Book Reviews

As you can probably tell, this blog is largely dedicated to book reviews! Here you can find a list of all of them, grouped by topic. Of course, most of these books are about more than one thing, but for the sake of simplicity I put them in whichever category I think best encompasses the book as a whole. Each category is organized in reverse chronological order.

Abortion & Reproductive Justice

• Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion by Gabrielle Blair
• Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights by Karen Blumenthal
• The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion by Diane Greene Foster
• Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America by Lauren Rankin
• Reproductive Justice: An Introduction by Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger
• Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
• The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler
• Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights by Katha Pollitt

Antiracism

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell
• How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• How to Argue With a Racist: What Our Genes Do (And Don’t) Say About Human Difference by Adam Rutherford
• Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

Astronomy

• The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers by Emily Levesque
• Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan
• Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Atheism

• Hi, I’m an Atheist!: What That Means and How to Talk About It with Others by David G. McAfee
• The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
• Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide by Richard Dawkins
• Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God by Armin Navabi
• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett
• Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
• God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Christian Apologetics

• The Causes and Cure of Unbelief by N. J. Laforêt
• The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Tim Keller
• The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief by James Spiegel
• The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God by Lee Strobel
• The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis Collins

Christian History

• The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr
• The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
• How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by Bart Ehrman
• Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart Ehrman
• Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman

Christian Nationalism

• Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next by Bradley Onishi
• American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom by Andrew Seidel
• Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
• Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War by James Risen and Judy Thomas
• The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart
• The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American by Andrew Seidel

Evolution

• The A B C of Evolution by Joseph McCabe
• The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
• Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul by Kenneth Miller
• Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Feminism

• Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis
• Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo
• White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad
• Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Human Evolution

• Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins by Lee Berger and John Hawks
• Human Evolution: A Brief Insight by Bernard Wood and A Pocket History of Human Evolution: How We Became Sapiens by Silvana Condemi and François Savatier
• The Piltdown Men by Ronald Millar
• A Most Interesting Problem: What Darwin’s Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong About Human Evolution by Jeremy DeSilva
• Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
• The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack: And Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution by Ian Tattersall
• Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins by Ian Tattersall
• The Jesuit and the Skull: Tielhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man by Amir D. Aczel
• Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human History by Lee Berger and John Hawks
• Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald Johanson

Human History

• Origins: How Earth’s History Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Humanism

• For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World by Sasha Sagan

Language and Writing

• On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser

LGBTQ+

• Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America by Gregory D. Smithers 
• The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice is Justice for All by Shon Faye
• Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality by Julia Shaw

Palestine

• Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Mike Merryman-Lotze
• Palestine: A Socialist Introduction by Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean

Physics

• A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen Hawking
• Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

Politics

• The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Jennifer Mueller

Religious Texts

• The Bible
• Luther’s Small Catechism

Science History

• A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and “Low Mechanicks”  by Clifford Conner
• Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity, and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World by David Hutchings and James Ungureanu
• Eureka! The Birth of Science by Andrew Gregory
• Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson
• Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh
• God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam
• Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science—from the Babylonians to the Maya by Dick Teresi

Social Issues

• White Magic by Elissa Washuta
• Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College by Jesse Wegman
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
• The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, & Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein