10 must-read race books like Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System by Alec Karakatsanis

Cover of Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System by Alec Karakatsanis

Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

By: Alec Karakatsanis

4.39

Format: 234 pages, Hardcover

From an award-winning civil rights lawyer, a profound challenge to our society’s normalization of t…

If you liked the race plot in Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System by Alec Karakatsanis , here is a list of 10 books like this:

Cover of The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler by Thomas Hager

1. The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler

By: Thomas Hager

4.34

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the discovery that changed billions … read more

Similar categories in Thomas Hager's The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • nonfiction
  • history
  • audiobook
"I would call that field of play--the place in which humans test their natural limits and often break them--science."

-Thomas Hager, The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler

Cover of Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by None, John F. Pfaff

2. Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform

By: None , John F. Pfaff

4.07

Format: 311 pages, Hardcover

"A succinct, powerful explanation of why much of what we think about the incarceration boom is prob… read more

Similar categories in None's Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • law
  • crime
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • social issues
  • sociology
  • audiobook
Cover of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

3. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

By: Richard Rothstein

2.89

Format: None pages, Hardcover

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading auth… read more

Similar categories in Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • law
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
Cover of Life and Death in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries by Kim MacQuarrie

4. Life and Death in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries

By: Kim MacQuarrie

3.46

Format: None pages, Hardcover

Unique portraits of legendary characters along South America's mountain spine, from Charles Darwin … read more

Similar categories in Kim MacQuarrie's Life and Death in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • nonfiction
  • history

5. Are Prisons Obsolete?

By: Angela Y. Davis

4.15

Format: None pages,

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case fo… read more

Similar categories in Angela Y. Davis's Are Prisons Obsolete? book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

6. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

By: Michelle Alexander

3.77

Format: None pages, Hardcover

"As the United States celebrates the nation's 'triumph over race' with the election of Barack Obama… read more

Similar categories in Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

7. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale

By: Philip K. Dick

3.65

Format: 192 pages, ebook

He awoke--and wanted Mars. The valleys, he thought. What would it be like to trudge among them? Gre… read more

Similar categories in Philip K. Dick's We Can Remember It for You Wholesale book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

8. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

By: Carol Anderson

3.67

Format: 208 pages,

From the Civil War to our combustible present, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson reframes our cont… read more

Similar categories in Carol Anderson's White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

Cover of Felon: Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts

9. Felon: Poems

By: Reginald Dwayne Betts

4.34

Format: 95 pages, Hardcover

Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration in fierce, dazzling poems—canvassing a wide r… read more

Similar categories in Reginald Dwayne Betts's Felon: Poems book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • social issues
  • audiobook
"A perfect day that's just like doom. Own so fucking world."

-Reginald Dwayne Betts, Felon: Poems

"& Nicky says it's a wonder how something that can have you hold another so gently could be the ruin of all you might touch."

-Reginald Dwayne Betts, Felon: Poems

Cover of The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins

10. The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

By: Vincent Bevins

4.61

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- ba… read more

Similar categories in Vincent Bevins's The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • politics
  • history
  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
"locals came to him, time and time again, and asked, with genuine mystification: 'We just don't understand America. You were once a colony. You know what colonialism is. You fought and bled and died f…"

-Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

Cover of Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

11. Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

By: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

4.00

Format: 157 pages, Paperback

A powerful indictment of the ways elites have co-opted radical critiques of racial capitalism to se… read more

Similar categories in Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • sociology
  • audiobook
"A philosopher Briana Toole clarifies, by itself, one's social location only puts a person in a position to know; 'epistemic privilege' or advantage, on the other hand, is achieved only through delibe…"

-Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

"Elites do often make the environment worse and block solutions, but to blame the problem of elite capture entirely on their moral successes and failures is to confuse effect for cause. The true probl…"

-Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

"To opt for deference, rather than interdependence, may soothe short-term psychological wounds. But it does so at a steep cost: it may undermine the goals that motivated the project--and it entrenches…"

-Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

"As Carter G. Woodson realized, many of our decisions are shaped by decisions that someone with more power made before us. The whole social structure affects how institutional systems, like schools, f…"

-Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

Cover of On Drinking by Charles Bukowski

12. On Drinking

By: Charles Bukowski

3.88

Format: 272 pages, ebook

CHARLES BUKOWSKI es uno de los escritores más conocidos y celebrados de las letras estadounidenses … read more

Similar categories in Charles Bukowski's On Drinking book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • audiobook
Cover of We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba

13. We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

By: Mariame Kaba

4.67

Format: 240 pages, Paperback

"Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring… read more

Similar categories in Mariame Kaba's We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • audiobook
"That does not mean, however, there should be no consequences. It means real consequences. Consequences that really matter. It means transforming the conditions that exist in the first place for this …"

-Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

Cover of The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale

14. The End of Policing

By: Alex S. Vitale

4.19

Format: 273 pages, Kindle Edition

The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself Recent years have seen an explosion of pr… read more

Similar categories in Alex S. Vitale's The End of Policing book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • social issues
  • sociology
  • audiobook
"Our standard of living is not declining because of migrants but because of unregulated neoliberal capitalism, which has allowed corporations and the rich to avoid paying taxes or decent wages. It is …"

-Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing

"There is no question that American police use their weapons more than police in any other developed democracy. Unfortunately, we don’t have fully accurate information about the number or nature of ho…"

-Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing

"As Jeffrey Reiman points out in the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, the criminal justice system excuses and ignores crimes of the rich that produce profound social harms while intensely crim…"

-Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing

"Heavy-handed immigration policing will not build a worker’s movement, it will shatter it. One of the mistakes that Trump supporters make is imagining that their own economic conditions will be improv…"

-Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing

Cover of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Maya Schenwar

15. Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

By: Maya Schenwar

4.44

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A crucial indictment of widely embraced “alternatives to incarceration” that exposes how many of th… read more

Similar categories in Maya Schenwar's Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • law
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • crime
  • sociology
"The same factors that propelled mass incarceration - racism, "law and order" politics, the war on drugs, the destruction of the social safety net - also propelled mass supervision."

-Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

"Monitors and house arrest aren't rehabilitative or transformative - they don't support people in making changes that would be helpful to their lives, gaining needed resources, addressing harm or viol…"

-Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

"Unlike prisons, psychiatric institutions can be entered voluntarily, and people often turn to them in pursuit of treatment. But when used involuntarily as prison replacements, hospitals mimic persons…"

-Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

"Many types of treatment claim to be about fixing the so-called problems of madness. The real problem is that certain ways of experiencing the world are seen as categorical threats— to normativity, to…"

-Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

Cover of Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber

16. Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

By: David Graeber

3.33

Format: 208 pages, Hardcover

The final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everyt… read more

Similar categories in David Graeber's Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • sociology
  • audiobook
"God and Man were inseparable companions. One day God said to Man: why don’t you go walk around on earth for a while so we can find some new topics for conversation? —beginning of a Malagasy folktale"

-David Graeber, Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

"The toothless or peg-legged buccaneer hoisting a flag of defiance against the world, drinking and feasting to a stupor on stolen loot, fleeing at the first sign of serious opposition, leaving only ta…"

-David Graeber, Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

"We would seem to be in the presence of a genuine historical anomaly: a political entity that presented itself to the outside world as a kingdom, organized around the charismatic figure of a brilliant…"

-David Graeber, Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

Cover of Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm by Robin DiAngelo

17. Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm

By: Robin DiAngelo

3.96

Format: 220 pages, Kindle Edition

In Nice Racism, her follow-up work to White Fragility, the author draws on her background as a soci… read more

Similar categories in Robin DiAngelo's Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • sociology
  • audiobook
"…every moment that I spend in white space reinforces in me a particular (and limited) worldview and experience. But the deeper message being reinforced is that we lose nothing of value by living in s…"

-Robin DiAngelo, Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm

Cover of Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System by Alec Karakatsanis

18. Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

By: Alec Karakatsanis

4.39

Format: 234 pages, Hardcover

From an award-winning civil rights lawyer, a profound challenge to our society’s normalization of t… read more

Similar categories in Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • law
  • crime
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • social issues
  • sociology
  • audiobook
Cover of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

19. Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

By: Derecka Purnell

4.44

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From commu… read more

Similar categories in Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • social issues
  • sociology
"The systems responsible for our oppression cannot be the same systems responsible for our liberation."

-Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

"Campus police and street police are different strands of the same supremacy that plague our resistance."

-Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

Cover of The Cult of the Constitution by Mary Anne Franks

20. The Cult of the Constitution

By: Mary Anne Franks

4.04

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

In this controversial and provocative book, Mary Anne Franks examines the thin line between constit… read more

Similar categories in Mary Anne Franks's The Cult of the Constitution book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • history
  • politics
  • law
  • nonfiction
  • audiobook
Cover of Guilty People by Abbe Smith

21. Guilty People

By: Abbe Smith

4.62

Format: 216 pages, Hardcover

Criminal defense attorneys protect the innocent and guilty alike, but, the majority of criminal def… read more

Similar categories in Abbe Smith's Guilty People book and Alec Karakatsanis's Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System

  • law

12 best-selling audiobook books like Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System by Alec Karakatsanis

Transform Your Habits

The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler

Thomas Hager

4.34

Transform Your Habits

Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform

None , John F. Pfaff

4.07

Transform Your Habits

Felon: Poems

Reginald Dwayne Betts

4.34

Transform Your Habits

The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

Vincent Bevins

4.61

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9 must-read fiction books like On Drinking by Charles Bukowski

Transform Your Habits

Tough Guys Don't Dance

Norman Mailer

3.51

Transform Your Habits

That Yellow Bastard (Sin City #4)

Frank Miller

3.93

Transform Your Habits

Nagi sad

Wiesław Myśliwski

4.02

Transform Your Habits

This Census-Taker

China Miéville

4.15

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