Beacon: 545 books

In this collaborative memoir, a parent and a transgender son recount wrestling with their differences as Donald Collins undertook medical-treatment options to better align his body with his gender identity. As a parent, Mary Collins didn’t agree with her trans son’s decision to physically...

A powerful call to end American gun violence from celebrated poets and those most impacted Focused intensively on the crisis of gun violence in America, this volume brings together poems by dozens of our best-known poets, including Billy Collins, Patricia Smith, Natalie Diaz, Ocean Vuong, Danez...

A lively and lyrical account of one woman’s unlikely apprenticeship on a national-park trail crew and what she discovers about nature, gender, and the value of hard work   Christine Byl first encountered the national parks the way most of us do: on vacation. But after she graduated from college,...

On August 28, 1963, over a quarter-million people—about two-thirds black and one-third white—held the greatest civil rights demonstration ever. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” oration. And just blocks away, President Kennedy and Congress skirmished over landmark...

A young Muslim leader’s memoir of his struggles to forge an American Muslim identity Haroon Moghul was thrust into the spotlight after 9/11, becoming an undergraduate leader at New York University’s Islamic Center forced into appearances everywhere: on TV, before interfaith audiences, in...

Written by a wrongfully convicted man who spent 16 years in solitary confinement and 12 years on death row, a powerful memoir about fighting for—and winning—exoneration. In the summer of 1992, a grandmother, a teenage girl, and four children under the age of ten were beaten and stabbed...

An eloquent, controversial argument that says, for the first time in their long history, Jews are free to live in a Jewish state—or lead secure and productive lives outside it   Since the beginnings of Zionism in the twentieth century, many Jewish thinkers have considered it close to heresy to...

On September 9, 1919, an American nightmare came true. The entire Boston police force deserted their posts, leaving the city virtually defenseless. Women were raped on street corners, stores were looted, and pedestrians were beaten and robbed while crowds not only looked on but cheered. The...

'Certainly one of the most promising theological statements of our time.' --The Christian Century 'Not for the timid, this brilliant book calls for nothing short of the overthrow of patriarchy itself.' --The Village Voice

From Gods, to ritual observance to the language of myth and the distinction between the sacred and the profane, Religious Worlds explores the structures common to all spiritual traditions.

William Paden's classic exploration in religious studies, with a new introduction In the current climate, Interpreting the Sacred provides a fresh, thorough way to consider and compare various religious belief systems. Paden puts forth the idea that our understanding of religion influences...

An exploration of freedom by some of the world’s most celebrated poets, published for the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps   The year 2015 marks the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the conclusion of the Second World War. But...

Why do people die? How do you explain the loss of a loved one to a child? This book is a compassionate guide for adults and children to read together, featuring a read-along story and answers to questions children ask about death. Talking about Death is a classic guide for parents helping their...

Winner of the International Labor History Award Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The...