Best of
History-And-Politics

2018

Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian


James H. Cone - 2018
    Widely regarded as the "Father of Black Theology, this autobiographical work by James Cone is truly the capstone to his career.

Radical Help: How We Can Remake the Relationships Between Us and Revolutionise the Welfare State


Hilary Cottam - 2018
    The welfare state was revolutionary: it lifted thousands out of poverty, provided decent homes, good education and security. But it is out of kilter now: an elaborate and expensive system of managing needs and risks. Today we face new challenges. Our resources have changed. Hilary Cottam takes us through five 'Experiments' to show us a new design. We start on a Swindon housing estate where families who have spent years revolving within our current welfare systems are supported to design their own way out. We spend time with young people who are helped to make new connections - with radical results. We turn to the question of good health care and then to the world of work and see what happens when people are given different tools to make change. Then we see those over sixty design a new and affordable system of support. At the heart of this way of working is human connection. Upending the current crisis of managing scarcity, we see instead that our capacities for the relationships that can make the changes are abundant. We must work with individuals, families and communities to grow the core capabilities we all need to flourish. Radical Help describes the principles behind the approach, the design process that makes the work possible and the challenges of transition. It is bold - and above all, practical. It is not a book of dreams. It is about concrete new ways of organising that already have been developing across Britain. Radical Help creates a new vision and a radically different approach that can take care of us once more, from cradle to grave.

Politics for Beginners


Alex Frith - 2018
    That’s why Usborne are publishing Politics for Beginners, ideal for children (and adults) who’d like a no-nonsense, easy-to-understand guide to what politics is all about.What is an election? Who gets to be Prime Minister or President? What does immigration mean? This essential introduction to politics for children answers all these questions and many more. Topics debated include capitalism, socialism and nationalism, terrorism, voting systems, free speech and human rights. Includes:- Simple explanations of BIG ideas- Cartoons, comic strips and diagrams- Debating tips- Internet links - Glossary and index

Urban Naxals


Vivek Agnihotri - 2018
    Naxalites are waging war on India with details plans for an overthrow of the State. Urban Naxals act to amplify their message, serve as recruiters and wage a propaganda war through social and conventional media. This gripping story recounts Agnihotri's own grooming in College to be an Urban Naxal and details the plans and modus operandi of the movement. Agnihotri's story is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of "Buddha in a Traffic Jam", the violent resistance to its screening, and an expose of the world's largest extreme-left terror movement and its penetration into urban India.

Wood, Luck & Survival: The Journey of a Father and his Son Through the Holocaust Horrors


Reuven (Gutkin) Govrin - 2018
    When the German army invaded Riga, Latvian Jewry numbered about 95,000, of which only about 1,000 survived the war. The story of how Wood and luck somehow enabled Max and his father to survive the Holocaust, unlike so many, is riveting. The family business was engaged with forestry and wood, so Max, his older brother, and their father were forced to work in wood for the Nazis, while his mother and little brother were murdered. A harrowing journey replete with painful memories… The book traces their harrowing journey from work camp to work camp, a terrible choice that the father is forced to make, the aftermath of the war in Europe, and finally arrival in Israel. For 65 years Max silently bore the burden of these memories until the author led him on a path of discovery through his painful personal history. Scroll up now and get your copy of Wood, luck & survival!

Back in the Game: The Majority Whip's Remarkable Fight for His Life


Steve Scalise - 2018
    On the morning of June 14, 2017, at a practice field for the annual Congressional Baseball Game, a man opened fire on the Republican team, wounding five, including Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise nearly fatally. In heart-pounding fashion, Scalise's minute-by-minute account tells not just his own harrowing story of barely surviving this horrific attack, but the stories of heroes who emerged in the seconds after the shooting began; in the minutes, hours, and days after he suffered a devastating gunshot wound, in order to save his life and the lives of his friends. Scalise delves into the backgrounds of each hero, seeking to understand how everyone wound up right where they needed to be, right when they needed to be there, and in possession of just the knowledge and experience they needed in order to save his life. Scalise takes us through each miracle, and each person who experienced it. He brings us the story of Rep. Brad Wenstrup, an Army Reserve officer and surgeon whose experience serving in combat in Iraq prepared him to save Scalise's life that day; of the members of his security detail who acted with nearly cinematic courage; of the police, paramedics, helicopter pilots and trauma team who came together to save his life. It tells, most importantly, of the citizens from all over America, who came together in ways big and small to help one grateful man, and whose prayers lifted Scalise up, during the worst of his hospitalization.As we follow the gripping, heart pounding, and ultimately inspiring story, we begin to learn what Scalise was experiencing in real time; That Americans look out for each other; that there is far more uniting us than dividing us.

Hitler and the Habsburgs: The F�hrer's Vendetta Against the Austrian Royals


James McMurtry Longo - 2018
    It was then and there that Adolf Hitler's obsession with the Habsburg Imperial family became the catalyst for his vendetta against a vanished empire, a dead archduke, and his royal orphans. That hatred drove Hitler's rise to power and led directly to the tragedy of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The royal orphans of Archduke Franz Ferdinand-offspring of an upstairs-downstairs marriage that scandalized the tradition-bound Habsburg Empire-came to personify to Adolf Hitler, and others, all that was wrong about modernity, the twentieth century, and the Habsburg's multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Austro-Hungarian Empire. They were outsiders in the greatest family of royal insiders in Europe, which put them on a collision course with Adolf Hitler.As he rose to power Hitler's hatred toward the Habsburgs and their diverse empire fixated on Franz Ferdinand's sons, who became outspoken critics and opponents of the Nazi party and its racist ideology. When Germany seized Austria in 1938, they were the first two Austrians arrested by the Gestapo, deported to Germany, and sent to Dachau. Within hours they went from palace to prison. The women in the family, including the Archduke's only daughter Princess Sophie Hohenberg, declared their own war on Hitler. Their tenacity and personal courage in the face of betrayal, treachery, torture, and starvation sustained the family during the war and in the traumatic years that followed.Through a decade of research and interviews with the descendants of the royal Habsburgs, scholar James Longo explores the roots of Hitler's determination to destroy the family of the dead Archduke. And he uncovers the family members' courageous fight against the Führer.

Storm Clouds over the Pacific, 1931–41


Peter Harmsen - 2018
    Peter Harmsen uses his renowned ability to weave together complex events into an entertaining and revealing narrative, including facets of the war that may be unknown to many readers of WWII history, such as the war in Subarctic conditions on the Aleutians, or the mass starvations that cost the lives of millions in China, Indochina, and India, and offering a range of perspectives to reflect what war was like both at the top and at the bottom, from the Oval Office to the blistering sands of Peleliu.Storm Clouds begins the story long before Pearl Harbor, showing how the war can only be understood if ancient hatreds and long-standing geopolitics are taken into account. Peter Harmsen demonstrates how Japan and China's ancient enmity grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries leading to increased tensions in the 1930s which exploded into conflict in 1937. The battles of Shanghai and Nanjing were followed by the battle of Taierzhuang in 1938, China's only major victory. A war of attrition continued up to 1941, the year when Japan made the momentous decision for all-out war; the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor catapulted the United States into the war, and the Japanese also overran British and Dutch territories throughout the western Pacific.

Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom


Stephen Gowans - 2018
    First Japan, then the United States.When Kim Il-sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, along with other patriots, launched a guerrilla war against Japanese colonial domination in 1932, other Koreans joined the side of Japan's Empire. They became officers in the Japanese army or part of the hated colonial police force, thus traitors to the cause of Korean freedom. After the US engineered partition of their country, Koreans fought a conventional war from 1950-1953. Three million Koreans gave their lives.This insightful, informative and timely book answers the nagging questions and provides a much-needed antidote to the jingoist clamor spewing from most quarters whenever Korea is discussed.

The Complete Story of Sadako Sasaki


Sue DiCicco - 2018
    While in the hospital, Sadako learns to fold origami cranes and believes that folding the cranes might lead to the granting of a wish. A loving and compassionate child, Sadako's life inspires her classmates to create a memorial in her honor, to remember all the children impacted by war.Filled with new illustrations and photos of Sadako and her family never before seen by the public, Masahiro Sasaki, Sadako's older brother, and Sue DiCicco, founder of The Peace Crane Project, tell Sadako's complete story in English for the first time.Proceeds from this book are shared equally between The Sadako Legacy NPO and The Peace Crane Project.

Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear


Matthew Kaemingk - 2018
    Their arrival has ignited a series of fierce public debates on both sides of the Atlantic about religious freedom and tolerance, terrorism and security, gender and race, and much more. How can Christians best respond to this situation?In this book theologian and ethicist Matthew Kaemingk offers a thought-provoking Christian perspective on the growing debates over Muslim presence in the West. Rejecting both fearful nationalism and romantic multiculturalism, Kaemingk makes the case for a third way—a Christian pluralism that is committed to both the historic Christian faith and the public rights, dignity, and freedom of Islam.

A Matter of Confidence: The Inside Story of the Political Battle for BC


Robert Shaw - 2018
     British Columbia's political arena has always been the site of dramatic rises and falls, infighting, scandal, and come-from-behind victories. However, no one was prepared for the historic events of spring 2017, when the Liberal government of Christy Clark, one of the most polarizing premiers in recent history, was toppled.A Matter of Confidence gives readers an insider's look at the overconfidence that fuelled the rise and fall of Clark's premiership and the historic non-confidence vote that defeated her government and ended her political career. Beginning with this pivotal moment, the book goes back and chronicles the downfall of Clark's predecessor, Gordon Campbell, which led to her unlikely victory in 2013, and traces the events leading up to her defeat at the hands of her NDP and Green opponents. Told by reporters Richard Zussman and Rob Shaw, who covered every moment of the election cycle, and illustrated by candid and extensive interviews with political insiders from both sides of the aisle--including Christy Clark and John Horgan--this book is a must read for anyone who cares about BC politics and the future of the province.

To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment


Laurence H. Tribe - 2018
    Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz provide an authoritative guide to impeachment's past and a bold argument about its proper role today. In an era of expansive presidential power and intense partisanship, we must rethink impeachment for the twenty-first century.Of impeachments, one Constitutional Convention delegate declared, "A good magistrate will not fear them. A bad one will be kept in fear of them." To End a Presidency is an essential book for all Americans seeking to understand how this crucial but fearsome power should be exercised.

Rise & Resist: How to Change the World


Clare Press - 2018
    The political march is back in a big way, as communities rally to build movements for environmental and social justice. But today's context calls for increasingly creative strategies to make our voices heard. Crossing the globe, Clare Press meets passionate change-makers who believe in the power of the positive. From eco warriors and zero wasters to knitting nannas, introvert craftivists to intersectional feminists, they're all up for a revolution of sorts. Are you? Join Press as she tracks the formation of a new counterculture, united by a grand purpose- to rethink how we live today to build a more sustainable tomorrow.

Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness


Kenneth M. Pollack - 2018
    They have lost many wars that by all rights they should have won, and in their best performances only ever achieved quite modest accomplishments. Over time, soldiers, scholars, and military experts have offered various explanations for this pattern. Reliance on Soviet military methods, the poor civil-military relations of the Arab world, the underdevelopment of the Arab states, and patterns of behavior derived from the wider Arab culture, have all been suggested as the ultimate source of Arab military difficulties.In Armies of Sand, Kenneth M. Pollack's powerful and riveting history of Arab armies from the end of World War Two to the present, assesses these differing explanations and isolates the most important causes. Over the course of the book, he examines the combat performance of fifteen Arab armies and air forces in virtually every Middle Eastern war, from the Jordanians and Syrians in 1948 to Hizballah in 2006 and the Iraqis and ISIS in 2014-2017. He then compares these experiences to the performance of the Argentine, Chadian, Chinese, Cuban, North Korean, and South Vietnamese armed forces in their own combat operations during the twentieth century. The book ultimately concludes that reliance on Soviet doctrine was more of a help than a hindrance to the Arabs. In contrast, politicization and underdevelopment were both important factors limiting Arab military effectiveness, but patterns of behavior derived from the dominant Arab culture was the most important factor of all. Pollack closes with a discussion of the rapid changes occurring across the Arab world-political, economic, and cultural-as well as the rapid evolution in warmaking as a result of the information revolution. He suggests that because both Arab society and warfare are changing, the problems that have bedeviled Arab armed forces in the past could dissipate or even vanish in the future, with potentially dramatic consequences for the Middle East military balance. Sweeping in its historical coverage and highly accessible, this will be the go-to reference for anyone interested in the history of warfare in the Middle East since 1945.

The Common Good


Robert B. Reich - 2018
    Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship. Rooting his argument in everyday reality and common sense, Reich demonstrates the existence of a common good, and argues that it is this that defines a society or a nation. Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine it. Over the course of the past five decades, Reich contends, America has been in a slowly accelerating vicious cycle--one that can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh what really matters, and how we as a country should relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership.Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers: a fundamental statement about the purpose of society and a cri de coeur to save America's soul.

How Winston Churchill changed the world


Michael Shelden - 2018
    

Embattled Freedom: Journeys Through the Civil War's Slave Refugee Camps


Amy Murrell Taylor - 2018
    In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands more followed in a mass exodus from slavery that would destroy the system once and for all. Drawing on an extraordinary survey of slave refugee camps throughout the country, Embattled Freedom reveals as never before the everyday experiences of these refugees from slavery as they made their way through the vast landscape of army-supervised camps that emerged during the war. Amy Murrell Taylor vividly reconstructs the human world of wartime emancipation, taking readers inside military-issued tents and makeshift towns, through commissary warehouses and active combat, and into the realities of individuals and families struggling to survive physically as well as spiritually. Narrating their journeys in and out of the confines of the camps, Taylor shows in often gripping detail how the most basic necessities of life were elemental to a former slave's quest for freedom and full citizenship.The stories of individuals--storekeepers, a laundress, and a minister among them--anchor this ambitious and wide-ranging history and demonstrate with new clarity how contingent the slaves' pursuit of freedom was on the rhythms and culture of military life. Taylor brings new insight into the enormous risks taken by formerly enslaved people to find freedom in the midst of the nation's most destructive war.

The Flying Tigers: The Untold Story of the American Pilots Who Waged a Secret War Against Japan Before Pearl Harbor


Sam Kleiner - 2018
    Led by legendary army pilot Claire Chennault, these men left behind an America still at peace in the summer of 1941 using false identities to travel across the Pacific to a run-down airbase in the jungles of Burma. In the wake of the disaster at Pearl Harbor this motley crew was the first group of Americans to take on the Japanese in combat, shooting down hundreds of Japanese aircraft in the skies over Burma, Thailand, and China. At a time when the Allies were being defeated across the globe, the Flying Tigers’ exploits gave hope to Americans and Chinese alike. Kleiner takes readers into the cockpits of their iconic shark-nosed P-40 planes—one of the most familiar images of the war—as the Tigers perform nail-biting missions against the Japanese. He profiles the outsize personalities involved in the operation, including Chennault, whose aggressive tactics went against the prevailing wisdom of military strategy; Greg “Pappy” Boyington, the man who would become the nation’s most beloved pilot until he was shot down and became a POW; Emma Foster, one of the nurses in the unit who had a passionate romance with a pilot named John Petach; and Madame Chiang Kai-shek herself, who first brought Chennault to China and who would come to visit these young Americans.A dramatic story of a covert operation whose very existence would have scandalized an isolationist United States, The Flying Tigers is the unforgettable account of a group of Americans whose heroism changed the world, and who cemented an alliance between the United States and China as both nations fought against seemingly insurmountable odds.

LBJ's 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America's Year of Upheaval


Kyle Longley - 2018
    In the United States, perhaps no one was more undone by the events of 1968 than President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Kyle Longley leads his readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of what Johnson characterized as the 'year of a continuous nightmare'. Longley explores how LBJ perceived the most significant events of 1968, including the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy, and the violent Democratic National Convention in Chicago. His responses to the crises were sometimes effective but often tragic, and LBJ's refusal to seek re-election underscores his recognition of the challenges facing the country in 1968. As much a biography of a single year as it is of LBJ, LBJ's 1968 vividly captures the tumult that dominated the headlines on a local and global level.

Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower


Michael Beckley - 2018
    Now many analysts believe that other countries are rising and the United States is in decline. Is the unipolar moment over? Is America finished as a superpower?In this book, Michael Beckley argues that the United States has unique advantages over other nations that, if used wisely, will allow it to remain the world’s sole superpower throughout this century. We are not living in a transitional, post-Cold War era. Instead, we are in the midst of what he calls the unipolar era—a period as singular and important as any epoch in modern history. This era, Beckley contends, will endure because the US has a much larger economic and military lead over its closest rival, China, than most people think and the best prospects of any nation to amass wealth and power in the decades ahead.Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, this book covers hundreds of years of great power politics and develops new methods for measuring power and predicting the rise and fall of nations. By documenting long-term trends in the global balance of power and explaining their implications for world politics, the book provides guidance for policymakers, businesspeople, and scholars alike.

Growing Pains: the future of democracy (and work)


Gwynne Dyer - 2018
    But how did this come about? And what does it mean for the future?Populism and ultra-nationalism brought about the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s. Now, as Trump sits in the White House, Britain negotiates its way out of the EU, and countries across Europe see substantial gains in support for the extreme Right, award-winning journalist, author, and historian Gwynne Dyer asks how we got here, and where we go next. Dyer examines the global challenges facing us all today and explains how they have contributed to a world of inequality, poverty, and joblessness, conditions which he argues inevitably lead to the rise of populism. The greatest threat to social and political stability lies in the rise of automation, which will continue to eliminate jobs, whether politicians admit that it is happening or not. To avoid a social and political catastrophe, we will have to find ways of putting real money into the pockets of those who have no work. But this is not a book without hope. Our capacity for overcoming the worst has been tested again and again throughout history, and we have always survived. To do so now, Dyer argues, we must embrace radical solutions to the real difficulties facing individuals, or find ourselves back in the 1930s with no way out.

The Meaning of Life: The Case for Abolishing Life Sentences


Marc Mauer - 2018
    

Our Boys: The Story of a Paratrooper


Helen Parr - 2018
    It is a first in many ways - a history of the Parachute Regiment, a group with an elite and aggressive reputation; a study of close-quarters combat on the Falkland Islands; and an exploration of the many legacies of this short and symbolic war.Told unflinchingly through the experiences of people who lived through it, Our Boys shows how the Falklands conflict began to change Britain's relationship with its soldiers, and our attitudes to trauma and war itself. It is also the story of one particular soldier: the author's uncle, who was killed during the conflict, and whose fate has haunted both the author and his fellow paratroopers ever since.'This is an extraordinary book. It is partly about the Falklands War itself and the terrible things that the Paras endured, and the terrible things that some of them did, but it is also about the white working class of the 1970s and why some men born into this class ended up marching across an island that most of them had never heard of.

Janusz Korczak :The Man Who Knew How to Love Children: The Educational Philosophy & Life of the Great Teacher Told By his Admiring Student - A Child Holocaust Survivor


Itzchak Belfer - 2018
    Belfer allows us a rare glimpse into Korczak's innovative methods, describing his daily life, the house arrangements, and how conflicts were resolved. He believed in giving children freedom, allowing them to manage themselves and develop their unique talents. Although he was murdered by the Nazis, the ideas and methods of Janusz Korczak live on When the Nazis occupied Warsaw, Belfer escaped through the woods to Russia, and was the only survivor in his family. Korczak, the legendary Polish pediatrician, author, and educator, was murdered by the Nazis when he refused to save himself and abandon his Jewish children. Teachers all over the world have adopted his innovative ideas and practice. Beautifully illustrated by the author and suitable for children The book is decorated with Itzchak Belfer's special drawings and is written for children age six and up. Scroll up now and get your copy of Janusz Korczak: The Man Who Knew How to Love Children!

Fragmented Democracy


Jamila Michener - 2018
    Crucially, Medicaid is also an intergovernmental program that yokes poverty to federalism: the federal government determines its broad contours, while states have tremendous discretion over how Medicaid is designed and implemented. Where some locales are generous and open handed, others are tight-fisted and punitive. In Fragmented Democracy, Jamila Michener demonstrates the consequences of such disparities for democratic citizenship. Unpacking how federalism transforms Medicaid beneficiaries' interpretations of government and structures their participation in politics, the book examines American democracy from the vantage point(s) of those who are living in or near poverty, (disproportionately) Black or Latino, and reliant on a federated government for vital resources.

A Very Stable Genius


Mike Luckovich - 2018
    But Mike rose to the challenge, pulling no punches and stripping down Trump and his cronies with his signature wit and style. Covering Trump’s antics from the 2016 election through to the Mueller investigation, the cartoons in A Very Stable Genius tackle key moments in Trump’s political career, offering scathing insights on everything from his disastrous track record with women to his revolving-door cabinet to his suspiciously intimate relationship with a certain Russian leader. Woven through with searing commentary and personal anecdotes, Mike’s cartoons will shock and delight you, making you think as much as they make you laugh — when you’re not too busy being terrified.

Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Kenya


Nanjala Nyabola - 2018
    And, as in Western nations, the digital age has had dramatic effects on society and politics. Yet, while we hear about the #MeToo movement and the Russian bot scandal, there is little appreciation for the feminist movement #MyDressMyChoice and the subversion of state-run political propaganda by social media.Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics aims to change this by presenting a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalized groups, particularly women and the disabled, digital spaces have provided vital platforms that allow Kenyans to build new communities that transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. Covering attempts by political elites to prevent social movements from translating online visibility into meaningful offline gains, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts to contain online activism and new methods of feminist mobilization, as well as how “fake news,” Cambridge Analytica, and allegations of hacking contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy for the first time from the African perspective, Nanjala Nyabola’s groundbreaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.

Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood


Joshua Keating - 2018
    Through stories about these would-be countries’ efforts at self-determination, as well as their respective challenges, Keating shows that there is no universal legal authority determining what a country is. He argues that although our current world map appears fairly static, economic, cultural, and environmental forces in the places he describes may spark change. Keating ably ties history to incisive and sympathetic observations drawn from his travels and personal interviews with residents, political leaders, and scholars in each of these “invisible countries.”

American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family


Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - 2018
    describes his life growing up Kennedy in a tumultuous time in history that eerily echoes the issues of nuclear confrontation, religion, race, and inequality that we confront today. In this powerful book that combines the best aspects of memoir and political history, the third child of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of JFK takes us on an intimate journey through his life, including watershed moments in the history of our nation. Stories of his grandparents Joseph and Rose set the stage for their nine remarkable children, among them three U.S. senators—Teddy, Bobby, and Jack—one of whom went on to become attorney general, and the other, the president of the United States.We meet Allen Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover, two men whose agencies posed the principal threats to American democracy and values. Their power struggles with the Kennedys underpinned all the defining conflicts of the era. We live through the Cuban Missile Crisis, when insubordinate spies and belligerent generals in the Pentagon and Moscow brought the world to the cliff edge of nuclear war. At Hickory Hill in Virginia, where RFK Jr. grew up, we encounter the celebrities who gathered at the second most famous address in Washington, members of what would later become known as America’s Camelot. Through his father’s role as attorney general we get an insider’s look as growing tensions over civil rights led to pitched battles in the streets and 16,000 federal troops were called in to enforce desegregation at Ole Miss. We see growing pressure to fight wars in Southeast Asia to stop communism. We relive the assassination of JFK, RFK’s run for the presidency that was cut short by his own death, and the aftermath of those murders on the Kennedy family.These pages come vividly to life with intimate stories of RFK Jr.’s own experiences, not just with historical events and the movers who shaped them but also with his mother and father, with his own struggles with addiction, and with the ways he eventually made peace with both his Kennedy legacy and his own demons. The result is a lyrically written book that is remarkably stirring and relevant, providing insight, hope, and steady wisdom for Americans as they wrestle, as never before, with questions about America’s role in history and the world and what it means to be American.

Prisoner 345: My Six Years in Guantánamo


Sami Alhaj - 2018
    He spent over six years in the American prison camp in Guantánamo, Cuba, before he was finally released and charges dropped.This is Sami’s story, told in his own words, in an act of generosity as he shares his pain with us. The story is told at his own pace, as the memories of those years in Guantánamo came flooding back to him after he returned to Al Jazeera in Doha.

The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History


Bashir BashirYochi Fischer - 2018
    While these two foundational tragedies are often discussed separately and in abstraction from the constitutive historical global contexts of nationalism and colonialism, The Holocaust and the Nakba explores the historical, political, and cultural intersections between them. The majority of the contributors argue that these intersections are embedded in cultural imaginations, colonial and asymmetrical power relations, realities, and structures. Focusing on them paves the way for a new political, historical, and moral grammar that enables a joint Arab-Jewish dwelling and supports historical reconciliation in Israel/Palestine.This book does not seek to draw a parallel or comparison between the Holocaust and Nakba or to merely inaugurate a "dialogue" between them. Instead, it searches for a new historical and political grammar for relating and narrating their complicated intersections. The book features prominent international contributors, including a foreword by Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury on the centrality of the Holocaust and Nakba in the essential struggle of humanity against racism, and an afterword by literary scholar Jacqueline Rose on the challenges and contributions of the linkage between the Holocaust and Nakba for power to shift and a world of justice and equality to be created between the two peoples. The Holocaust and the Nakba is the first extended and collective scholarly treatment in English of these two constitutive traumas together.

The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders


B.J. Hollars - 2018
      In May 1961, despite multiple Supreme Court rulings, segregation remained alive and well within the system of interstate travel. All across the American South, interstate buses as well as their travel facilities were divided racially. This blatant disregard for law and morality spurred the Congress of Racial Equality to send thirteen individuals—seven black, six white—on a harrowing bus trip throughout the South as a sign of protest.   These original riders were met with disapproval, arrests and violence along the way, but that did not stop the movement. That summer, more than four hundred Freedom Riders continued their journey—many of them concluding their ride at Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm, where they endured further abuses and indignities. As a result of the riders sacrifice, by November of 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission finally put an end to interstate commerce segregation, and in the process, elevated the riders to become a source of inspiration for other civil rights campaigns such as voter registration rights and school desegregation.   While much has been written on the Freedom Rides, far less has been published about the individual riders. Join award-winning author B. J. Hollars as he sets out on his own journey to meet them, retracing the historic route and learning the stories of as many surviving riders as he could. The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders offers an intimate look into the lives and legacies of the riders. Throughout the book these civil rights veterans’ poignant, personal stories offer timely insights into America’s racial past and hopeful future.   Weaving the past with the present, Hollars aims to demystify the legendary journey, while also confronting more modern concerns related to race in America. The Road South is part memoir and part research-based journalism. It moves transcends the traditional textbook version of this historical journey to highlight the fascinating stories of the many riders—both black and white—who risked their lives to move the country forward.

With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims, Racism, and Empire


Sohail Daulatzai - 2018
    Prior to 9/11, white supremacy had a violent relationship of dominance with Islam and Muslims. Racism against Muslims today borrows from centuries of white supremacy and is a powerful and effective tool to maintain the status quo.With Stones in Our Hands compiles writings by scholars and activists who are leading the struggle to understand and combat anti-Muslim racism. Through a bold call for a politics of the Muslim Left and the poetics of the Muslim International, this book offers a glimpse into the possibilities of social justice, decolonial struggle, and political solidarity. The essays in this anthology reflect a range of concerns such as the settler colonial occupation of Palestine, surveillance and policing, blackness and radical protest traditions, militarism and empire building, social movements, and political repression. With Stones in Our Hands offers new ideas to achieve decolonization and global solidarity.Contributors: Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, Abdullah Al-Arian, Arshad Imtiaz Ali, Evelyn Alsultany, Vivek Bald, Abbas Barzegar, Hatem Bazian, Sylvia Chan-Malik, Arash Davari, Fatima El-Tayeb, Hafsa Kanjwal, Ronak K. Kapadia, Maryam Kashani, Robin D. G. Kelley, Su‘ad Abdul Khabeer, Nadine Naber, Selim Nadi, Sherene H. Razack, Atef Said, Steven Salaita, Stephen Sheehi.

Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia


Shenila Khoja-Moolji - 2018
    Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Forging the Ideal Educated Girl, Shenila Khoja-Moolji traces the figure of the 'educated girl' to examine the evolving politics of educational reform and development campaigns in colonial India and Pakistan. She challenges the prevailing common sense associated with calls for women's and girls' education and argues that such advocacy is not simply about access to education but, more crucially, concerned with producing ideal Muslim woman-/girl-subjects with specific relationships to the patriarchal family, paid work, Islam, and the nation-state. Thus, discourses on girls'/ women's education are sites for the construction of not only gender but also class relations, religion, and the nation.

The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages


Geraldine Heng - 2018
    Examining Europe's encounters with Jews, Muslims, Africans, Native Americans, Mongols, and the Romani ('Gypsies'), from the 12th through 15th centuries, she shows how racial thinking, racial law, racial practices, and racial phenomena existed in medieval Europe before a recognizable vocabulary of race emerged in the West.Analysing sources in a variety of media, including stories, maps, statuary, illustrations, architectural features, history, saints' lives, religious commentary, laws, political and social institutions, and literature, she argues that religion - so much in play again today - enabled the positing of fundamental differences among humans that created strategic essentialisms to mark off human groups and populations for racialized treatment. Her ground-breaking study also shows how race figured in the emergence of homo europaeus and the identity of Western Europe in this time.

Authoritarianism and the Elite Origins of Democracy


Michael Albertus and Victor Menaldo - 2018
    Provides an innovative theory of regime transitions and outcomes, and tests it using extensive evidence between 1800 and today.

Colonial Al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture


Eric Calderwood - 2018
    It may therefore come as a surprise that 80,000 Moroccans fought at General Franco's side in the 1930s. What brought these strange bedfellows together, Eric Calderwood argues, was a highly effective propaganda weapon: the legacy of medieval Muslim Iberia, known as al-Andalus. This legacy served to justify Spain's colonization of Morocco and also to define the Moroccan national culture that supplanted colonial rule.Writers of many political stripes have celebrated convivencia, the fabled "coexistence" of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in medieval Iberia. According to this widely-held view, modern Spain and Morocco are joined through their shared Andalusi past. Colonial al-Andalus traces this supposedly timeless narrative to the mid-1800s, when Spanish politicians and intellectuals first used it to press for Morocco's colonization. Franco later harnessed convivencia to the benefit of Spain's colonial program in Morocco. This shift precipitated an eloquent historical irony. As Moroccans embraced the Spanish insistence on Morocco's Andalusi heritage, a Spanish idea about Morocco gradually became a Moroccan idea about Morocco.Drawing on a rich archive of Spanish, Arabic, French, and Catalan sources--including literature, historiography, journalism, political speeches, schoolbooks, tourist brochures, and visual arts--Calderwood reconstructs the varied political career of convivencia and al-Andalus, showing how shared pasts become raw material for divergent contemporary ideologies, including Spanish fascism and Moroccan nationalism. Colonial al-Andalus exposes the limits of simplistic oppositions between European and Arab, Christian and Muslim, that shape current debates about European colonialism.

Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction


Mark Fisher - 2018
    But what is in- teresting about Haraway's remark - its challenge to the oppositional think- ing that sets up free will against determinism, vitalism against mechanism - has seldom been processed by a mode of theorizing which has tended to reproduce exactly the same oppositions. These theoretical failings, it will be argued here, arise from a resistance to pursuing cybernetics to its limits (a failure evinced as much by cyberneticists as by cultural theorists, it must be added). Unraveling the implications of cybernetics, it will be claimed, takes us out to the Gothic flatline. The Gothic flatline designates a zone of radical immanence. And to theorize this flatline demands a new approach, one committed to the theorization of immanence. This thesis calls that approach Gothic Materialism.

Social Mobility: And Its Enemies


Lee Elliot Major - 2018
    The lack of movement in who gets where in society - particularly when people are stuck at the bottom and the top - costs the nation dear, both in terms of the unfulfilled talents of those left behind and an increasingly detached elite, disinterested in improvements that benefit the rest of society.This book analyses cutting-edge research into how social mobility has changed in Britain over the years, the shifting role of schools and universities in creating a fairer future, and the key to what makes some countries and regions so much richer in opportunities, bringing a clearer understanding of what works and how we can better shape our future.

Hicky's Bengal Gazette: The Untold Story of India's First Newspaper


Andrew Otis - 2018
    Indian princes pose a danger to the East India Company’s plans of commerce and domination. Warren Hastings, the British governor-general, is attempting to consolidate his power in the Company.Johann Zacharias Kiernander is on a mission to convert heathen souls in a land far from his native Sweden though he is not averse to lining his pockets while doing ‘God’s work’.Into this steaming cauldron of skullduggery and intrigue walks James Augustus Hicky, a wild Irishman seeking fame and fortune. Sensing an opportunity, he decides to establish a newspaper, the first of its kind in South Asia. In two short years, his endeavour threatens to lay bare the murky underside of the early British empire. Does it succeed?This is the story of the forces Hicky came up against, the corrupt authorities determined to stop him and of his resourcefulness. The product of five years of research by Andrew Otis in the archives of India, UK and Germany, Hicky’s Bengal Gazette: The Story of India’s First Newspaper is an essential and compelling addition to the history of subcontinental journalism.

We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century


Erwin Chemerinsky - 2018
    Beautifully written and powerfully argued, this is a masterpiece." --Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School, and author of Free Culture Worried about what a super conservative majority on the Supreme Court means for the future of civil liberties? From gun control to reproductive health, a conservative court will reshape the lives of all Americans for decades to come. The time to develop and defend a progressive vision of the U.S. Constitution that protects the rights of all people is now.University of California Berkeley Dean and respected legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky expertly exposes how conservatives are using the Constitution to advance their own agenda that favors business over consumers and employees, and government power over individual rights.But exposure is not enough. Progressives have spent too much of the last forty-five years trying to preserve the legacy of the Warren Court’s most important rulings and reacting to the Republican-dominated Supreme Courts by criticizing their erosion of rights—but have not yet developed a progressive vision for the Constitution itself. Yet, if we just look to the promise of the Preamble—liberty and justice for all—and take seriously its vision, a progressive reading of the Constitution can lead us forward as we continue our fight ensuring democratic rule, effective government, justice, liberty, and equality.Includes the Complete Constitution and Amendments of the United States of America

Thinking Black: Britain, 1964-1985


Rob Waters - 2018
    He shows how, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, black radicalism defined what it meant to be black and what it meant to be radical in Britain.

Crisis: 2038: A Novel


Gerald Huff - 2018
    A crisis is brewing as increasingly intelligent AIs and robots replace more and more human labor, leading to high unemployment and civil unrest. While politicians and the people remain paralyzed by tribal ideologies, two competing voices emerge with radically different solutions. Sara Dhawan, a brilliant sixteen-year-old girl discovered in a small village in India, emerges onto the global stage with a compelling pro-technology message. But a darker force is emerging. A shadowy group of anti-technology terrorists determined to use any means necessary to stop our merging with and subservience to technology. Over the course of five perilous months, the battle plays out, each side leveraging the latest tech, in-depth VR experiences, autonomous explosive drones, and government surveillance through medical implants. Which path the country chooses will determine whether we plunge into social breakdown or chart a course to a more abundant and equally distributed world.

Resisting Occupation in Kashmir


Haley Duschinski - 2018
    Suppressed and unheard, Kashmiri political aspirations were subordinated to larger geopolitical concerns--by opposing governments laying claim to Kashmir, by security experts promoting bilateral peace settlements in the region, and by academic researchers studying the conflict. But since 2008, Kashmiris who grew up in the midst of armed insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare have been deploying new strategies for challenging India's state and military apparatus and projecting their legal and political claims for freedom from Indian rule to global audiences. Resisting Occupation in Kashmir analyzes the social and legal logic of India's occupation of Kashmir in relation to colonialism, militarization, power, democracy, and sovereignty. It also traces how Kashmiri youth are drawing on the region's long history of armed rebellion against Indian domination to reimagine the freedom struggle in the twenty-first century.Resisting Occupation in Kashmir presents new ways of thinking and writing about Kashmir that cross conventional boundaries and point toward alternative ways of conceptualizing the past, present, and future of the region. The volume brings together junior and senior scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds who have conducted extensive fieldwork during the past decade in various regions of Kashmir. The contributors, many of whom were born and raised during the peak of the conflict in the 1990s, offer ethnographically grounded perspectives on contemporary social, legal, and political life in ways that demonstrate the multiplicity of experiences of Kashmiri communities. The essays highlight the ways in which this scholarly orientation--built through collaboration and dialogue across different kinds of borders--offers a new critical approach to Kashmir studies at this transformative and generative moment.Contributors Mona Bhan, Haley Duschinski, Farrukh Faheem, Gowhar Fazili, Bruce Hoffman, Mohamad Junaid, Seema Kazi, Ershad Mahmud, Cynthia Mahmood, Saiba Varma, Ather Zia.

Storied Ground: Landscape and the Shaping of English National Identity


Paul Readman - 2018
    In Storied Ground Paul Readman uncovers why landscape matters so much to the English people, exploring its particular importance in shaping English national identity amid the transformations of modernity. The book takes us from the fells of the Lake District to the uplands of Northumberland; from the streetscapes of industrial Manchester to the heart of London. This panoramic journey reveals the significance, not only of the physical characteristics of landscapes, but also of the sense of the past, collective memories and cultural traditions that give these places their meaning. Between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, Englishness extended far beyond the pastoral idyll of chocolate-box thatched cottages, waving fields of corn and quaint country churches. It was found in diverse locations - urban as well as rural, north as well as south - and it took strikingly diverse forms.

In Pursuit of Conflict


Avalok Langer - 2018
    Fast delivery through DHL/FedEx express.

Wales: The First & Final Colony


Adam Price - 2018
     In it, he writes on many aspects of the politics, history and culture of Wales. It includes some of his most famous speeches to the House of Commons and his rousing speech at Harvard University. The title essay on the history and colonisation of Wales is a great assessment of the current Welsh situation, and in this book he offers ideas for securing a brighter future for Wales. The book is an attempt to add some depth and weight to the growing debate over the viability of Welsh independence.

A Queer Way Out: The Politics of Queer Emigration from Israel


Hila Amit - 2018
    In A Queer Way Out, Hila Amit explores the as-yet-untold story of queer Israeli emigrants. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Berlin, London, and New York, she examines motivations for departure and feelings of unbelonging to the Israeli national collective. Amit shows that sexual orientation and left-wing political affiliation play significant roles in decisions to leave. Queer Israeli emigrants question national and heterosexual norms such as army service, monogamy, and reproduction. Amit argues that emigration itself is not only a political act, but one that pioneers a deliberately unheroic form of resistance to Zionist ideology. This fascinating study enriches our understandings of migration, political activism, and queer forms of living in Israel and beyond.

King Sigismund of Poland and Martin Luther: The Reformation Before Confessionalization


Natalia Nowakowska - 2018
    It offers a new narrative of Luther's dramatic impact on this monarchy - which saw violenturban Reformations and the creation of Christendom's first Lutheran principality by 1525 - placing these events in their comparative European context. King Sigismund's realm appears to offer a major example of sixteenth-century religious toleration: the king tacitly allowed his Hanseatic ports toenact local Reformations, enjoyed excellent relations with his Lutheran vassal duke in Prussia, allied with pro-Luther princes across Europe, and declined to enforce his own heresy edicts. Polish church courts allowed dozens of suspected Lutherans to walk free.Examining these episodes in turn, this study does not treat toleration purely as the product of political calculation or pragmatism. Instead, through close analysis of language, it reconstructs the underlying cultural beliefs about religion and church (ecclesiology) held by the king, bishops, courtiers, literati, and clergy - asking what, at heart, did these elites understood 'Lutheranism' and 'catholicism' to be? It argues that the ruling elites of the Polish monarchy did not persecute Lutheranism because they did not perceive it as a dangerous Other - but as a variant form of catholicChristianity within an already variegated late medieval church, where social unity was much more important than doctrinal differences between Christians. Building on John Bossy and borrowing from J.G.A. Pocock, it proposes a broader hypothesis on the Reformation as a shift in the languages andconcept of orthodoxy.