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Science is a system that uses unbiased, empirical evidence to make awe-inspiring discoveries, but the ways in which we attribute and chronicle those discoveries are far from impartial. From textbooks and history books to scientific journals, the contributions, or attributed contributions, of white males have long been privileged. Others, particularly the contributions of Black scientists, and Black female scientists, have been purposely distorted or left out.

In recent years, authors, professors, journalists, and others have worked to uncover and highlight those buried legacies, but they’ve really only scratched the surface. From Alice Ball, who invented the 20th century's best treatment for leprosy at just 23, to Dr. Marie Maynard Daly, the first Black woman to earn a PhD in Chemistry in the United States, there are still scientists about whom books are scarce, out of print, or nonexistent...

We are still in the middle of a pandemic. We've had four long years of broken norms and endless, horrifying, exhausting outrages. 2020 brought a long-overdue and ongoing reckoning with racism. We have spent January watching armed domestic terrorists attempt to stage an insurrection at the behest of political leaders. It feels like a strange time to be a policy wonk, but once it was the job of politicians to do that "boring" work and it was the job of an informed citizenry to learn about, advocate for, and criticize that work.

We can't put things back the way they were before and, in many ways, we shouldn't want to, but we can take time this inauguration day to reset, refocus, and think about the concrete policy changes we want to see made. As a small step towards that lofty goal, we have put together a reading list based on President-elect Biden's publicized policy goals for his first 100 days in office. From pandemic response and criminal justice to immigration and the economy, these books are a starting point for understanding the social issues that underlie the policy priorities of the incoming administration. May the next four years bring more time spent on policy and less time spent on Twitter...

In 2020, the year of endless doomscrolling (and doom-reading), it is sometimes easy to despair. Through that lens, the theme that encapsulates the best nonfiction books of the year is “ending”: The end of the human epoch via global warming. The end of privacy via invasive tech. The end of our country via autocracy, oligarchy, racism and white supremacy, and economic inequality. The final end of the universe. But there is also a less cynical thread running through these books: they can represent turning points. These books inform us, they give us the sometimes-uncomfortable knowledge necessary to understand our past, inform our present, and actively create our future...