As 2023 comes to a close, we’re highlighting the books we published this year that received starred reviews and other major endorsements—for your gift-giving needs or just for planning your own 2024 reading list!
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By Vincent Schiraldi, with a foreword by Bruce Western
Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Mass Supervision offers a comprehensive critique of probation and parole—and a provocative and compelling argument for abolishing both. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly says “this astute and accessible study illuminates a vital yet understudied topic.”
By Murong Xuecun
From one of China’s most celebrated—and silenced—literary authors, Deadly Quiet City collects eight riveting portraits of Wuhan residents at the dawn of the pandemic. A Publishers Weekly starred review calls Deadly Quiet City “a masterful exposé.” A starred review in Kirkus Reviews calls the book “a shocking, heart-rending report from the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic in China.” Kirkus also named it one of the Best Current Affairs Books of 2023.
By Norman Solomon
From the acclaimed veteran political analyst Norman Solomon, War Made Invisible is a searing exposé of how the American military, with the help of the media, conceals its perpetual war. Solomon traces the history of how this came to pass and illuminates its consequences, from military and civilian casualties to drained resources at home. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews calls War Made Invisible “a powerful, necessary indictment of efforts to disguise the human toll of American foreign policy.”
By Benjamin Weber
A groundbreaking look at how America exported mass incarceration around the globe, which spans the wars to subjugate Native Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, the conquest of the western territories, and the creation of an American empire in Panama, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Publishers Weekly noted in their starred review of American Purgatory that, “Historian Weber connects the histories of mass incarceration and American imperialism in his wide-ranging and innovative debut. . . . It’s an eye-opening and fresh perspective on a pair of hot-button issues.”
By Robert Jay Lifton
As Masha Gessen notes in an interview with the author in the New Yorker, “Lifton’s impact on the study and treatment of trauma is unparalleled.” Surviving Our Catastrophes is a powerful rumination on how we can draw on historical examples of “survivor power” to understand and cope with the lasting effects and legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a starred review, Booklist says “Readers will cry and cheer as they immerse themselves in Lifton’s wise, chilling, enlightening, and compassionate book.”
By Susan Linn
In Who’s Raising the Kids?, psychologist and renowned expert on creative play Susan Linn “provides evidence that apps like Instagram and TikTok are supplanting the crucial process of childhood play with consumption, and argues in favor of policy change to reduce their impact” (New York Times Book Review). In starred reviews of the hardcover, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal all declared Who’s Raising the Kids? “a must-read.”
By Thomas L. Dybdahl, with a foreword by Sister Helen Prejean
The Brady rule was meant to transform the U.S. justice system. In soaring language, the Supreme Court decreed in 1963 that prosecutors must share favorable evidence with the defense—part of a suite of decisions of that reform-minded era designed to promote fairness for those accused of crimes. But reality intervened. When Innocence Is Not Enough is a gripping work of narrative nonfiction, which a Library Journal starred review calls “a well-researched, impactful account of the inequities in the legal justice system.” The review goes on to say the book “should be required reading for anyone working in the criminal justice system.”
By César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Migrating to Prison takes a hard look at the immigration prison system’s origins in the mid-1980s, examines how they currently operate, asks why they exist, and calls for the abolition of immigration prisons. A starred review from Library Journal called the hardcover “a thought-provoking perspective on immigration and U.S. immigration policy.” In January, we will publish García Hernández’s new book, Welcome the Wretched, which argues for separating immigration enforcement from the criminal legal system.
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