Book List

Looking for a good book to read? This list of books discussed in recent years by the WTB Book Club provides you with a variety of excellent choices:

  • The Accidental Pope by Raymond Flynn and Robin Moore
  • Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos
  • American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard
  • Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
  • Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin 
  • The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
  • The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq by Dunya Mikhail
  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
  • Believer Beware: First Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith edited by Jeff Sharlet
  • Best African-American Fiction edited by Gerald Early
  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • The Bible by Karen Armstrong
  • A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity by Jan Egeland
  • The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap in an Interconnected World by Jacqueline Novogratz
  • The Boat People by Sharon Bala
  • The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
  • The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith by Joanna Brooks
  • The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
  • Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
  • A Border Passage: From Cairo to America – A Woman’s Journey by Leila Ahmed
  • The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba
  • Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
  • Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser
  • Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam by Willow Wilson
  • Call Me American: A Memoir by Abdi Nor Iftin
  • A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power by Jimmy Carter
  • Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
  • Caught in the Web: Inside the Police Hunt to Rescue Children from Online Predators by Julian Sher
  • The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
  • Censoring an Iranian Love Story: A Novel by Shahriar Mandanipour
  • Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
  • Confessions of a Pagan Nun by Kate Horsley
  • Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
  • Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
  • Dark Money by Jane Mayer
  • Daughters of Another Path by Carol L. Anway
  • The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands by Margaret Regan
  • The Dove Keepers by Alice Hoffman Masada, 70 c.e.
  • The Embattled Ladies of Little Rock: 1958-1963, the Struggle to Save Public Education at Central High by Vivion Lenon Brewer
  • Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
  • Encountering God by Diana Eck
  • Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
  • The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew – Three Women Search for Understanding by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, Priscilla Warner
  • Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris
  • Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence by Geoffrey Canada
  • Founding Faith by Steven Waldman
  • Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi
  • The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz by Michelle Cameron
  • Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
  • The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox
  • Genghis Khan by Jack Weatherford
  • The Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse
  • Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale by Rachel Lloyd
  • A Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes
  • God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time by Desmond Tutu
  • God Is Not a Christian and Other Provocations by Desmond Tutu
  • God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World – and Why Their Differences Matter by Stephan Prothero
  • The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
  • God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet
  • The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the teachings of Jesus by the Dalai Lama
  • The Gospel of John in the Light of Indian Mysticism by Ravi Ravindra
  • The Great Fire: One American’s Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century’s First Genocide by Lou Ureneck
  • Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
  • Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration by Reuben Jonathan Miller
  • The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
  • Heart Berries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot
  • The Help by by Kathryn Stockett
  • Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
  • A History of God: The 4000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Karen Armstrong
  • Hope & Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh by Gerald Grant
  • The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper
  • The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
  • How Does It Feel to Be a Problem: Being Young and an Arab in America by Mustafa Bayoumi
  • I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
  • I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
  • I Will Never See the World Again byAhmet Altan
  • The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness and Hope by Claudia Kolker
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloott
  • The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear edited by Paul Rogat Loeb
  • An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore
  • India Calling by Anand Giridharadas
  • Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Iran Awakening by Shirin Ibadhi
  • Islam: A Mosaic, not a Monolith by Vartan Gregorian
  • The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
  • Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Gramm
  • King Peggy by Pegielene Bartels
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  • The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
  • The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari by Paul Theroux
  • The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan
  • The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World by Bob Abernathy and William Bole (eds.)
  • The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
  • Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Ayadeh Moaveni
  • A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Soldier by Ismael Beah
  • The Making of a Racist by Charles Dew
  • Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine by Eric Weiner
  • Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss
  • Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeen Aslam
  • Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me, A Graphic Memoir by Ellen Forney
  • The Middle of Everywhere: The World’s Refugees Come to Our Town by Mary Pipher
  • The Milk Lady of Bangalore by Shoba Narawan
  • The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates
  • The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers
  • My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
  • My Promised Land by Ari Shavit
  • The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
  • New York, My Village: A Novel by Uwem Akman
  • Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
  • The Night Watch Man by Louise Erdrich
  • Nine Parts of Desire, The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
  • North of Dawn by Nuruddin Farah
  • North Star Conspiracy by Miriam Grace Mondfredo (from Rochester, NY)
  • Nothing Ever Dies: Viet Nam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen
  • Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
  • Oil on Water: A Novel by Helon Habila
  • A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunities by Kristoff and WuDunn
  • Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer
  • The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi
  • People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
  • The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and V. C. Murray
  • A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirya
  • Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin
  • Poetry by Mary Oliver
  • Poetry by Wistawa Szymborska
  • The Power of Half by Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen
  • The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
  • Prague Winter by Madelaine Albright
  • Pretty Birds by Scott Simon
  • Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli
  • Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder
  • The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
  • The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
  • The River Where Blood Is Born by Sandra Jackson-Opoku
  • The Round House by Louise Erdrich
  • Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
  • Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan
  • Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan
  • The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
  • Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
  • Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
  • Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee Influences on Early American Feminists by Sally Roesch Wagner
  • Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History by Canyon Sam
  • Snow by Orhan Pamuk
  • Somebody’s Daughter: The Hidden Story of America’s Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them by Julian Sher
  • Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett
  • Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong
  • The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctor, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman
  • Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
  • The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Us and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee
  • The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal
  • Sweetgrass Basket by Marlene Carvell
  • Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibbs
  • Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir
  • The Tent of Abraham:  Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Sister Joan Chittister, and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chishti
  • The Tenth Gift by Jane Johnson
  • Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold
  • Terrorist by John Updike
  • Terrorist Hunter (anonymous)
  • Teta, Mother and Me: Three Generations of Arab Women by Jean Said Makdisi
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini
  • Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
  • The Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle
  • True Biz by Sara Novic
  • Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
  • The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri
  • Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World by Jean S. Bolen
  • Us and Them: A History of Intolerance in America by Jim Carnes, Herbert Tauss, and Harry A. Blackmun
  • The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett
  • The Veil: Women Writers on Its History, Lore, and Politics by Jennifer Heath (ed.)
  • War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
  • We Are the Ones We have Been Waiting For by Alice Walker
  • We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
  • A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alverez
  • Welcome to the Wisdom of the World by Joan Chittister
  • What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America by Imam Rauf
  • When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone
  • When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip
  • Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media by Susan J. Douglas
  • Why Are Our Babies Dying by Sandra Lane
  • Without You There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite by Suki Kim
  • A Woman Among Warlords by Malalai Joya
  • A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonya Purnell
  • The Women Who Raised Me by Victoria Rowell
  • The Yellow House by Sharon Broom
  • You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right by Brad Hirschfield
  • The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book by Finn and Couvee’
  • The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman

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