Books like It Starts With Me! — picked by fans

The library has always been my favorite place to visit. As a child, I would travel the world through books. I learned about different cultures and studied other languages. Through these experiences, I gained a deep appreciation for cultures around the world. I also learned an important lesson that inclusion is the thread that weaves together a rich multicultural tapestry. Fast forward to today, I share these lessons through my work as an author, leadership scholar, and law professor. My booklist reflects a celebration of diverse cultures, introduces learning tools for becoming an inclusive leader, and provides an invitation to join me in taking intentional action for justice and equity.  

The library has always been my favorite place to visit. As a child, I would travel the world through books. I learned about different cultures and studied other languages. Through these experiences, I gained a deep appreciation for cultures around the world. I also learned an important lesson that inclusion is the thread that weaves together a rich multicultural tapestry. Fast forward to today, I share these lessons through my work as an author, leadership scholar, and law professor. My booklist reflects a celebration of diverse cultures, introduces learning tools for becoming an inclusive leader, and provides an invitation to join me in taking intentional action for justice and equity.  

The library has always been my favorite place to visit. As a child, I would travel the world through books. I learned about different cultures and studied other languages. Through these experiences, I gained a deep appreciation for cultures around the world. I also learned an important lesson that inclusion is the thread that weaves together a rich multicultural tapestry. Fast forward to today, I share these lessons through my work as an author, leadership scholar, and law professor. My booklist reflects a celebration of diverse cultures, introduces learning tools for becoming an inclusive leader, and provides an invitation to join me in taking intentional action for justice and equity.  

The library has always been my favorite place to visit. As a child, I would travel the world through books. I learned about different cultures and studied other languages. Through these experiences, I gained a deep appreciation for cultures around the world. I also learned an important lesson that inclusion is the thread that weaves together a rich multicultural tapestry. Fast forward to today, I share these lessons through my work as an author, leadership scholar, and law professor. My booklist reflects a celebration of diverse cultures, introduces learning tools for becoming an inclusive leader, and provides an invitation to join me in taking intentional action for justice and equity.  

I grew up and completed the formative years of my college education in Cape Town, South Africa, while active also in anti-apartheid struggles. My Ph.D. dissertation in the 1980s focused on the elaboration of key racial ideas in the modern history of philosophy. I have published extensively on race and racism in the U.S. and globally, in books, articles, and public media. My interests have especially focused on the transforming logics and expressions of racism over time, and its updating to discipline and constrain its conventional targets anew and new targets more or less conventionally. My interest has always been to understand racism in order to face it down.

I remember well my first visit to Gettysburg on a high school trip. I had trouble expressing what I felt until I read the words of a battlefield guide who said that he often sensed a “brooding omnipresence.” I have often felt such presences across the historic landscape in the U.S. and elsewhere. I am now Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University, and former editor of the Journal Of American History. I have also written Preserving Memory: The Struggle To Create America’s Holocaust Museum; The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City In American Memory, and co-edited American Sacred Space; History Wars: The Enola Gay And Other Battles For The American Past; and Landscapes Of 9/11: A Photographer’s Journey.

Music came to me as a bolt of lightning when I experienced, at 14 years old, the playing of pianist Vladimir Horowitz. My training in engineering, physics, and music propelled me into a career that continues to evolve. I am fascinated by what creative musicians in all cultures have accomplished through the ages, by how they worked, and by the ways in which new technologies and cross-cultural awareness enlarge music's potential futures. The Pulitzer Prize in Music and numerous other “authentifications” underlie my willingness and ability to make these claims. Music is the most malleable of the arts in terms of the contexts in which it can be useful. 

When I was a child, I grew up in a very crowded house in suburbia with three sisters. Reading was the best way to escape all the mayhem. By the age of eight I was reading my parents’ novels, whatever books I could find. I wanted to move to a big city like the ones in their novels. At night I would tell myself Cinderella-type stories where I lived in a fabulous apartment and got to be the heroine. I took a class at Harvard Extension, and the professor read my story aloud to the group. From that day on I was hooked.

I'm passionate about a world of kindness and inclusiveness. Growing up, I loved to write stories, but reading was hard. My eyes would go over the words but the meaning wouldn’t get to my brain. So I stopped writing. We must start with little children, making sure they believe in themselves, presenting issues of acceptance, diversity, and social justice. I've published two books on this theme and am working on two more. I talk to school classes and the media, and travel to Ethiopia, where I'm involved with their clean water project. I 'm involved in sustainable projects that improve health and education for children and young women. Please visit my website to learn more.

I’ve been fascinated by different cultures since I was 14 years old growing up in inner-city Chicago. My passion has given me a curious quest to travel the world and learn about different cultures. My friends have a tagline for me which is ‘From the Hood to Hanoi and All the Stops In Between’ because of my international teaching in Vietnam. As an adult who is now an international professor, sought-out global trainer, and cultural subject matter expert, my passion has increased for bringing an awareness to a broader audience about the beauty of diverse friendships.