Book picks similar to
Living White by Robert S. Griffin
race
cultural-studies
dissident-right
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Zeebrugge: Eleven VCs Before Breakfast
Barrie Pitt - 1959
This is the story, brilliantly told, of a desperate and heroic venture - the raid by British warships of the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, 23 April 1918. The objective was to sink blockships in the mouth of the canal, sealing off access to the English Channel from the U-boats and destroyers based in the harbour at Bruges. The British crews were all volunteers, yet highly trained and ready for the fight. Many knew they were unlikely to survive the firestorm from the German batteries. It was the ultimate example of heroism in the face of defeat. The Germans removed the obstructions, and the U-boats continued to operate through the summer. But in that one brief morning, eleven men won the VC, 21 the DSO, 29 the DSC, among many other awards. Barrie Pitt, the bestselling author of The Crucible of War (about the Battle of Alamein) and History of the SBS, captures logistics, action and spirit of the men during the campaign. Zeebrugge is a military classic, a testament to British heroism. Recommended reading for fans of Antony Beevor, Max Hastings and James Holland. Barrie Pitt (1918-2006) was well known as a military historian and editor of Purnell’s History of the Second World War and History of the First World War. His publications include 'Coronel and Falkland', 'Churchill and the Generals' and 'The Crucible of War', a trilogy covering the North African campaign of the Second World War. He was born in Galway and later lived near Ilminster in Somerset. Praise for Barrie Pitt: 'As much a thriller as it is a history book.' Daily Mail 'A breathless and unforgettable narrative.' Sphere 'A magnificent book. Barrie Pitt has almost a novelist's skill and perception of character.' Daily Telegraph Totally readable, Mr Pitt's study depicts equally well the broad outlines of strategy, the confusions and hazards of the battlefield and the personalities of the generals of private soldiers fighting there.' Oxford Times
Haven't You Heard?: Gossip, power, and how politics really works
Marie Le Conte - 2019
From policy rows which aren't about policy at all and boozy nights with dramatic consequences, to people spinning their way to the top and dark secrets never seeing the light of day, Marie explores in great and entertaining detail the human side of the people running the country against a backdrop of political mayhem.
Noughts & Crosses Graphic Novel
Malorie Blackman - 2015
But when Sephy and Callum's childhood friendship grows into love, they're determined to find a way to be together.And then the bomb explodes . . .The long-awaited graphic novel adaptation of one of the most influential, critically acclaimed and original novels of all time, from multi-award-winning Malorie Blackman.
Black Cop's Kid: An Essay
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - 2021
It kick-started Kareem’s interest in a rich history erased by white educators. It also sparked his activism. During these years, as Kareem struggled with racism, visibility, and justice, his father’s presence loomed large with purpose. He was a Black cop weathering a complicated conflict of loyalties during the most tumultuous civil rights upheaval the country had ever been through. Now, at a time when his powerful voice is needed the most, Kareem shares his unique perspective from the front lines of sixty years of social change, not just as an activist, but as a son, an athlete, a writer, and a Black man in America.
How Was It For You?: Women, Sex, Love and Power in the 1960s
Virginia Nicholson - 2019
But men most of all.We tend to think of the 60s as a decade sprinkled with stardust: a time of space travel and utopian dreams, but above all of sexual abandonment. When the pill was introduced on the NHS in 1961 it seemed, for the first time, that women - like men - could try without buying."It was paradise for men... all these willing girls..."But this book - by 'one of the great social historians of our time' - describes a turbulent power struggle.Here are the voices from the battleground. Meet dollybird Mavis, debutante Kristina, Beryl who sang with the Beatles, bunny girl Patsy, Christian student Anthea, industrial campaigner Mary and countercultural Caroline. From Carnaby Street to Merseyside, from mods to rockers, from white gloves to Black is Beautiful, their stories throw an unsparing spotlight on morals, four-letter words, faith, drugs, race, bomb culture and sex.This is a moving, shocking book about tearing up the world and starting again. It's about peace, love, psychedelia and strange pleasures, but it is also about misogyny, violation and discrimination - half a century before feminism rebranded. For out of the swamp of gropers and groupies, a movement was emerging, and discovering a new cause: equality.The 1960s: this was where it all began. Women would never be the same again.'One of the great social historians of our time. No one else makes makes history this fun' Amanda Foreman'Intimate, immersive, often moving, How Was It For You? subtly but powerfully subverts complacent male assumptions about a legendary decade' David Kynaston'An absorbing study of an extraordinary age. Beautifully written and intensively researched' Selina Hastings'Every baby boomer should read this great and wonderfully revelatory book if only to shout, "Ah yes, that's exactly what it was like for me!"' Anne Sebba'Virginia Nicholson is the outstanding recorder of British lives in the twentieth century... and this account of the 1960s is the most vivid and moving of all her works' Carmen Callil'Essential reading' Marina Lewycka'A dazzling kaleidoscope of facts, feelings and observations' Juliet Nicolson'A hugely ambitious, kaleidoscope of a book' Richard Vinen'Makes it feel like the Sixties have never been away' Hunter Davies'I was there, and she's right' Valerie Grove
A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe
Johannes Krause - 2019
Krause is a pioneer in the revolutionary new science of archaeogenetics, archaeology augmented by revolutionary DNA sequencing technology, which has allowed scientists to uncover a new version of human history reaching back more than 100,000 years. Using this technology to re-examine human bones from the distant past, Krause has been able to map not only the genetic profiles of the dead, but also their ancient journeys.In this concise narrative he tells us their long-forgotten stories of migration and intersection. It's well known that many human populations carry genetic material from Neanderthals; but, as Krause and his colleagues discovered, we also share DNA with a newly uncovered human form, the Denisovans. We know now that a wave of farmers from Anatolia migrated into Europe 8,000 years ago, essentially displacing the dark-skinned, blue-eyed hunter-gatherers who preceded them. The farmer DNA is one of the core genetic components of contemporary Europeans and European Americans. Though the first people to cross into North and South America have long been assumed to be primarily of East Asian descent, we now know that they also share DNA with contemporary Europeans and European Americans. Genetics has an unfortunate history of smuggling in racist ideologies, but our most cutting-edge science tells us that genetic categories in no way reflect national borders.Krause vividly introduces us to prehistoric cultures such as the Aurignacians, innovative artisans who carved animals, people, and even flutes from bird bones more than 40,000 years ago; the Varna, who buried their loved ones with gold long before the Pharaohs of Egypt; and the Gravettians, big-game hunters who were Europe's most successful early settlers until they perished in the ice age. This informed retelling of the human epic confirms that immigration and genetic mingling have always defined our species and that who we are is a question of culture not genetics.
White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era
Shelby Steele - 2006
Forty years later, despite the strong DNA evidence against him, accused murderer O. J. Simpson went free after his attorney portrayed him as a victim of racism. The age of white supremacy has given way to an age of "white guilt" and neither has been good for African Americans.Through articulate analysis and engrossing recollections, acclaimed race relations scholar Shelby Steele sounds a powerful call for a new culture of personal responsibility.
Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain
Clair Wills - 2017
opens up postwar migration in all its richness' Sukhdev Sandhu, Guardian'Groundbreaking, sophisticated, original, open-minded ... essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not only the transformation of British society after the war but also its character today' Piers Brendon, Literary Review'Lyrical, full of wise and original observations' David Goodhart, The TimesThe battered and exhausted Britain of 1945 was desperate for workers - to rebuild, to fill the factories, to make the new NHS work. From all over the world and with many motives, thousands of individuals took the plunge. Most assumed they would spend just three or four years here, sending most of their pay back home, but instead large numbers stayed - and transformed the country.Drawing on an amazing array of unusual and surprising sources, Clair Wills' wonderful new book brings to life the incredible diversity and strangeness of the migrant experience. She introduces us to lovers, scroungers, dancers, homeowners, teachers, drinkers, carers and many more to show the opportunities and excitement as much as the humiliation and poverty that could be part of the new arrivals' experience. Irish, Bengalis, West Indians, Poles, Maltese, Punjabis and Cypriots battled to fit into an often shocked Britain and, to their own surprise, found themselves making permanent homes. As Britain picked itself up again in the 1950s migrants set about changing life in their own image, through music, clothing, food, religion, but also fighting racism and casual and not so casual violence.Lovers and Strangers is an extremely important book, one that is full of enjoyable surprises, giving a voice to a generation who had to deal with the reality of life surrounded by 'white strangers' in their new country.
Postcolonial Astrology: Reading the Planets through Capital, Power, and Labor
Alice Sparkly Kat - 2021
By looking at the symbolic and etymological histories of the sun, moon, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter, we can trace and understand the politics of magic–and challenge our own practices, interrogate our truths, and reshape our institutions to build better frameworks for communities of care.Fearless, radical, and fresh, Sparkly Kat’s Postcolonial Astrology ushers in a new wave of astrology revival, refusing to apologize for its magickism and connecting its power to the spirituality and politics we need now. Intersectional, inclusive, and geared towards queer and POC communities, it uses our historical and collective constructs of the planets, sun, and moon to re-chart our subconscious history, redefine the body in the world, and assert our politics of the personal, in astrology and all things.
Malcolm X: Speeches at Harvard
Malcolm X - 1991
These speeches document Malcolm's progression from Black nationalism to internationalism, and are key to both understanding his extraordinary life and illuminating his angry yet uplifting cause.
Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority
Tom Burrell - 2010
In fact, they are much more. They are survivors of the Middle Passage and centuries of humiliation and deprivation, who have excelled against the odds, constantly making a way out of “No way!” At this pivotal point in history, the idea of black inferiority should have had a “Going-Out-of-Business Sale.” After all, Barack Obama has reached America’s Promised Land.Yet, as Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority testifies, too many in black America are still wandering in the wilderness. In this powerful examination of “the greatest propaganda campaign of all time”—the masterful marketing of black inferiority, aka the BI Complex—Burrell poses ten disturbing questions that will make black people look in the mirror and ask why, nearly 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, so many blacks still think and act like slaves. Burrell’s acute awareness of the power of words and images to shift, shape, and change the collective consciousness has led him to connect the contemporary and historical dots that have brought us to this crossroads. Brainwashed is not a reprimand—it is a call to action. It demands that we question our self-defeating attitudes and behaviors. Racism is not the issue; how we respond to media distortions and programmed self-hatred is the issue. It’s time to reverse the BI campaign with a globally based initiative that harnesses the power of new media and the wisdom of intergenerational coalitions. Provocative and powerful, Brainwashed dares to expose the wounds so that we, at last, can heal.
Kennedy and King: The President, the Pastor, and the Battle over Civil Rights
Steven Levingston - 2017
These two men from starkly different worlds profoundly influenced each other's personal development. Kennedy's hesitation on civil rights spurred King to greater acts of courage, and King inspired Kennedy to finally make a moral commitment to equality. As America still grapples with the legacy of slavery and the persistence of discrimination, Kennedy and King is a vital, vivid contribution to the literature of the Civil Rights Movement.
Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School
Stuart Jeffries - 2016
Among the most prominent members of what became the Frankfurt School were the philosophers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. Not only would they change the way we think, but also the subjects we deem worthy of intellectual investigation. Their lives, like their ideas, profoundly, sometimes tragically, reflected and shaped the shattering events of the twentieth century.Grand Hotel Abyss combines biography, philosophy, and storytelling to reveal how the Frankfurt thinkers gathered in hopes of understanding the politics of culture during the rise of fascism. Some of them, forced to escape the horrors of Nazi Germany, later found exile in the United States. Benjamin, with his last great work—the incomplete Arcades Project—in his suitcase, was arrested in Spain and committed suicide when threatened with deportation to Nazi-occupied France. On the other side of the Atlantic, Adorno failed in his bid to become a Hollywood screenwriter, denounced jazz, and even met Charlie Chaplin in Malibu.After the war, there was a resurgence of interest in the School. From the relative comfort of sun-drenched California, Herbert Marcuse wrote the classic One Dimensional Man, which influenced the 1960s counterculture and thinkers such as Angela Davis; while in a tragic coda, Adorno died from a heart attack following confrontations with student radicals in Berlin.By taking popular culture seriously as an object of study—whether it was film, music, ideas, or consumerism—the Frankfurt School elaborated upon the nature and crisis of our mass-produced, mechanised society. Grand Hotel Abyss shows how much these ideas still tell us about our age of social media and runaway consumption.
Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America
Vegas Tenold - 2018
But in the last few years, that has all changed. Their racially-motivated violence has been on open display at rallies in Charlottesville, Berkeley, Pikesville, Phoenix, and Boston. In response to economic grievances, anger over the presidency of Barack Obama and the visibility of Black Lives Matter, and egged on by the rhetoric of Donald Trump, membership is rising and national politicians are giving validation to these groups. One young man has emerged as a powerful figure: Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Workers Party, who was once labeled the "Little Führer" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Heimbach believes that cross burning and fight-ridden conventions are a waste of time. He understands political power, and has organized a coalition of white nationalists to bring these groups into the mainstream. Everything You Love Will Burn gives readers a front-row seat at violent white supremacist conventions, newly formed separatist communities, and backroom meetings with Republican operatives. We meet a neo-Nazi lieutenant and his daughter in Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay; a bubbly, twenty-something Klanswoman in Tennessee; and a solemn skinhead recruit in Georgia, and learn about why they've tied their fates to these movements. By turns frightening and fascinating, Everything You Love Will Burn shows us the future of hate in America.
The Deeper the Roots: A Memoir of Hope and Home
Michael Tubbs - 2021
For Michael, that meant a lot of things: don’t tell anyone about the day-to-day struggle of being Black and broke in Stockton, CA. Don’t tell anyone the pain of having a father incarcerated for 25 years to life. Don’t tell anyone about living two lives, the brainy bookworm and the kid with the newest Jordans. And also don’t tell anyone about the particular joys of growing up with three “moms”―a Nana who never let him miss church, an Auntie who’d take him to the library any time, and a mother, “She-Daddy”, who schooled him in the wisdom of hip-hop and taught him never to take no for an answer.So for a long time Michael didn’t tell anyone his story, but as he went on to a scholarship at Stanford and an internship in the Obama White House, he began to realize the power of his experience, the need for his perspective in the halls of power. By the time he returned to Stockton to become, in 2016 at age 26, its first Black mayor and the youngest-ever mayor of a major American city, he knew his story meant something.The Deeper the Roots is a memoir astonishing in its candor, voice, and clarity of vision. Tubbs shares with us the city that raised him, his family of badass women, his life-changing encounters with Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, the challenges of governing in the 21st century and everything in between―en route to unveiling his compelling vision for America rooted in his experiences in his hometown.