Leisure Reading

Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal

King: a Life by Jonathan Eig

Liliana's Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza

G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American century by Beverly Gage

His Name Is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa

Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott

Wilmington's Lie by David Zucchino

The Undying by Anne Boyer

The End of the Myth by Greg Grandin

Amity and Prosperity by Eliza Griswold

One Nation under Stress by Dana Becker

Beer: A Global Journey Through the Past and Present by John W. Arthur

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant

A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Think Again by Adam Grant

Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent by John Reader

World of Sugar by Ulbe Bosma

Rice: Global Networks and New Histories by Francesca Bray (Editor); Peter A. Coclanis (Editor); Edda L. Fields-Black (Editor); Dagmar Schäfer (Editor)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Animal, Vegetable, Junk by Mark Bittman

Endangered Eating: America's Vanishing Foods by Sarah Lohman

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

Traveling Black by Mia Bay

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST The epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality to the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism.   Cotton is so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, yet understanding its history is key to understanding the origins of modern capitalism. Sven Beckert's rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world's most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world. Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia, and combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to crucially reshape the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia, and how industrial capitalism gave birth to an empire, and how this force transformed the world. The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today. The result is a book as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.

Ours Was the Shining Future by David Leonhardt

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie

Black Snow by James M. Scott

Ancestor Trouble by Maud Newton

Four Hundred Souls by Ibram X. Kendi (Editor); Keisha N. Blain (Editor)

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Man Who Hated Women by Amy Sohn

Washington by Ron Chernow

An Immense World by Ed Yong

The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot