![]() Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies (2010) –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow “This system is out of sight, out of mind.” Her book, which exposes this subtler but still horrible new mode of social control, is an essential, groundbreaking achievement which does more than call out the hypocrisy of our infrastructure, but provide it with obvious steps to change. “Unlike in Jim Crow days, there were no ‘Whites Only’ signs.” Alexander explains. Former convicts, she learns through working with the ACLU, will face discrimination (discrimination that is supported and justified by society) which includes restrictions from voting rights, juries, food stamps, public housing, student loans-and job opportunities. “We have not ended racial caste in America,” she declares, “we have merely redesigned it.” Alexander’s meticulous research concerns the mass incarceration of black men principally through the War on Drugs, Alexander explains how the United States government itself (the justice system) carries out a significant racist pattern of injustice-which not only literally subordinates black men by jailing them, but also then removes them of their rights and turns them into second class citizens after the fact. Though it’s hard to look back on this particular zeitgeist now (when, and I still can’t believe I’m writing this, Donald Trump is president of the United States) without decrying the ignorance and naiveté of this mindset, Alexander’s book called out this the insistence on a phenomenon of “colorblindness” in 2012, as a veneer, as a sham, or as, simply, another form of ignorance. It was published during the Obama Administration, an interval which many (white people) thought signaled a new dawn of race relations in America-of a kind of fantastic post-racialism. ![]() I read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow when it first came out, and I remember its colossal impact so clearly-not just on the academic world (it is, technically, an academic book, and Alexander is an academic) but everywhere. *** The Top Twenty Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (2010) As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten-so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. The following books were finally chosen after much debate (and multiple meetings) by the Literary Hub staff. It only made sense, with such a large field. But our sixth list was a little harder-we were looking at what we (perhaps foolishly) deemed “general” nonfiction: all the nonfiction excepting memoirs and essays (these being covered in their own lists) published in English between 20. We began with the best debut novels, the best short story collections, the best poetry collections, the best memoirs of the decade, and the best essay collections of the decade. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. ![]() So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website-though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task-in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We’ll take our silver linings where we can. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches.
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