Books for Black History Month

This week, Kim and Alice share reads for Black History Month, plus new nonfiction about cobalt, China, Vikings, and clothing.

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Nonfiction in the News

2022 Carnegie Medals [American Library Association]

A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib

Get a first look at David Sedaris’ new essay collection [Entertainment Weekly]

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris

New Nonfiction

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu

Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower by Charlie Angus

Worn: A People’s History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser

River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads by Cat Jarman

Architects of an American Landscape: Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the Reimagining of America’s Public and Private Spaces by Hugh Howard

Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder

Black History Month Reads

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Overground Railroad: The Green Book & Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor

White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue … and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation by Lauren Michele Jackson

The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. by Peniel E. Joseph

Reading Now

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

Medicine in the Middle Ages by Juliana Cummings