Inspiring Pages

BY NOW you’ve probably heard of a little book of hard analysis and eloquent perspective that came out this summer, Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau) by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (If not, get thee to a book store or library.) Here are some other books—some out this fall, others from earlier in 2015—that you’ll want to know about.

Fresh This Fall

With Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time (The New Press), James Kilgore has written an accessible field guide to an urgent topic. Geraldine Brooks gives King David the novel treatment in The Secret Chord (Viking). Aviya Kushner plumbs translation inThe Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible (Spiegel & Grau). Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer profile families enduring poverty in $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Inventing American Religion: Polls, Surveys, and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation’s Faith (Oxford) is Robert Wuthnow’s case for why sometimes data is dubious.

In the children’s picture book Mama’s Nightingale: A Story of Immigration and Separation (Dial), Edwidge Danticat tells the stories of many through one little girl. Sarah Bessey tells us to be not afraid of questions inOut of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith (Howard Books). Women write their truth inFaithfully Feminist: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Feminists on Why We Stay (part of the I Speak for Myself series), edited by Gina Messina-Dysert, Jennifer Zobair, and Amy Levin.

Earlier This Year

Editors adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha invite us to envision new worlds withOctavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements (AK Press). Jimmy Carter shares an abundance of wisdom inA Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (Simon & Schuster). Leonardo Boff summons sacred power inCome, Holy Spirit: Inner Fire, Giver of Life, and Comforter of the Poor (Orbis). In the young adult novel Conviction (Hyperion), by Kelly Loy Gilbert, a teenage boy negotiates a dramatic tangle of faith, family, and loyalty. Citizen of the Choctaw Nation and Episcopal priest Steven Charleston describes The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (Morehouse). Margaret Regan reports on the Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire (Beacon).

Jon M. Sweeney edited and introduces Phyllis Tickle: Essential Spiritual Writings (Orbis). Martha Spong edited a book whose title says it all: There’s a Woman in the Pulpit: Christian Clergywomen Share Their Hard Days, Holy Moments, and the Healing Power of Humor (Christian Journeys). Stanley Hauerwas offers an atypical “how to” book with The Work of Theology (Eerdmans). Kelly Brown Douglas delves into history, theology, and culture in Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Orbis). Finally, Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Spiegel & Grau), first released in 2014, came out in paperback this summer: A both devastating and cautiously hopeful narrative from a veteran lawyer who has made justice for the least and left out his life’s work.