The Book Every American Citizen Should Read
Summer is here!
That means longer days, beach afternoons, and more free time than you lot know what to do with (hopefully). Now is the perfect fourth dimension to read a great book — so that you lot can print your friends with the depth of your noesis over a glass of vino.
With a mix of non-fiction and literature, from war zones to the dinner table, these thought-provoking books will prompt you lot to re-evaluate your choices, the earth around you, and your ability to effect change. Here are 12 must-reads for every Global Citizen.
The Namesake past Jhumpa Lahiri
This cute story follows a family from Calcutta to Cambridge, detailing the lives of an immigrant family and their first-generation son equally he rejects his name and heritage in favor of absorption.
This novel forces yous to recall about why people get out their homes and how hard it is to begin a new life in a foreign place. The Namesake will help you connect with the experiences of immigrants and refugees.
Under the Banner of Sky: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer
This true story starts at the terminate — a double homicide committed past Mormon Fundamentalists. Krakauer then circles back, chronicling the history of Mormonism and the events leading upward to the murders, drawing parallels between the development of modernistic Mormon Fundamentalism and the killers' journey of radicalization. Krakauer adeptly draws a stardom between religion and fanaticism, showing that ane tin be drawn into extremist beliefs and actions through seemingly logical steps.
At a time when many are quick to associate religious fervor with terrorism, particularly devotion to Islam, Under the Banner of Sky will have you questioning what it ways to blindly believe, what people volition practice for that conventionalities, and what nosotros call "terrorism."
Eating Animals past Jonathan Safran Foer
Total disclosure: I read this book because I liked the author'due south other works, not considering I was particularly interested in farming practices or had any qualms nigh eating meat. Simply a month afterward I'd finished Eating Animals I found myself repulsed by my dinner and my knowledge — and that'southward when I stopped eating meat. Foer's book is part memoir, part exposé, but information technology's all thought-provoking. You'll salivate over the description of his grandmother's cooking and blench throughout the chapter entitled "Pieces of Shit."
Fifty-fifty if this book doesn't plough you into a vegetarian, it will make you think almost the affect we have on the environs, other lives, and the life your dinner lived before it concluded upwardly on your plate.
The Omnivore'southward Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
If Eating Animals is an investigation of food and how nosotros are commonly producing it today, The Omnivore's Dilemma is a expect at food and how information technology has been grown historically and should be grown.
The goal of this book is non to convince you to go a vegetarian — it's to become you to understand how we interact with the world when nosotros eat and to exist more than conscientious consumers of food. "Consume food. Non too much. Mostly plants."
The Drinking glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
In this autobiography, Jeannette Walls shares a coming-of-age story almost too wild to be fiction, let alone fact. With unreliable parents and never enough coin, Walls' babyhood is a nomadic one every bit her family unit bounces from one tough fourth dimension to some other.
Using education equally a way out of poverty, Walls ultimately builds her own success against all odds. This a story of how things fall apart, but too of survival and unconditional love.
The Other Wes Moore: I Proper noun, Two Fates by Wes Moore
Author Wes Moore was born in Baltimore, a few blocks and less than a year apart from another boy named Wes Moore. Both had similarly hard childhoods and landed themselves in trouble, merely i earned a life judgement for murder, the other a Rhodes Scholarship. The Other Wes Moore is the author'southward attempt to identify which factors determine ane's fate.
Focusing on race, bigotry, poverty, and education, this memoir volition make you recollect about the influences that have shaped our lives, without u.s.a. even knowing.
Americanah past Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Americanah tells the story of a Nigerian girl who moves to the United states of america where she is forced to confront her own race for the first time. Adichie touches on race, culture, corruption, immigration, and repatriation. Her clarification of the girl's development and experiences are so clear, you lot experience you know her.
This book lets y'all walk through someone else's life with them, and paints a vivid picture show of an Africa that challenges the flat "Africa in poverty" epitome often played upwardly in the media.
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Redeployment is a collection of curt stories that are vignettes of soldiers' lives during and after the war in Republic of iraq. These curt works of fiction are rooted in the real-life experiences of Klay and his friends, all veterans. Ranging from the mundane to grotesque, the tragic to comical, Klay's stories portray war with a rare level of complication — information technology's certainly not a Hemingway novel.
This volume volition bring you a step closer to understanding what really goes on in a war and the experiences of those who serve. Very likely, you lot'll learn that war is not quite what yous thought it was.
Nineteen Fourscore-4 past George Orwell
If yous weren't required to read this in loftier school, I'grand requiring you lot to read information technology now. The globe of Nineteen Eighty-Four is 1 in which thoughts can be policed, individualism is punished, and Large Brother is always watching. This dystopian classic is simply as relevant today as it was in 1949 when it was first published — if non more then.
This novel will force you lot to reflect on what it ways to have liberty of idea and speech, and consider what privacy means in this digital age. You'll accept a moment to appreciate the rights that you lot have, and understand the struggle of those in our modern society who are still existence deprived of their rights.
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
If you thought Heart of Darkness was purely a piece of work of fiction, think again. King Leopold'south Ghost is the factual version of Center of Darkness and sadly it's not all that different. The book sheds light on the atrocities committed by Belgian colonists in the Congo, simply actually it tells the story of those who recognized the ongoing injustices, challenged Leopold, and took risks to share the truth with the world.
It volition inspire you to be part of movements and accept activity in whatever way y'all are able against injustices you encounter. King Leopold's Ghost looks dorsum at change-makers of the past, Global Citizens of the 1800s.
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Oft taking a lite-hearted tone, White Teeth, addresses serious themes: war, race, religion, poverty. Cultures and ideas disharmonism as Smith weaves several lives together in a small borough outside of London, a microcosm of the world today.
The novel touches on unequal opportunities afforded to boys and girls and the effect of racial and religious discrimination. White Teeth offers dissimilar perspectives of the modernistic, globalized world in which we live.
Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff by Fred Pearce
This volume is the author'due south investigation into where his stuff came from and where information technology goes. Pearce travels to South Africa to come across the people who mined the aureate for his wedding ring and to People's republic of bangladesh to meet the people who made his socks. Visiting more 20 countries to detect the origin of his possessions, Pearce discovers that "fair-trade" and recycling don't ever hateful what you lot think they practise.
Touching on the environmental bug, labor violations, and human being rights complications behind the production of everyday objects, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner will make you take a second look at the things you own.
Source: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/summer-reads-books-global-citizen/
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