The New York Public Library is urging people to read before they vote. To help with that task, librarians have compiled a 2020 Election Reading List, with nearly 200 nonfiction and fiction titles for adults, kids, and teens. The library’s expert librarians have broken down the key issues for both campaigns and compiled reading recommendations to help inform and prepare readers to vote.
Elevating issues such as health care, gender equality, climate change, and foreign policy, among others top of mind among voters, the 2020 Election Reading List is another way the NYPL says it is continuing its commitment to making its resources accessible to all. Compiling the reading list took three weeks, and it’s the first the NYPL has dedicated to the U.S. presidential election.
“With the election rapidly approaching, the library wanted to produce a list that would help patrons—and beyond—understand the important issues in our society and prepare them to cast an informed
vote,” Julie Golia, one of the list’s curators as well as curator of history, social sciences, and government information at the NYPL, tells Fortune. “For more than a century, New York City’s public libraries have supported and strengthened New Yorkers, our nation’s democratic foundation, and our world by welcoming all and employing values of trust, inclusion, respect, and free and open access to information, knowledge, and opportunity.”
The NYPL is also putting voting and getting informed front and center—literally outside the front doors of the most famous branch at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The library is installing props in front of its beloved lion statues, named Patience and Fortitude, depicting them as holding books encouraging New Yorkers to vote, along with banners reading “Read. Think. Vote” flanking the entrance.
Here is a selection of books to consider reading before Nov. 3, which you can find at your local independent bookseller via Bookshop.org or your own local library.
Climate Change
As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice From Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker
A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet A. Washington
The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption by Dahr Jamail
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein
Economy
Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor by Steven Greenhouse
Education
Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education by Noliwe Rooks
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris
Foreign Policy
The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
Gender Equality
Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism edited by Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman
Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister
In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers by Bernice Yeung
Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller
See Jane Win: The Inspiring Story of the Women Changing American Politics by Caitlin Moscatello
Health
Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, From Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah
The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy by Anna Clark
Immigration
We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future by Deepa Iyer
No Justice in the Shadows: How America Criminalizes Immigrants by Alina Das
Sand and Blood: America’s Stealth War on the Mexico Border by John Carlos Frey
LGBTQ+ Rights
Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices by Toby Beauchamp
Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States by Samantha Allen
Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlene A. Carruthers
Media
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other by Sherry Turkle
From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy by Claire Bond Pitter
Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation by Andrew Marantz
Politics
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley
Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein
The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court in the Age of Trump by David A. Kaplan
Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America by Stacey Abrams
What You Should Know About Politics…But Don’t: A Nonpartisan Guide to the Issues that Matter by Jessamyn Conrad
Race
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Latino America: How America’s Most Dynamic Population Is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation by Matt Barreto and Gary M. Segura
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Voting Rights
Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman
Blackballed: The Black Vote and U.S. Democracy by Darryl Pinckney
Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College by Jesse Wegman
One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy by Carol Anderson
Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy by David Daley
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones
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