Titles that we recommend are featured below. The ones with reviews are noted with an asterisk (*). Some titles are recommended with a caveat.

Also see these related booklists: Environment / Climate Justice, Food and Water Justice, and Nature

Elementary | Middle School / YA | Adult

Coronavirus: A Book for Children

By Elizabeth Jenner, Kate Wilson & Nia Roberts

The Doctor with an Eye for Eyes: The Story of Dr. Patricia Bath

By Julia Finley Mosca

Fresh Juice

By Robert Liu-Trujillo

Let's Talk about Abortion

By Carly Kol and Emulsify (Illustrator)

The Little Doctor / El Doctorcito*

By Juan J. Guerra

Making Happy

By Sheetal Sheth and Khoa Le (Illustrator)

My Grandma's Photos

By Özge Bahar Sunar, Senta Urgan (Illustrator), and Amy Marie Spangler (Translator)

Out of Breath: Kendra's Big Secret*

By Destiney, Kairon, and Aderemi of Reach Incorporated

Tiny Stitches: The Life of Medical Pioneer Vivien Thomas

By Gwendolyn Hooks, Colin Bootman (Illustrator)

What’s an Abortion, Anyway?

By Carly Manes and Emulsify

The Women Who Caught The Babies: A Story of African American Midwives*

By Eloise Greenfield

Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food

By Charles Wilson and Eric Schlosser

Fever 1793

By Laurie Halse Anderson

Jayla Jumps In

By Joy Jones

American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics

By Kevin Hazzard

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets Psychiatric Drugs & the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

By Robert Whitaker
Source documents: Mad in America - Anatomy Source Documents

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition

By Randy Shilts

The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis

By Maria Smilios

Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination

By Alondra Nelson

The Cancer Factory: Industrial Chemicals, Corporate Deception, and the Hidden Deaths of American Workers

By Jim Morris

The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution

By Andrew M. Wehrman

Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948

By Khary Oronde Polk

Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative

By Priscilla Wald

Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration

By Victoria Law

Eyes to the Wind: A Memoir of Love and Death, Hope and Resistance

By Ady Barkan
Interview on Democracy Now!

Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848-1942

By John McKiernan-González

Fevered Measures: Public Health and Race at the Texas-Mexico Border, 1848-1942

By Paul Farmer

Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore

By Nicole Fabricant

Fit to Be Citizens? 

By Natalia Molina

The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care

By John Dittmer

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By Rebecca Skloot

Infectious Fear

By Samuel Kelton, Jr. Roberts

Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice

By Rupa Marya and Rajeev Patel

It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic

By Jack Lowery

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

By Dorothy Roberts

Lost Connections: Why You're Depressed and How to Find Hope

By Johann Hari

Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, & the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

By Robert Whitaker
Documents and more information at: Mad in America.com

Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health

By Micha Frazer-Carroll
Author interview can be read here.

Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine

By Jim Downs

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

By Harriet A. Washington

Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology

By Deirdre Cooper Owens
To learn more, listen to this podcast with the author on Learning for Justice

The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu

By Mike Davis

Mountains Beyond Mountains

By Tracy Kidder

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

By Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté

On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System

By Judi Chamberlin

The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

By Ricardo Nuila

Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood

By Michele Goodwin

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease

By Jonathan M. Metzl

Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness

By Bruce M. Z. Cohen

Critical review: Psychiatric Hegemony

 

Psychiatry Under the Influence: Institutional Corruption, Social Injury, and Prescriptions for Reform

By Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove

Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization

By Khiara Bridges

Reproductive Justice: An Introduction

By Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger

Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women

By Barbara Gurr

Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice

By Zakiya Luna

The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America

By Jacob Levenson

Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction

By Jim Downs

The Social Life of DNA

By Alondra Nelson

Soteria: Through Madness to Deliverance

By Loren Mosher and Voyce Hendrix

Testimonials: "Schizophrenia" Without Antipsychotic Drugs & The Legacy of Loren Mosher

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention — And How to Think Deeply Again

By Johann Hari

A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind

By Harriet A. Washington

Tranquil Prisons: Chemical Incarceration Under Community Treatment Orders

By Erick Fabris

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation

By Linda Villarosa

Until We're Seen: Public College Students Expose the Hidden Inequalities of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Edited by Joseph Entin and Jeanne Theoharis

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide

By Steven W. Thrasher

What Is Health? Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design

By Peter Sterling

Interview with author: What Does Our Species Require for a Healthy Life? An Interview with Peter Sterling

Witches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers

By Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement

By Jennifer Nelson

Writings for a Liberation Psychology

By Ignacio Martín-Baró

Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment, and Abusive Guardianships

By Rob Wipond

Author interview: Consent Not Required | Rob Wipond 

The Zyprexa Papers

By Jim Gottstein
Reviewed at CounterPunch: The Zyprexa Papers: A Legal System for Drug Companies and Lawyers…Not the Public

---

Learn about our criteria for selecting titles at Social Justice Books. Feedback on these lists and suggestions for additional titles are welcome.

Most of the books on these lists are linked for more information or purchase to Bookshop (an indie bookstore platform) and / or Powells.com (an independent, unionized bookstore). A small percentage from book sales through these links goes to Teaching for Change.

---

If you value this book list, please help us promote it and create more book lists.

Donate Today