20 Best Books of 2019

JANUARY 1, 2020

Booked Up: the 20 Best Books of 2019

by JEFFREY ST. CLAIRFacebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Best Nonfiction

Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration
Rachel Elise Barkow
(Belknap Press)

Dirty Jokes and Bawdy Songs: the Uncensored Life of Gershon Legman
Susan Davis
(University of Illinois)

Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance
Nick Estes
(Verso)

Music: a Subversive History
Ted Gioia
(Basic Books)

The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America
Greg Grandin
(Metropolitan)

Midnight in Chernobyl: the Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster
Adam Higginbotham
(Simon and Schuster)

Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music
Gerald Horne
(Monthly Review Press)

And Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee YearMichael Hudson
(Islet)

This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West
Christopher Ketcham
(Viking)

Red Round Globe Hot Burning: a Tale at the Crossroads of Commons and Closure, of Love and Terror, of Race and Class, and of Kate and Ned Despard
Peter Linebaugh
(University of California)

The Rise of Wolf 8: Witnessing the Triumph of Yellowstone’s Underdog
Rick McIntyre
(Greystone)

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
(University of North Carolina)

Novels

Black Leopard, Red Wolf
Marlon James
(Riverhead)

American Spy
Lauren Wilkinson
(Random House)

Deep River
Karl Marlantes
(Atlantic Monthly)

Disappearing Earth
Julia Phillips
(Knopf)

Heaven, My Home
Attica Locke
(Profile Books)

Best Poetry

Oceanic
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
(Copper Canyon)

A Sand Book
Arianna Reines
(Tin House)

Ayaiti
Daniel Wolff
(Finishing Line Press)

Join the debate on Facebook 

More articles by:JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent books are Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes From a Failed Revolution and The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink (with Joshua Frank) He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter  @JSCCounterPunch . 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/01/booked-up-the-20-best-books-of-2019/