To build connections during our virtual Summit event in May, NewSchools asked a diverse group of innovators, policymakers, funders, and educators to share the books that helped them make sense of the world or simply inspired them this past year. Here are the 145 books that were recommended to us, covering a wide variety of genres and subjects, all relevant to our work of reimagining education. Many of these books remind us that for all our differences and the time we were apart, we are still very much bound to one another.

Happy browsing and reading!   

• A Good Time for the Truth, edited by Sun Yung Shin
• A Joyful Pause by Nicole Taylor
• A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-one Writers of Color on the New American South, edited by Cinelle Barnes
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Questions in K–12 Education by Pedro Noguera and Federick Hess
• Acts of Faith (Daily Meditations for People of Color) by Iyanla Vanzant
• All Students Must Thrive by Patrick Camangian, Tyrone Caldwell Howard, Earl J. Edwards, Andrea C. Minkoff
• Always Running by Luis J Rodriguez
• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
• Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
• Awakening the Natural Genius of Black Children by Amos N. Wilson
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and It’s Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie Glaude Jr.
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
• Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, with accompanying workbook
• Brave, Not Perfect by Reshma Saujani
• Brown is the New White by Steve Phillips
• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham
• Change: How to Make Big Things Happen by Damon Centola
• Charter Schools and Their Enemies by Thomas Sowell
• Churchill by Andrew Roberts
• Citizen by Claudia Rankine
• Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
• Color of Law
• Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism by Ann Todd Jealous
• Courageous Conversations About Race by Glenn E. Singleton
• Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad
• Dare to Lead by Brene Brown
• Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
• Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva
• Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need by Sasha Costanza-Chock
• Despite the Best Intentions by Amanda Lewis & John Diamond
• Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen
• Educated by Tara Westover
• Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 by James D Anderson
• Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
• Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown
• Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker
• Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by John C Maxwell
• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Richard Harries, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Ola Rosling
• Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
• Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
• Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching by Jarvis Givens
• Gather by Octavia Raheem
• Ghosts in the Schoolyard by Eve L. Ewing
• Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman
• High Conflict by Amanda Ripley
• Home Body by Rupi Kaur
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
• How Children Succeed by Paul Tough
• How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
• How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende
• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
• Language at the Speed of Sight by Mark Seidenberg
• Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute
• Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading by Heifeta and Linsky
• Leapfrogging Inequality by Rebecca Winthrop
• Looking Like A Language, Sounding Like A Race by Jonathan Rosa
• Makes Me Wanna Holler by Nathan McCall
• Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children by Marjorie Ingall
• Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
• Moral Leadership by Thomas Serviovanni
• My Grandmother’s Hands by Reesma Menakem
• Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen
• No Justice in the Shadows: How America Criminalizes Immigrants by Alina Das
• Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph
• Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique Morris, EdD
• Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach
• Radio Golf by August Wilson
• Raising Free People by Akilah S. Richards
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
• Reading With Patrick by Michelle Kuo
• Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
• Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan
• See No Stranger by Valerie Kaur
• Shifting by Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden
• Sisters of the Yam by bell hooks
• Subtractive Schooling by Angela Valenzuela
• Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle
• Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
• Teaching with Fire by Sam M. Intrator
• The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp, Jim Dethmer
• The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
• The Black Excellence Project: Bard Early College D.C. written by 9th and 10th grade students
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
• The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predict by Thomas Hatch
• The Element by Sir Ken Robinson
• The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others In Your Life by Helen Palmer
• The Essential Conversation by Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot
• The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
• The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik
• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E Baptist
• The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Purpose through Nature, Ritual, and Community by Malidoma Patrice Some
• The Inequality Machine – How Colleges Divide Us by Paul Tough
• The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The Leavers by Lisa Ko
• The Lost Education of Horace Tate by Vanessa Siddle Walker
• The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G Woodson
• The Overstory by Richard Powers
• The Power Within Me: The road back home to the real you by Dr. Annice E. Fisher
• The Price of the Ticket by James Baldwin
• The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t by Nate Silver
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
• The Sum of Us by Heather McChee
• The Sun Does Shine: How I found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton
• The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
• The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
• The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgett M. Davis
• There There by Tommy Orange
• Think Again by Adam Grant
• Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice by Dennis Kimbro, Napoleon Hill
• This America: A Case for the Nation by Jill Lepore
• Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Waking Up White by Debbie Irving
• We Got This by Cornelius Minor
• We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• We Want to Do More Than Survive by Bettina Love
• What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young
• What I Know For Sure by Oprah Winfrey
• Whistling Vivaldi by Claude M. Steele
• Who Do We Choose To Be? by Margaret Wheatley
• Who Gets In and Why by Selingo
• Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
• Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Tatum
• Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas
• Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
• Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion