Current Affairs
Showing all 12 results
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How They See Us
The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump$19.99 – $49.00From the celebrated magazine of writing from around the world, twelve sharp global perspectives on a changing United States, edited by a winner of the European Press Prize
The 2024 U.S. presidential election reverberated internationally, a global event whose outcome has already reshaped trade, migration, security, and rising authoritarianism across the world. Inside the United States, we are swamped by a news cycle; but how does the wider world see and interpret what is happening under Trump?
In How They See Us, twelve of some of the most talented and insightful journalists from around the world probe their home countries’ complex relationship with the United States—and especially, how this has swerved under the new administration. A diverse, international cast of writers examines:
- how Turkey’s recent history helps us understand America’s slide into autocracy
- how Argentina’s century-long obsession with the dollar has changed under Trump
- the new wave of anti-American tourism activism in Italy
- what Elon Musk gets wrong about South Africa
- how Taiwan is navigating the uncertainty of Trump’s response in the event of a Chinese invasion
- the newly fraught view of the U.S. among Canadians
Featuring all new pieces commissioned by The Dial, the celebrated magazine of culture, politics, and ideas from around the world, How They See Us both shifts and expands our frame of reference, our self-awareness, and our understanding of how much our world has changed since the fateful election of 2024.
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Are White Men Really Smarter Than Everyone Else?
Playing Offense in the Fight for Racial Justice in America$27.99 – $28.99From the bestselling author of Brown Is the New White, an explosive new argument for draining the swamp of white male privilege
We are witnessing an attack on equal rights in America unparalleled since the collapse of Reconstruction. In the tradition of his New York Times and Washington Post bestseller Brown Is the New White and his “spirited and persuasive” (Publishers Weekly) How We Win the Civil War, Steve Phillips’s goal is nothing less than to exhort people to go on the offensive in the fight for racial justice in this country—to flip the script from the underrepresentation of people of color to the overrepresentation of white men.
In twelve short, animated chapters covering the fields of business, arts and entertainment, government, higher education, philanthropy, and democracy itself, Phillips shows how Straight White American Male Preference (or S.W.A.M.P.) has come roaring out of the shadows once again. Far from being a country where white men have suffered under so-called reverse racism, Phillips reveals America to be a place where white men—a minority population—have enjoyed unfair legal advantages, racial quotas, grade inflation, and jumping the line for public benefits.
Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else? calls for nothing less than draining the swamp of white male privilege. Fearless, funny, and deeply researched, this much-needed corrective offers equality-loving readers the arguments and energy they need to launch a new counterattack.
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Pushed to the Edge
Teachers' Stories from the Culture Wars$29.99Powerful tales of resilience, from educators and librarians in the face of the growing bigotry stoked by the far right
When the Proud Boys stormed a library near her former school to disrupt a Drag Queen Story Hour, veteran public school teacher Sue Granzella knew she had to respond. Drawing on more than thirty years in the classroom, she began documenting the stories of fellow educators and librarians across California who have been harassed and threatened for teaching honestly about race, gender, immigration, religion, and sexuality. Many would be surprised to hear that it’s happening in California, the state long considered the haven of liberals and the pinnacle of acceptance and tolerance. If states such as Florida and Texas have been the canary-in-the-coalmine of nascent culture wars, California is now the disaster siren, screaming a state of emergency.
Pushed to the Edge is a powerful and timely collection of first-person accounts from the front lines of today’s escalating culture wars. Cassandra, a young, queer woman of color and an award-winning teacher, was shattered by homophobia and viciously emboldened parents, and was ultimately forced to leave the job she’d dreamed of since kindergarten. In Temecula, educators mobilized their community to try to overthrow the Christian nationalist school board determined to eliminate the teaching of Black history. While rooted in California, the book’s insights and urgency resonate nationwide—offering both a sobering view of what’s at stake in our schools and our libraries and a hopeful testament to those who refuse to back down.
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American Hate
Survivors Speak Out$24.99 – $30.00“Amid the ugly realities of contemporary America, American Hate affirms our courage and inspiration, opening a roadmap to reconciliation by means of the victims’ own words.”
—NPR Books
“The collection offers possible solutions for how people, on their own or working with others, can confront hate.”
—San Francisco ChronicleAn NPR Best Book of 2018
A San Francisco Chronicle Books Pick
One of Bitch Media‘s “13 Books Feminists Should Read in August”One of Paste Magazine‘s “The 10 Best Books of August 2018”
A moving and timely collection of testimonials from people impacted by hate before and after the 2016 presidential election
In American Hate: Survivors Speak Out, Arjun Singh Sethi, a community activist and civil rights lawyer, chronicles the stories of individuals affected by hate. In a series of powerful, unfiltered testimonials, survivors tell their stories in their own words and describe how the bigoted rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration have intensified bullying, discrimination, and even violence toward them and their communities.
We hear from the family of Khalid Jabara, who was murdered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in August 2016 by a man who had previously harassed and threatened them because they were Arab American. Sethi brings us the story of Jeanette Vizguerra, an undocumented mother of four who took sanctuary in a Denver church in February 2017 because she feared deportation under Trump’s cruel immigration enforcement regime. Sethi interviews Taylor Dumpson, a young black woman who was elected student body president at American University only to find nooses hanging across campus on her first day in office. We hear from many more people impacted by the Trump administration, including Native, black, Arab, Latinx, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, undocumented, refugee, transgender, queer, and people with disabilities.
A necessary book for these times, American Hate explores this tragic moment in U.S. history by empowering survivors whose voices white supremacists and right-wing populist movements have tried to silence. It also provides ideas and practices for resistance that all of us can take to combat hate both now and in the future.
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Chain of Title
How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud$22.99 – $27.95NOW IN PAPERBACK The “gripping” (New York Times) and “Hitchcockian”(Publishers Weekly) story of how a nurse, a car dealership worker, and a forensic expert took on the nation’s largest banksA Kirkus Reviews and The Week best book of the year, David Dayen’s Chain of Title is a riveting work that recalls A Civil Action, Erin Brockovich, and Flash Boys, recounting how three ordinary Floridians—a car dealership worker, a cancer nurse, and an insurance fraud specialist—helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history, challenged the most powerful institutions in America, and—for a brief moment—brought the corrupt financial industry to its knees.
Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anticorporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it. Harnessing the power of the Internet, they revealed how the financial crisis and subsequent recession were fundamentally based upon a series of frauds that kicked millions out of their homes because of false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose. As Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi noted: “Chain of Title is a sweeping work of investigative journalism that traces the arc of a criminally underreported story in America, the collapse of the rule of law in the home mortgage industry.” -
Wrong Turn
Americas Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency$24.95 – $24.99A searing indictment of US strategy in Afghanistan from a distinguished military leader and West Point military historian—“A remarkable book” (National Review).
In 2008, Col. Gian Gentile exposed a growing rift among military intellectuals with an article titled “Misreading the Surge Threatens U.S. Army’s Conventional Capabilities,” that appeared in World Politics Review. While the years of US strategy in Afghanistan had been dominated by the doctrine of counterinsurgency (COIN), Gentile and a small group of dissident officers and defense analysts began to question the necessity and efficacy of COIN—essentially armed nation-building—in achieving the United States’ limited core policy objective in Afghanistan: the destruction of Al Qaeda.
Drawing both on the author’s experiences as a combat battalion commander in the Iraq War and his research into the application of counterinsurgency in a variety of historical contexts, Wrong Turn is a brilliant summation of Gentile’s views of the failures of COIN, as well as a trenchant reevaluation of US operations in Afghanistan.
“Gentile is convinced that Obama’s ‘surge’ in Afghanistan can’t work. . . . And, if Afghanistan doesn’t turn around soon, the Democrats . . . who have come to embrace the Petraeus-Nagl view of modern warfare . . . may find themselves wondering whether it’s time to go back to the drawing board.” —The New Republic -
Catholic Does Not Equal the Vatican
A Vision for Progressive Catholicism$23.95In the 1960s, the hopes for a blossoming progressive Catholicism awakened by the Second Vatican Council were cut short by conservative opposition and the rightward agendas of the previous and current pope.
Forty years later, Catholic ≠ the Vatican heralds the revival of a newly democratic and participatory church that transcends narrow Vatican doctrine. Destined to be a seminal text of progressive Catholicism, this beautifully written and uncompromising book by renowned scholar and activist Rosemary Radford Ruether examines the serious moral contradictions in Vatican Catholicism and offers a vision of a faith committed to justice and peace. Ruether calls for the dismantling of sexist teachings and ascetic values, while promoting healthy sexual ethics and egalitarian communities that welcome women, gays, and lesbians into full equality in the church and even ordination. Reverend Doctor Susan Thistlethwaite’s introduction explains Ruether’s pioneering leadership in progressive Christianity and her unwavering commitment to ecological responsibility and human rights.
Grounded in her civil rights work in the Mississippi Delta and the Latin American tradition of liberation theology, Ruether’s long overdue vision of the church as it should be will serve as an inspiration for Catholics everywhere.
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All Things Being Equal
Instigating Opportunity in an Inequitable Time$24.95When we talk about uninsured kids, dozens to a classroom, being taught by teachers with no expertise in their field; about mass incarceration with no rehabilitation; about real estate brokers or employment firms that continue to discriminate into the twenty-first century; about housing programs that reinforce segregation and fail to connect willing workers with the employers who need them, we are mainly talking about failures of opportunity.
Contrary to popular belief, opportunity in America is in crisis. Class mobility is at an all-time low, the wage gap is through the roof, and Horatio Algers are few and far between. This and other critical ideas about the state of opportunity are documented in All Things Being Equal, a smart new book from a smart new outfit whose mission is to increase opportunity for all Americans.
Half critique, half all-important road map for the future, All Things Being Equal includes eight original essays by top-notch thinkers pointing to areas in American life where opportunity is missing and showing us how to instigate it.
Featuring:
- Jared Bernstein, “You Can Take It with You: Income and Wealth Across Generations”
- Linda Darling-Hammond, “Educational Quality and Equality: What It Will Take to Leave No Child Behind"
- Marc Mauer, “Reducing Incarceration to Expand Opportunity”
- Brian D. Smedley, “Why Health-Care Equity Is Essential to Opportunity—and How to Get There”
- Philip Tegeler, “Connecting Families to Opportunity: The Next Generation of Housing Mobility Policy”
- Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz, “Finding America: Creating Educational Opportunity for our Newest Citizens”
- Margery Austin Turner and Carla Herbig, “Measuring the Extent and Forms of Discrimination in the Marketplace: Lessons from Paired-Testing Research”
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America’s Military Today
The Challenge of Militarism$18.95In the face of seemingly unending resistance in Iraq and growing difficulty with recruitment at home, the U.S. armed forces are under increasing scrutiny from Congress, the media, the public, and even from within. America’s Military Today provides an eye-opening survey of the way the modern U.S. military enlists, trains, and deploys its all-volunteer force. Long-standing soldiers’ rights attorney Tod Ensign brings together a range of expert commentators to examine hot-button issues, including:
• The techniques used by the Pentagon to recruit and train a required 200,000 volunteers each year
• The controversial arguments being advanced for a return to the draft
• The military’s reputation as an exemplar in the promotion of racial minoritie
• The ongoing challenge of gender discrimination, sexual assaults, and bias against gays and lesbians
• The appropriate role of the armed forces in policing post–9/11 America
• The future of war fighting, with an emphasis on the continued relevance of the ordinary foot soldierThe book also includes first-person accounts from soldiers on active duty in Iraq, providing a harrowing and poignant picture of life at the sharp end of combat duty today.
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Dick
The Man Who Is President$23.95Here is the definitive portrait of the ultimate power broker by “the toughest, most in-your-face investigative reporter in the U.S.A.” (Greg Palast). Dick Cheney sets energy policy. He guided the nation into war with Iraq. And, working closely with Karl Rove, he oversees the political infrastructure that allows corporate interests and the religious right to control lawmaking, regulation, the selection of judges, and the development of foreign policy. As John Dean put it, “This page-turner closes the case: Cheney is our de facto president.”
With an emboldened administration that has turned a thin victory into a renewed mandate—rewarding ideologues and purging dissenters—John Nichols’s question is more urgent than ever: can this nation survive four more years of Dick Cheney?
The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney draws on groundbreaking reporting—including exclusive interviews with Cheney’s college professors, Nelson Mandela, Gore Vidal, and political insiders.
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Citizen You!
$16.95Two leading Onion writers and a film producer lampoon the Bush administration, in words and pictures. Loaded with illustrations, pie charts, and informational graphics, this easy-to-read manual will set Americans of all ages on the path of proper patriotic behavior.
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Cigarettes
Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke$17.95Cigarettes chronicles the controversies of a 350 billion dollar industry, telling the fast-paced business story of cigarettes—from seed to smoke—that surprises as it entertains. In a book Publishers Weekly calls “an absorbing and informative history of cigarettes,” Parker-Pope provides “up-to-date coverage of the recent tobacco industry litigation [that] is not only concise and accessible, but illuminating.” The author, who follows the tobacco industry for the Wall Street Journal, offers a unique spin on a much-covered topic, examining the commercial aspect of an industry that became the biggest business success story of the twentieth century.
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