Politics
Showing 33–64 of 116 results
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Not a Crime to Be Poor
The Criminalization of Poverty in America$17.99 – $26.95Awarded “Special Recognition” by the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Book & Journalism AwardsFinalist for the American Bar Association’s 2018 Silver Gavel Book Award
Named one of the “10 books to read after you’ve read Evicted” by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Essential reading for anyone trying to understand the demands of social justice in America.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy
Winner of a special Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the book that Evicted author Matthew Desmond calls “a powerful investigation into the ways the United States has addressed poverty . . . lucid and troubling”
In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city’s poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors’ prisons of the twenty-first century. The anti-tax revolution that began with the Reagan era led state and local governments, starved for revenues, to squeeze ordinary people, collect fines and fees to the tune of 10 million people who now owe $50 billion.
Nor is the criminalization of poverty confined to money. Schoolchildren are sent to court for playground skirmishes that previously sent them to the principal’s office. Women are evicted from their homes for calling the police too often to ask for protection from domestic violence. The homeless are arrested for sleeping in the park or urinating in public.
A former aide to Robert F. Kennedy and senior official in the Clinton administration, Peter Edelman has devoted his life to understanding the causes of poverty. As Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy has said, “No one has been more committed to struggles against impoverishment and its cruel consequences than Peter Edelman.” And former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes, “If there is one essential book on the great tragedy of poverty and inequality in America, this is it.”
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Night in the American Village
Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa$24.99 – $37.00“A lively encounter with identity and American military history in Okinawa. Night in the American Village is by turns intellectual, hip, and sexy. I admire it for its ferocity, style, and vigor. A wonderful book.”
—Anthony Swofford, author of JarheadA beautifully written examination of the complex relationship between the women living near the U.S. bases in Okinawa and the servicemen who are stationed there
At the southern end of the Japanese archipelago lies Okinawa, host to a vast complex of U.S. military bases. A legacy of World War II, these bases have been a fraught issue in Japan for decades—with tensions exacerbated by the often volatile relationship between islanders and the military, especially after the brutal rape of a twelve-year-old girl by three servicemen in the 1990s.
But the situation is more complex than it seems. In Night in the American Village, journalist Akemi Johnson takes readers deep into the “border towns” surrounding the bases—a world where cultural and political fault lines compel individuals, both Japanese and American, to continually renegotiate their own identities. Focusing on the women there, she follows the complex fallout of the murder of an Okinawan woman by an ex–U.S. serviceman in 2016 and speaks to protesters, to women who date and marry American men and groups that help them when problems arise, and to Okinawans whose family members survived World War II.
Thought-provoking and timely, Night in the American Village is a vivid look at the enduring wounds of U.S.-Japanese history and the cultural and sexual politics of the American military empire.
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The Rise of the New Religious Right
$24.95The Gospel According to Sarah is a fascinating new look at a little understood but crucial side of Sarah Palin: her Pentecostal roots. Anthea Butler’s perfectly timed analysis trains the keen eye of a noted religion scholar on religious and political currents that have been widely caricatured but, until now, poorly understood and rarely discussed.
Butler shows that Palin’s widely publicized fumbles and verbal gaffes are irrelevant to her committed core of “Christians on steroids,” whose beliefs in miracles, literal readings of the Bible, and apocalyptic patriotism make traditional evangelicals like James Dobson and Pat Robertson seem almost mainstream. Although the media cannot hear the regular dog whistle of Christian buzzwords Palin uses to rally her base, it’s plainly there.
To Sarah Palin’s millions of devoted followers, religion is everything; to her detractors, it is a puzzle. The Gospel According to Sarah brilliantly deciphers this new breed of religious conservative. -
Brown Is the New White
How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority$18.99 – $25.95The New York Times and Washington Post bestseller that sparked a national conversation about America’s new progressive, multiracial majority, updated to include data from the 2016 election
With a new preface and afterword by the author
When it first appeared in the lead-up to the 2016 election, Brown Is the New White helped spark a national discussion of race and electoral politics and the often-misdirected spending priorities of the Democratic party. This “slim yet jam-packed call to action” (Booklist) contained a “detailed, data-driven illustration of the rapidly increasing number of racial minorities in America” (NBC News) and their significance in shaping our political future.
Completely revised and updated to address the aftermath of the 2016 election, this first paperback edition of Brown Is the New White doubles down on its original insights. Attacking the “myth of the white swing voter” head-on, Steve Phillips, named one of “America’s Top 50 Influencers” by Campaigns & Elections, closely examines 2016 election results against a long backdrop of shifts in the electoral map over the past generation—arguing that, now more than ever, hope for a more progressive political future lies not with increased advertising to middle-of-the-road white voters, but with cultivating America’s growing, diverse majority.
Emerging as a respected and clear-headed commentator on American politics at a time of pessimism and confusion among Democrats, Phillips offers a stirring answer to anyone who thinks the immediate future holds nothing but Trump and Republican majorities.
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Reclaiming Gotham
Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End Americas Tale of Two Cities$26.95How Bill de Blasio’s mayoral victory triggered a seismic shift in the nation’s urban political landscape—and what it portends for our cities in the future
In November 2013, a little-known progressive stunned the elite of New York City by capturing the mayoralty by a landslide. Bill de Blasio’s promise to end the “Tale of Two Cities” had struck a chord among ordinary residents still struggling to recover from the Great Recession.De Blasio’s election heralded the advent of the most progressive New York City government in generations. Not since the legendary Fiorello La Guardia in the 1930s had so many populist candidates captured government office at the same time. Gotham, in other words, had been suddenly reclaimed in the name of its people.
How did this happen? De Blasio’s victory, journalist legend Juan González argues, was not just a routine change of government but a popular rebellion against corporate-friendly policies that had dominated New York for decades. Reflecting that broader change, liberal Democrats Bill Peduto in Pittsburgh, Betsy Hodges in Minneapolis, and Martin Walsh of Boston also won mayoral elections that same year, as did insurgent Ras Baraka in Newark the following year. This new generation of municipal leaders offers valuable lessons for those seeking grassroots reform.
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How Do I Explain This to My Kids?
Parenting in the Age of Trump$15.95The day after the 2016 presidential election, filmmaker Carlos Sandoval found Ku Klux Klan fliers on the seats of the Long Island Railroad and recounts how his Cuban American niece Lexi’s world was “shattered” by the election—she is one of thousands of children wondering if they will be deported or denied benefits under the Trump administration. Other children are taunted on the playground, have their head scarves ripped off, or are left to wonder, “Does Donald Trump not like brown boys like me?” And girls everywhere are devastated that a crass and bigoted bully was elected over the woman poised to become America’s first female president.
In the wake of the election, even the most thoughtful and progressive parents across the country found themselves at a loss for words. Borrowing its title from the memorable election night question posed by Van Jones, How Do I Explain This to My Kids? brings together moving first-person accounts by parents including novelist Mira Jacob, Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, scholar Robin D.G. Kelley, New York Times blogger Nicole Chung, and others, who recount their best efforts to parent effectively in the current climate. The second half of the book features advice from leading child psychologist Ava Siegler, whose bestselling book What Should I Tell the Kids? established her as an authority on talking to children about difficult topics. From racism and homophobia to anti-Semitism, lying, sexism, and bullying, Dr. Siegler provides concrete advice for parents of kids of all ages—grade schoolers, preteens, adolescents, and young adults—for helping their children navigate a complicated, difficult time.
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The Least Among Us
Waging the Battle for the Vulnerable$25.95The outspoken Connecticut congresswoman provides “a powerful case for protecting and expanding America’s safety net” (Elizabeth Warren).
Cynical politicians like Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump argue that the people of the United States would be better off without food stamps, Obamacare, and workplace protections. Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro knows these folks are just plain wrong.
Growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, DeLauro saw firsthand how vulnerable hard-working people are in the face of corporate indifference and government neglect. From fatal industrial fires to devastating childhood poverty, DeLauro witnessed it all—and emerged convinced that social programs are worth going to the mat for, again and again. Worker protections, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and housing assistance lift up all Americans; they fulfill this country’s promise of opportunity for everyone and are essential for our country’s health.
For twenty-five years, DeLauro has been fighting for everyday Americans, earning a reputation as the most impassioned defender of our social safety net. The Least Among Us tells the story of a quarter-century of deal-making on behalf of people too often overlooked, told by a woman as fearless as she is opinionated. Part House of Cards, part progressive manifesto, The Least Among Us shares lessons about power—how it’s gained and how to wield it for everyone’s benefit.
“Can you imagine how cool the world would be if we had Rosa DeLauro getting s*** done instead of Congress being held hostage by terrible people!” —Wonkette
“An impassioned, urgent defense of democratic values and the role of government to serve and benefit all citizens.” —Kirkus Reviews -
Rules for Resistance
Advice from Around the Globe for the Age of Trump$15.95Some of us have been here before. Many people living today in America and around the world have direct experience with countries where an autocrat has seized control. Others have seen charismatic, populist leaders come to power within democracies and dramatically change the rules of the road for the public, activists, and journalists alike. In Rules for Resistance, writers from Russia, Turkey, India, Hungary, Chile, China, Canada, Italy, and elsewhere tell Americans what to expect under our own new regime, and give us guidance for living—and for resisting—in the Trump era.
Advice includes being on the watch for the prosecution of political opponents, the use of libel laws to attack critics, the gutting of non-partisan institutions, and the selective application of the law.
A special section on the challenges for journalists reporting on and under a leader like Donald Trump addresses issues of free speech, the importance of press protections, and the critical role of investigative journalists in an increasingly closed society. An introduction by ACLU legal director David Cole looks at the crucial role institutions have in preserving democracy and resisting autocracy.
A chilling but necessary collection, Rules for Resistance distills the collective knowledge and wisdom of those who “have seen this video before.”
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Wolf Whistle Politics
The New Misogyny in America Today$15.95The 2016 election year may be remembered as a year to forget, but for American women in politics and feminists alike it was unforgettably distressing—a flash point illuminating both the true state of play for women in public life and feminist politics in the early twenty-first century.
Wolf Whistle Politics is a book that tries to account for, contextualize, and even make some sense out of this trying political chapter in American history. With an introduction by Naomi Wolf and pieces by leading journalists and essayists ranging from Lindy West’s “Donald and Billy on the Bus,” to Amy Davidson’s “What Wendy Davis Stood For,” and Rhon Manigault-Bryant’s “Open Letter to White, Liberal Feminists,” this collection comprises the best political reporting and socio-historical analysis on everything from the contentious meaning of a potential first female president to the misogynist overtones of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s electoral defeat by Donald Trump; from rape culture to reproductive rights; Pantsuit Nation to poor women of color; media double standards to hashtag activism.
Together these pieces form a constellation aptly symbolized by the lascivious “wolf whistle,” a demeaning, sexually loaded catcall which, unlike the racial “dog whistle,” has nothing subtle or covert about it. Wolf Whistle Politics shines a bright light on the complex relationship between women and politics today, reflecting on what we lost, what we won, and what we can do to move forward.
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The New Threat
The Past, Present, and Future of Islamic Militancy$17.95 – $26.95“The book on jihad that Donald Trump needs to read.”
—Newsweek
“A fine overview [from] one of the shrewdest observers of contemporary Muslim activism…Draws together the strands of a highly complex reality to create a picture that is not just convincing but readable.”
—The New York Review of Books
NOW IN PAPERBACK With a new afterword by the author, “essential reading” (Andrew Bacevich) from one of the world’s leading authorities on the roots, reality, and future of modern Muslim extremism
From Syria to Somalia, from Libya to Indonesia, from Yemen to the capitals of Europe, Islamic militancy appears stronger, more widespread, and more threatening than ever.
In The New Threat prizewinning frontline reporter Jason Burke cuts through the mass of opinion and misinformation to explain the nature of the threat we now face. Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, The New Threat offers insight into the rise of ISIS and other groups, such as Boko Haram, which together command significant military power, rule millions, and control extensive territories. Elsewhere, Al Qaeda remains potent and is rapidly evolving. As a new generation of Western extremists emerges—as seen by the horrifying attacks in Paris and Brussels as well as the “lone wolf” operatives in the United States—Burke argues it is imperative that we understand who these groups are and what they actually want. -
Captured
The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy$17.99 – $27.95A leading member of the Senate Judiciary Committee “spells out, in considerable detail, the extent of corporate influence over a variety of issues” in national politics (The New Yorker)
As a U.S. senator and former federal prosecutor, Sheldon Whitehouse has had a front-row seat for the spectacle of dark money in government. In his widely praised book Captured, he describes how corporations buy influence over our government— not only over representatives and senators, but over the very regulators directly responsible for enforcing the laws under which these corporations operate, and over the judges and prosecutors who are supposed to be vigilant about protecting the public interest.
In a case study that shows these operations at work, Whitehouse reveals how fossil fuel companies have held any regulation related to climate change at bay. The problem is structural: as Kirkus Reviews wrote, “many of the ills it illuminates are bipartisan.”
This paperback edition features a new preface by the author that reveals how corporate influence has taken advantage of Donald Trump’s presidency to advance its agenda—and what we can do about it.
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Blue in a Red State
The Survival Guide to Life in the Real America$24.95Imagine if you felt out of step with every other member of the parent association at your kid’s school, your quilting circle, or even your workout group. What if casual conversations revolved around Fox News and the decline of American values? How would you feel if you were afraid to put a political bumper sticker on your car or had to think twice about what liberal posts you liked on Facebook? These are just some of the experiences shared by liberals across twenty states and five time zones who tell their stories with honesty, warmth, and humor.Most of us have to “talk across the aisle” once or twice a year—when we’re seated next to our conservative out-of-town uncle at Thanksgiving, say. But millions of self- identified liberals live in cities and towns—particularly away from the East and West Coasts—where they are regularly outnumbered and outvoted by conservatives.
In this uplifting and completely original book, Justin Krebs, the founder of the national Living Liberally network, speaks with and tells the stories of atheists, vegetarians, environmentalists, pacifists, and old-fashioned liberals—a term he is intent on rehabilitating—from Texas to Idaho, South Carolina to Alaska. Krebs weaves these stories together to create a provocative and rollicking taxonomy of strategies for living in a diverse society, with lessons for every participant in our great democratic experiment.
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The War on Leakers
National Security and American Democracy, from Eugene V. Debs to Edward Snowden$26.95Four days before Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, someone leaked American contingency war plans to the Chicago Tribune. The small splash the story made was overwhelmed by the shock waves caused by the Japanese attack on the Pacific fleet anchored in Hawaii—but the ripples never subsided, growing quietly but steadily across the Cold War, Vietnam, the fall of Communism, and into the present.
Ripped from today’s headlines, Lloyd C. Gardner’s latest book takes a deep dive into the previously unexamined history of national security leakers. The War on Leakers joins the growing debate over surveillance and the national security state, bringing to bear the unique perspective of one our most respected diplomatic historians. Gardner examines how national security leaks have been grappled with over nearly five decades, what the relationship of “leaking” has been to the exercise of American power during and after the Cold War, and the implications of all this for how we should think about the role of leakers and democracy.
Gardner’s eye-opening new history asks us to consider why America has invested so much of its resources, technology, and credibility in a system that all but cries out for loyal Americans to leak its secrets. -
When We Fight, We Win
Twenty-First-Century Social Movements and the Activists That Are Transforming Our World$21.99Real stories of hard-fought battles for social change, told by those on the front lines—with clear lessons and tips for activists on gaining power from the ground up
“As protests and demonstrations sprout across the land, young organizers and activists need to know why and how movements are sustained and how they grow. That resource has arrived.” —Mumia Abu-Jamal, author and activist
In this visually rich and deeply inspiring book, the leaders of some of the most successful movements of the past decade—from the legalization of same-sex marriage to the Black Lives Matter movement—distill their wisdom, sharing lessons of what makes transformative social change possible.
Longtime social activist Greg Jobin-Leeds joins forces with AgitArte, a collective of artists and organizers, to capture the stories, philosophy, tactics, and art of today’s leading social movements. When We Fight, We Win! weaves together interviews with today’s most successful activists and artists from across the country and beyond—including Patrisse Cullors, Bill McKibben, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Karen Lewis, Favianna Rodriguez, Rea Carey, and Gaby Pacheco, among others—with narrative recountings of their inspiring strategies and campaigns alongside full-color photos. It includes a foreword by Rinku Sen and an afterword by Antonia Darder.
The recent nationwide explosion of protests has shown the power the people have when we join together with a common goal and compelling message. When We Fight, We Win! will give a whole generation of readers the road map to building resilient movements that can achieve real social justice.
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The Boy Who Could Change the World
The Writings of Aaron Swartz$22.99 – $23.00Winner of the Ida and Studs Terkel Prize
Here for the first time in print is revealed the quintessential Aaron Swartz: besides being a technical genius and a passionate activist, he was also an insightful, compelling, and cutting essayist. With a technical understanding of the Internet and of intellectual property law surpassing that of many seasoned professionals, he wrote thoughtfully and humorously about intellectual property, copyright, and the architecture of the Internet. He wrote as well about unexpected topics such as pop culture, politics both electoral and idealistic, dieting, and lifehacking. Including three in-depth and previously unpublished essays about education, governance, and cities,The Boy Who Could Change the World contains the life’s work of one of the most original minds of our time. -
Right Out of California
The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism$18.99 – $27.95“Olmsted’s vivid, accomplished narrative really belongs to the historiography of the left… as her strong research shows, race and gender prejudice informed or deformed, almost the whole of American social and cultural life in the 1930s and was as common on the left as on the right.”
—The New York Times Book Review
NOW IN PAPERBACK An “arresting” (In These Times) new history of modern American conservatism, uncovering its roots in the turbulent agricultural fields of Depression-era California
In a reassessment of modern conservatism, noted historian Kathryn S. Olmsted reexamines the explosive labor disputes in the agricultural fields of Depression-era California, the cauldron that inspired a generation of artists and writers and triggered the intervention of FDR’s New Deal. Right Out of California, which received a full-page review in the New York Times when it was published in hardcover, tells how this brief moment of upheaval terrified business leaders into rethinking their relationship to American politics—a narrative that pits a ruthless generation of growers against a passionate cast of reformers, writers, and revolutionaries.
At a time when a resurgent immigrant labor movement is making urgent demands on twenty-first-century America—and when a new and virulent strain of right-wing anti-immigrant populism is roiling the political waters—Right Out of California is a fresh and profoundly relevant touchstone for anyone seeking to understand the roots of our current predicament. -
The Age of Aspiration
Power, Wealth, and Conflict in Globalizing India$28.95Nearly four decades ago, Dilip Hiro’s Inside India Today, banned by Indira Gandhi’s government, was acclaimed by The Guardian as simply “the best book on India.” Now Hiro returns to his native country to chronicle the impact of the dramatic economic liberalization that began in 1991, which ushered India into the era of globalization.Hiro describes how India has been reengineered not only in its economy but also in its politics and cultural mores. Places such as Gurgaon and Noida on the outskirts of Delhi have been transformed from nondescript towns into forests of expensive high-rise residential and commercial properties. Businessmen in Bollywood movies, once portrayed as villains, are now often the heroes. The marginal, right-wing Hindu militants of the past now rule the nominally secular nation, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as their avatar, one whose electoral victory was funded by big business.
Hiro provides a gripping account of the role played by Indians who have settled in the United States and Britain since 1991 in boosting India’s GDP. But he also highlights the negatives: the exponential growth in sleaze in the public and private sectors, the impoverishment of farmers, and the rise in urban slums. A masterful panorama, The Age of Aspiration covers the whole social spectrum of Indians at home and abroad.
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Democracy in the Dark
The Seduction of Government Secrecy$26.99 – $27.95“A timely and provocative book exploring the origins of the national security state and the urgent challenge of reining it in” (The Washington Post).
From Dick Cheney’s man-sized safe to the National Security Agency’s massive intelligence gathering, secrecy has too often captured the American government’s modus operandi better than the ideals of the Constitution. In this important book, Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., who was chief counsel to the US Church Committee on Intelligence—which uncovered the FBI’s effort to push Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide; the CIA’s enlistment of the Mafia to try to kill Fidel Castro; and the NSA’s thirty-year program to get copies of all telegrams leaving the United States—uses examples ranging from the dropping of the first atomic bomb and the Cuban Missile Crisis to Iran–Contra and 9/11 to illuminate this central question: How much secrecy does good governance require? Schwarz argues that while some control of information is necessary, governments tend to fall prey to a culture of secrecy that is ultimately not just hazardous to democracy but antithetical to it. This history provides the essential context to recent cases from Chelsea Manning to Edward Snowden.
Democracy in the Dark is a natural companion to Schwarz’s Unchecked and Unbalanced, cowritten with Aziz Huq, which plumbed the power of the executive branch—a power that often depends on and derives from the use of secrecy.
“[An] important new book . . . Carefully researched, engagingly written stories of government secrecy gone amiss.” —The American Prospect -
A Theory of the Drone
$26.95Drone warfare has raised profound ethical and constitutional questions both in the halls of Congress and among the U.S. public. Not since debates over nuclear warfare has American military strategy been the subject of discussion in living rooms, classrooms, and houses of worship. Yet as this groundbreaking new work shows, the full implications of drones have barely been addressed in the media.
In a unique take on a subject that has grabbed headlines and is consuming billions of taxpayer dollars each year, philosopher Grégoire Chamayou applies the lens of philosophy to our understanding of how drones are changing our world. For the first time in history, a state has claimed the right to wage war across a mobile battlefield that potentially spans the globe. Remote-control flying weapons, he argues, take us well beyond even George W. Bush’s justification for the war on terror.
What we are seeing is a fundamental transformation of the laws of war that have defined military conflict as between combatants. As more and more drones are launched into battle, war now has the potential to transform into a realm of secretive, targeted assassinations of individuals—beyond the view and control not only of potential enemies but also of citizens of democracies themselves. Far more than a simple technology, Chamayou shows, drones are profoundly influencing what it means for a democracy to wage war. A Theory of the Drone will be essential reading for all who care about this important question.
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On Anarchism
$16.99The definitive primer on anarchist thought and practice, from the thinker the New York Times Book Review calls “the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet”
“The essence of anarchism [is] the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.” —Noam Chomsky
With the specter of anarchy being invoked by the Right to sow fear, a cogent explanation of the political philosophy known as anarchism has never been more urgently needed. In On Anarchism, radical linguist, philosopher, and activist Noam Chomsky provides it. Known for his brilliant evisceration of American foreign policy, state capitalism, and the mainstream media, Chomsky remains a formidable and unapologetic critic of established authority and perhaps the world’s most famous anarchist.
On Anarchism sheds a much-needed light on the foundations of Chomsky’s thought, specifically his constant questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. The book gathers his essays and interviews to provide a short, accessible introduction to his distinctively optimistic brand of anarchism. Chomsky eloquently refutes the notion of anarchism as a fixed idea, suggesting that it is part of a living, evolving tradition, and he disputes the traditional fault lines between anarchism and socialism, emphasizing the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.
Including a retrospective interview with Chomsky where the author assesses his writings on anarchism to date, this is a book that is sure to challenge, provoke, and inspire. Profoundly relevant to our times, On Anarchism is a touchstone for political activists and anyone interested in deepening their understanding of anarchism and the power of collective action.
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Extremely Loud
Sound as a Weapon$24.95 – $24.99“Everything you ever suspected or feared about music as a weapon, sound as torture . . . Disturbingly illuminating in the possible ramifications” (Kirkus Reviews).
In this troubling and wide-ranging account, acclaimed journalist Juliette Volcler looks at the long history of efforts by military and police forces to deploy sound against enemies, criminals, and law-abiding citizens. During the 2004 battle over the Iraqi city of Fallujah, US Marines bolted large speakers to the roofs of their Humvees, blasting AC/DC, Eminem, and Metallica songs through the city’s narrow streets as part of a targeted psychological operation against militants that has now become standard practice in American military operations in Afghanistan. In the historic center of Brussels, nausea-inducing sound waves are unleashed to prevent teenagers from lingering after hours. High-decibel, “nonlethal” sonic weapons have become the tools of choice for crowd control at major political demonstrations from Gaza to Wall Street and as a form of torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere.
In an insidious merger of music, technology, and political repression, loud sound has emerged in the last decade as an unlikely mechanism for intimidating individuals as well as controlling large groups. “Thorough and well researched,” Extremely Loud documents and interrogates this little-known modern phenomenon, exposing it as a sinister threat to the peace and quiet that societies have traditionally craved (Publishers Weekly).
“Extremely Loud makes you shiver, or cover your ears, at the technological buildup now at the service of the most sophisticated forms of repression.” —Libération -
The Machine
A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right$16.95Before Barack Obama had even taken the oath of office after his historic victory in 2008, cadres of lobbyists, oil tycoons, and right-wing politicians met to plan his political demise. The massive conservative infrastructure created by business groups beginning in the 1970s would not be sufficient, they concluded: in the age of Obama, something new—and bold—had to be done.Four years later, the blogger who exposed the nefarious Koch brothers and who first reported on the lobbyists who brought us the Tea Parties gives us a brilliant, withering exposé of the plans to make America conservative again. Informed by years of deep research and firsthand reporting, Lee Fang “knows it better than anyone writing today” (Jennifer Granholm). He dissects the dynamics of the conservative message machine, traces the money trail, and explicates how the right-wing machine has cleverly adapted to crush Obama and progressive reform. Fang also takes stock of the 2012 election results, warning us that, with Obama’s reelection, the right is only going to dig deeper ideological trenches.
One of the star investigative journalists of his generation, Fang has been hailed as a “fearless American muckraker” (Jane Mayer, The New Yorker). In this indispensable handbook, he sheds light on the darkest corners of the new conservative movement, telling the story of the people, the money, and the strategies that makes it tick. The Machine is essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of our democracy.
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Electoral Dysfunction
A Survival Manual for American Voters$17.95Imagine a country where the right to vote is not guaranteed by the Constitution, where the candidate with the most votes loses, and where paperwork requirements and bureaucratic bungling disenfranchise millions. You’re living in it. If the consequences weren’t so serious, it would be funny.
An eye-opening, fact-filled companion to the forthcoming PBS documentary starring political satirist and commentator Mo Rocca, Electoral Dysfunction illuminates a broad array of issues, including the Founding Fathers’ decision to omit the right to vote from the Constitution—and the legal system’s patchwork response to this omission; the battle over voter ID, voter impersonation, and voter fraud; the foul-ups that plague Election Day, from ballot design to contested recounts; the role of partisan officials in running elections; and the anti-democratic origins and impact of the Electoral College. The book concludes with a prescription for a healthy voting system by Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote.
Published in the run-up to the 2012 election, Electoral Dysfunction is for readers across the political spectrum who want their votes to count.
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Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?
How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life$18.95 – $25.95Try to imagine your life in a full-blown European social democracy, especially the German version. Free public goods, a bit of worker control, and whopping trade surpluses? Social democracy doesn’t sound too bad. Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? reveals where you might have been happier—or at least had time off to be unhappy properly. It explains why Americans should pay attention to Germany, where ordinary people can work three hundred to four hundred hours a year less than we do and still have one of the most competitive economies in the world. -
Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven?
The Essential Writings of the Professor Glenn Beck Loves to Hate$17.95The sociologist and political scientist Frances Fox Piven and her late husband Richard Cloward have been famously credited by Glenn Beck with devising the “Cloward/Piven Strategy,” a world view responsible, according to Beck, for everything from creating a “culture of poverty” and fomenting “violent revolution” to causing global warming and the recent financial crisis. Called an “enemy of the people,” over the past year Piven has been subjected to an unprecedented campaign of hatred and disinformation, spearheaded by Beck.
How is it that a distinguished university professor, past president of the American Sociological Association, and recipient of numerous awards and accolades for her work on behalf of the poor and for American voting rights, has attracted so much negative attention? For anyone who is skeptical of the World According to Beck, here is a guide to the ideas that Glenn fears most.
Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven? is a concise, accessible introduction to Piven’s actual thinking (versus Beck’s outrageous claims), from her early work on welfare rights and “poor people’s movements,” written with her late husband Richard Cloward, through her influential examination of American voting habits, and her most recent work on the possibilities for a new movement for progressive reform. A major corrective to right-wing bombast, this essential book is also a rich source of ideas and inspiration for anyone interested in progressive change. -
What the (Active Verb) Is Wrong with the Right?
A Fill-in-the-Blanks Game for the Rest of Us$12.95After a long political season of listening to Glenn Beck’s loony rants, Sarah Palin’s off-kilter phraseology, and Rand Paul’s downright oddball elocutions, authors Shelby Gragg and Stefan Petrucha were struck by an astonishing similarity to the beloved fill-in-the-blank games of their childhood. And so the hilarious spoof What the (Active Verb) Is Wrong with the Right? was born.
This laugh-out-loud parody invites readers to create their own fanciful sentences that would make any right-wing nut proud. From the roots of the rabid right (testing our knowledge of the McCarthy hearings and Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech), through the O’Reilly and Hannity ascendancy, and up to the heyday of Glenn and Sarah, What the (Active Verb) Is Wrong with the Right? touches on the greatest hits and the most outrageous misses of contemporary conservative rhetoric.
Including favorites such as Ann Coulter and Ronald Reagan, along with a supporting cast of thousands of tea partiers and irate Fox News viewers, here’s the ultimate impulse buy/graduation gift/stocking stuffer that will provide hours of cathartic and comic relief for the rest of us. Chuckle at the rabid right! Guffaw through O’Reilly and Hannity! Giggle at Glenn and Sarah! And laugh until you weep for the fate of the nation!
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Political Awakenings
$17.95A “remarkable collection” of insight and inspiration from 20 leaders and thinkers, including Elizabeth Warren, Howard Zinn, and Oliver Stone (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
As a kid, Noam Chomsky handed out the Daily Mirror at his uncle’s newsstand on 72nd Street, inadvertently finding himself in a buzzing intellectual and political hub for European immigrants in New York. Iranian human rights Nobelist Shirin Ebadi and her husband signed their own legal contract, attempting to restore equality to their marriage after the Iranian Revolution effectively erased the legal rights of women. Elizabeth Warren set out to expose those frauds declaring bankruptcy and taking advantage of the system—only to discover, in her research, a very different story of hard-working middle-class families facing economic collapse in the absence of a social safety net. While studying at Oxford, a young Tariq Ali made a bet with a friend that he could work the Vietnam War into every single answer on his final exams.
In this rousing, thoughtful, often funny, and always inspiring volume, a diverse and impressive group of thinkers reflect on those formative experiences that shaped their own political commitments. A fascinating new window into the revealing links between the personal and the political, Political Awakenings will engage readers across generations.
“Fascinating.” —Booklist -
Unjust Deserts
How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back$17.95Warren Buffett is worth nearly $50 billion. Does he “deserve” all this money? Buffett himself will tell you that “society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I’ve earned.”
Unjust Deserts offers an entirely new approach to the wealth question. In a lively synthesis of modern economic, technological, and cultural research, Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly demonstrate that up to 90 percent (and perhaps more) of current economic output derives not from individual ingenuity, effort, or investment but from our collective inheritance of scientific and technological knowledge: an inheritance we all receive as a “free lunch.”
Alperovitz and Daly then pursue the implications of this research, persuasively arguing that there is no reason any one person should be entitled to that inheritance. Recognizing the true dimensions of our unearned inheritance leads inevitably to a new and powerful moral case for wealth redistribution—and to a series of practical policies to achieve it in an era when the disparities have become untenable.
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The Torture Memos
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On Empire
AmericaWarand Global Supremacy$12.95“A small volume for igniting big discussions” (Booklist), the renowned historian Eric Hobsbawm’s On Empire is a major new intellectual resource for anyone seeking to understand America’s fate in the new millennium.
In four brief chapters encompassing a century of world history, Hobsbawm engages the key questions of our era with his characteristic wit, precision, and historical breadth of knowledge. A startling image of danger and instability emerges as On Empire sketches the tangled relationship between globalization, war, and the prospects for peace in a world that has witnessed uninterrupted military conflict since 1914.
It is against this somber backdrop that Hobsbawm offers his views about why America will never achieve the dominance of past empires—despite the overwhelming preponderance of U.S. military power in the world. And in a powerful series of historical observations about the war in Iraq, Hobsbawm dismantles every major assumption underlying American military strategy, demonstrating the utter futility of U.S. hopes for “victory” in the Middle East.
“Good grounds for heated discussion about America’s role in the world” (Kirkus Reviews), On Empire is a brilliant new intellectual volley from “our greatest living historian” (The New York Review of Books). -
Grand Illusion
The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny$27.95Ralph Nader’s former campaign manager “takes the biggest swing—not a jab, but a roundhouse punch—at America’s corrupt electoral system” (Phil Donahue).
As the national campaign manager for Ralph Nader’s historic runs for president in 2000 and 2004, Theresa Amato had a rare ringside role in two of the most hotly contested presidential elections this country has seen. In Grand Illusion, she gives us a witty, thoughtful critique of the American electoral system, as well as a powerful argument for opening up the contest as if people and their daily lives mattered.
While making the case for specific reforms in the United States’ arcane system of ballot access laws, complex federal regulations, and partisan control of elections, Amato also offers a spirited history of how third-party and Independent candidates have kept important issues on the table in elections past and contribute to our country’s political life. Even the most fervent Nader critics will think twice about Nader’s role in 2000, thanks to Amato’s trenchant factual analysis.
Looking beyond the Nader story to campaigns waged by challengers John Anderson, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and others, Amato shows how limiting ourselves to two candidates deprives our country of a robust political life, strips would-be contenders of their free speech and association rights, and cheats voters out of meaningful political choices.
“Amato displays an encyclopedic knowledge of election law, and her recommendations for election reform, including a comprehensive plan for ‘Federal Administration and Financing of Elections,’ are crucial contributions to the debate over election law.” —Publishers Weekly -
Keeping Down the Black Vote
Race and the Demobilization of American Voters$26.95A controversial examination of how our political system, despite “Get Out the Vote” rhetoric, works to suppress the vote—especially the votes of African Americans
Today, over forty years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 demolished bars to voting for African Americans, the effort to prevent black people—as well as Latinos and the poor in general—from voting is experiencing a resurgence. A myriad of new tactics, some of which adopt the mantle of “election reform,” has evolved to suppress the vote. In this sharply argued new book, three of America’s leading experts on party politics and elections demonstrate that our political system is as focused on stopping people from voting as on getting Americans to go to the polls.
In recent years, the Republican Party, the Bush administration, and the conservative movement have devoted a remarkable amount of effort to controlling election machinery (the scandal over federal prosecutors was in part over their refusal to gin up election-fraud cases). But Keeping Down the Black Vote shows that the effort to rig the system is as old as American political parties themselves, and race is at the heart of the game.
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