Books like The Feminine Mystique

01

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir · Philosophy

The Second Sex is Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 examination of the situation of women — why they have been defined as "Other" throughout human history, how that otherness is constructed and maintained, and what it would mean to be free of it.

Both dig into feminism.

02

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson · Memoir

Isabel Wilkerson's second book proposes a reframing of American racial hierarchy: rather than thinking of racism primarily as prejudice, she argues that the United States has operated as a caste society, with Black Americans at the bottom of a rigidly maintained hierarchy similar in its structure — though different in its specific mechanisms — to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany.

A kindred history read.

03

Becoming

Michelle Obama · Memoir

Becoming is Michelle Obama's account of how a girl from a modest house on Chicago's South Side became one of the most recognized people in the world — and what that journey cost and revealed.

A kindred history read.

04

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

A kindred history read.

05

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa · History

This Bridge Called My Back, first published in 1981 and edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, is a landmark anthology of writing by women of color in the United States.

Both dig into feminism.

06

Obedience to Authority

Stanley Milgram · Psychology

In the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram recruited ordinary people off the street and asked them to administer what they believed were increasingly severe electric shocks to another person on the orders of an experimenter in a lab coat.

Both dig into social conformity.

07

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain · Literary fiction

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is set in the fictional St.

Both dig into social conformity.

08

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Charles C. Mann · History

Charles Mann's 1491 sets out to correct a widespread misconception: that the Americas before Columbus were a mostly empty wilderness populated by small, isolated bands of hunter-gatherers living in gentle harmony with an untouched nature.

A kindred history read.

09

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

Charles C. Mann · History

Where 1491 ends, 1493 begins.

A kindred history read.

10

1776

David McCullough · History

David McCullough's 1776, published in 2005, covers a single year of the American Revolution — from the winter siege of Boston through Washington's crossing of the Delaware and the surprise victory at Trenton.

A kindred history read.

11

A Man on the Moon

Andrew Chaikin · History

A Man on the Moon is Andrew Chaikin's exhaustive narrative history of the Apollo program, from the first lunar orbit of Apollo 8 in 1968 through the final mission, Apollo 17, in 1972.

A kindred history read.

12

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn · History

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, first published in 1980, retells American history from the perspective of those who rarely appear in conventional textbooks: Native Americans, enslaved people, industrial workers, women, immigrants, and dissidents of various kinds.

A kindred history read.