Life-Changing Books To Educate Yourself On Important Social Issues

We've put together the ultimate list of books to read if you want to read up on and educate yourself on the most talked about topics. Understand social issues more than before and gain the perspective of others by reading Jews Don't Count by David Baddiel, The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye and Chums: How A Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over The UK by Simon Kuper. These are our top books on social issues that you need to add to your reading list!

Jews Don’t Count - David Baddiel

The book Jews Don't Count is for those who believe they are on the right side of history. fighting for equality against racism, transphobia, homophobia, and all forms of discrimination. 

David Baddiel, a writer and comic, claims that one form of racism has been ignored in this debate. Baddiel contends that people who consider themselves to be on the right side of history have frequently overlooked the history of anti-Semitism in his distinctive blend of precise logic, polemic, personal experience, and humour.

In a period of greatly increased understanding of minorities, he explains why and how Jewish people don't count as a real minority and why they should.

How To Argue With A Racist - Adam Rutherford

Although racist pseudoscience is on the upswing, science is not on the side of bigots. Instead, science and history may be strong partners in the fight against discrimination by giving us the most accurate picture of how people truly are, as opposed to how we perceive them to be.

How to Argue With a Racist gives a clear explanation of what contemporary genetics can and cannot tell us about human difference and demolishes outdated ideas of race. It is a crucial manifesto for studying human evolution and variation in the twenty-first century and a timely tool against the manipulation of science to support prejudice.

Black and British: A Short, Essential History - David Olusoga

Award-winning historian and broadcaster David Olusoga provides a concise, crucial introduction to Black British history for readers aged 12 and up. This essential overview of 1800 years of Black British history, from the Roman African guards of Hadrian's Wall to the present, provides the answers to questions such as:

• When did Africans first come to Britain?
• Who are the well-dressed black children in Georgian paintings?
• Why did the American Civil War disrupt the Industrial Revolution?

Maps, pictures, and portraits are used to illustrate this bestseller Black and British: A Forgotten History for children.

Why I’m No Longer Talking About Race - Remi Eddo-Lodge

Reni Eddo-Lodge, a prize-winning journalist, expressed her frustration in a 2014 article on how discussions of race and racism in Britain were being led by individuals who weren't affected by it. She published an article titled "Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race" on her blog.

Her remarks caused a stir. When the post went viral, a great deal of people commented, eager to share their own stories. She was inspired by the need for an honest dialogue and made the decision to explore the root of these emotions.

Reni Eddo-Lodge explores topics like erased black history, the political reason for white dominance, whitewashed feminists, and the inescapable connection between class and race. She then provides a contemporary and important new framework for understanding, acknowledging, and combating racism.

Whites - Otegha Uwagba

Best-selling author Otegha Uwagba examines racism, whiteness, and the mental work involved for Black people to negotiate these concepts in this powerful and important personal essay.

Whites explores the enormous burden of whiteness as told by someone who is, in her own words, "a reluctant expert". It is a record of Uwagba's observations during this historical moment, namely the brutal murder of George Floyd and the successive protests and examination of institutional racism.

Uwagba effectively scrutinises the present status quo and addresses complicated inter-racial dynamics and long-standing conflicts with characteristically unflinching honesty. As a result, she offers an intimate and intensely engaging portrait of an inescapable aspect of the Black experience.

Men Who Hate Women - Laura Bates

Imagine a society where a substantial incel and other misogynist network can operate virtually undetected. These extremists deliberately target women in their attacks. Teenage boys who are vulnerable are radicalised and indoctrinated. That world need not be imagined. You already call it home. Perhaps you were unaware of it because we avoid discussing it. But it's time to get going.

The Everyday Sexism Project creator and bestselling author Laura Bates goes undercover to discover vast misogynist networks and communities.  She takes a deep dive into the global extremism that is rarely discussed.

Interviews with those who have fought against these organisations and their former members offer insightful information about how they operate. Ideas travel from the most insular parts of the internet to schools, workplaces, and the corridors of power via trolls, media, and celebrities, where they take root in our collective consciousness.

Natives: Race & Class In The Ruins Of Empire - Akala

The rapper Akala released this book in 2019 named Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire. The book, which is also a memoir, analyses race and class in modern British society as well as other historical periods. 

Natives will speak frankly to British willful ignorance and prudishness when it comes to having to confront issues of race and class that are at the core of the legacy of Britain's racialized empire. Topics covered in Natives range from the police, education, and identity to politics, sexualisation, and the far right.

Chums: How A Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over The UK - Simon Kuper

Theresa May, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove, David Cameron, George Osborne, The majority of today's well-known Conservative MPs are alumni of Oxford. Recognizable names can be found throughout the Bullingdon Club reports, social function images, and news articles in the university newspapers from thirty years ago. Many entered the national arena directly from the realm of student debates. They brought the politics of their university with them.

Of the fifteen British prime ministers after World War II, eleven attended the University of Oxford. The country has been shaped by this small talent pool. In Chums, Simon Kuper describes how the exclusive and elite environment of Oxford, as well as the friendships and belief systems it fostered, contributed to the formation of the modern United Kingdom, including Brexit.

This Is How We Come Back Stronger - Feminist Book Society

Everything changed in the spring of 2020. At that point, even as lives withdraw behind closed doors all around the world, severe gender inequities came into sharper focus. The message that women of all backgrounds and circumstances are not alone, was and continues to be more vital than ever. The way in which we can and will cooperate to combat inequality has fundamentally changed. 

This Is How We Come Back is a hard-hitting but nonetheless inspirational book that was released on the US and UK's one-year lockdown anniversary. It is a crucial anthology of contemporary intersectional feminism. Forty female writers from both sides of the Atlantic reflect on their current concerns in essays, interviews, fiction, and more.

Contributors include Laura Bates, Kate Mosse, Jude Kelly, Yomi Adegoke, Fatima Bhutto, Catherine Cho and Sarah Eagle Heart.

Tribes: A Search for Belonging in a Divided Society - David Lammy

Before going into politics, David was the first black British man to attend Harvard Law School and he practised as a barrister. Since 2000, he has represented Tottenham (London) in Parliament. David is currently one of the most well-known and experienced social justice activists in the Parliament. He championed the effort to grant British citizenship to Windrush immigrants, and he has been in the forefront of the fight for justice for the Grenfell Tower fire victims' families.

Tribes examines both the positive and negative consequences of our drive to fit in and is both a memoir and a call to action. How this need, which is both genetically programmed and socially acquired, may manifest positively and help a group of people work together to accomplish great things. 

In recent years have seen a rise in new, more harmful forms of tribalism as a result of globalisation and digitisation. This book provides an interesting and insightful analysis of both how the world functions and how we actually are.

The Transgender Issue: Shon Faye

Today's culture war has made transgender people a "issue" in Britain. Although they constitute fewer than 1% of the nation's population, they are the focus of a poisonous and increasingly politicised "discussion" that provides consistent controversy for newspapers and talk shows. The reality is that we are having the wrong discourse; one in which trans people themselves are restricted to talking points in a media frenzy and disallowed a meaningful voice.

Shon Faye reclaims the concept of the "transgender issue" in this striking new book to explore the realities of what it means to be trans in a transphobic culture. She does this by offering an engaging, comprehensive account of trans lives from childhood to old age, including job, relationships, housing, healthcare, the criminal justice system, and trans engagement in the LGBTQ+ and feminist groups in modern Britain and elsewhere.

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