can be found in that speech at Oxford

SALADIN AMBAR

Biography

Saladin Ambar writes and teaches about American politics and society at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. He is the author of Malcolm X at Oxford Union: Racial Politics in a Global Era (Oxford University Press) and How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency (University of Pennsylvania Press). His first work of historical fiction ("The Frenchman and the Stranger") has just appeared in Seattle's Monarch Review. He is currently researching for a book on the political life and thought of former New York Governor, Mario Cuomo. All other times he is the father of 6 year-old triplets, who are fairly disinterested in all of the above.

You can follow his blog on the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/saladin-ambar/