Book picks similar to
Perspectives on a Global Green New Deal by Sunil AcharyaKirtana Chandrasekaran
politics
non-fiction
race
usa
This Our Exile: A Spiritual Journey with the Refugees of East Africa
James Martin - 1999
His mission was straightforward: to help the refugees who had settled in the sprawling slums of Nairobi, Kenya, to begin small businesses and earn a living. He imagined that he would be teaching them much, and he did. But the Kenyans and refugees with whom the author worked - from Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia - would end up teaching him much more about life, about survival and faith, and about love and friendship.
Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire
David Cannadine - 2001
But the question of how we understand the British Empire - its origins, nature, purpose, and effect on the world it ruled - is far from settled. In this incisive work, David Cannadine looks at the British Empire from a new perspective - through the eyes of those who created and ruled it - and offers fresh insight into the driving forces behind the Empire.Arguing against the views of Edward Said and others, Cannadine suggests that the British were motivated not only by race, but also by class. The British wanted to domesticate the exotic world of their colonies and to reorder the societies they ruled according to an idealized image of their own class hierarchies.
People Like Us: What it Takes to Make it in Modern Britain
Hashi Mohamed - 2020
Beautifully written, People Like Us makes a deeply personal case for a world in which anybody can reach success, but doesn't have to leave a part of themselves behind to achieve it.' David Lammy MPWhat does it take to make it in modern Britain? Ask a politician, and they'll tell you it's hard work. Ask a millionaire, and they'll tell you it's talent. Ask a CEO and they'll tell you it's dedication. But what if none of those things is enough?Raised on benefits and having attended some of the lowest-performing schools in the country, barrister Hashi Mohamed knows something about social mobility. In People Like Us, he shares what he has learned: from the stark statistics that reveal the depth of the problem to the failures of imagination, education and confidence that compound it. We live in a society where the single greatest indicator of what your job will be is the job of your parents. Where power and privilege are concentrated among the 7 per cent of the population who were privately educated. Where, if your name sounds black or Asian, you'll need to send out twice as many job applications as your white neighbour. Wherever you are on the social spectrum, this is an essential investigation into our society's most intractable problem. We have more power than we realise to change things for the better.
Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority
Tim Wise - 2012
Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation's diverse cultural reality, a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious.This anxiety has helped to create the Tea Party movement, with its call to "take our country back." By means of a racialized nostalgia for a mythological past, the Right is enlisting fearful whites into its campaign for reactionary social and economic policies.In urgent response, Tim Wise has penned his most pointed and provocative work to date. Employing the form of direct personal address, he points a finger at whites' race-based self-delusion, explaining how such an agenda will only do harm to the nation's people, including most whites. In no uncertain terms, he argues that the hope for survival of American democracy lies in the embrace of our multicultural past, present and future.
Two Weeks in November: The astonishing inside story of the coup that toppled Mugabe
Douglas Rogers - 2019
Little America: Incredible True Stories of Immigrants in America
Epic Magazine - 2020
This is a fundamental part of the American idea—it's an identity and a place open to everyone. People arrive from all points distant, speaking hundreds of languages, carrying every culture, each having their own reason for uprooting themselves to try something new. Everyone has a unique story. Little America is a collection of those stories, told by the people who lived them. Together, they form a wholly original, at times unexpected portrait of America’s immigrants, and thereby a portrait of America itself. The book includes nearly one hundred color photographs and an introduction by Kumail Nanjiani.
A Fistful of Rice: My Unexpected Quest to End Poverty Through Profitability
Vikram Akula - 2010
While microfinance - small loans to impoverished individuals - initially attracted attention in the press, it didn't achieve the scale, scope, and profitability necessary to substantially combat poverty. All that changed with Vikram Akula's creation of SKS Microfinance.In this highly personal narrative, A Fistful of Rice, Akula reveals how he pieced together the best of both philanthropy and (to his surprise) capitalism to help millions of India's poor transition from paupers to customers to business owners.As thoughtful as Barack Obama's personal journey in Dreams from My Father, as harrowing as Paul Farmer's battle against infectious disease in Mountains Beyond Mountains, and as gripping as Greg Mortensen's fight for education in Three Cups of Tea, Akula's story shows how traditional business principles can be brought to bear on global problems in new ways.A Fistful of Rice offers not only inspiration but also lessons for anyone seeking to transform tenacity, creativity, and innovation into potent tools for fighting even the most seemingly intractable human burdens.
Caught Between the Dog and the Fireplug, or How to Survive Public Service
Kenneth H. Ashworth - 2001
The book is written as a series of lively, entertaining letters of advice from a sympathetic uncle to a niece or nephew embarking on a government career. The book will interest students and teachers of public administration, public affairs, policy development, leadership, or higher education administration. Ashworth's advice will also appeal to anyone who has ever been caught in a tight spot will working in government service.
The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America
Nikesh Shukla - 2019
In this much-anticipated follow-up to the bestselling UK edition, hailed by Zadie Smith as "lively and vital," editors Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman hand the microphone to an incredible range of writers whose humanity and right to be here is under attack. Chigozie Obioma unpacks an Igbo proverb that helped him navigate his journey to America from Nigeria.Jenny Zhang analyzes cultural appropriation in 90s fashion, recalling her own pain and confusion as a teenager trying to fit in.Fatimah Asghar describes the flood of memory and emotion triggered by an encounter with an Uber driver from Kashmir.Alexander Chee writes of a visit to Korea that changed his relationship to his heritage.These writers, and the many others in this singular collection, share powerful personal stories of living between cultures and languages while struggling to figure out who they are and where they belong. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, troubling and uplifting, the essays in The Good Immigrant come together to create a provocative, conversation-sparking, multivocal portrait of America now.
World's Great Men of Color, Volume II
J.A. Rogers - 1972
In this first volume: outstanding blacks of Asia and Africa, and historical figures before Christ -- including Akhenaton, Aesop, Hannibal, Cleopatra, Zenobia, Askia the Great, the Mahdi, Samuel Adjai Crowther, and many more. World's Great Men of Color is a comprehensive account of the great Black personalities in world history. J. A. Rogers was one of the first Black scholars to devote most of his life to researching the lives of hundreds of men and women of color. This first volume is a convenient reference; equipped with a comprehensive introduction, it treats all aspects of recorded Black history. J. A. Rogers's book is vital reading for everyone who wants a fuller and broader understanding of the great personalities who have shaped our world. The companion volume covers the great Blacks of Europe, South and Central America, the West Indies, and the United States, including Marcus Garvey, Robert Browning, Dom Pedro, Alexandre Dumas, Joachim Murat, Aleksander Sergeevich Pushkin, Alessandro de' Medici, St. Benedict the Moor, and many others.
Brother: A Story of Hope and Survival from Africa's Rebel Heart
George Obama - 2009
Born into a completely different world from his brother, he was caught up in a life of crime, where lives were cheap and short, and violence was the only way a man could fight his way out of the ghetto.But through strength and character, George Obama turned everything around - escaping the gangs and building a future for himself.From survival to hope, ‘Brother’ tells his amazing story.It is a book that will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about the extraordinary family of the world's most powerful political leader - as well as day-to-day life on Africa's meanest streets.
The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics
Mark Lilla - 2017
Although there have been Democrats in the White House, and some notable policy achievements, for nearly 40 years the vision that Ronald Reagan offered—small government, lower taxes, and self-reliant individualism—has remained the country’s dominant political ideology. And the Democratic Party has offered no convincing competing vision in response.Instead, as Lilla argues, American liberalism fell under the spell of identity politics, with disastrous consequences. Driven originally by a sincere desire to protect the most vulnerable Americans, the left has now unwittingly balkanized the electorate, encouraged self-absorption rather than solidarity, and invested its energies in social movements rather than in party politics. With dire consequences. Lilla goes on to show how the left’s identity-focused individualism insidiously conspired with the amoral economic individualism of the Reaganite right to shape an electorate with little sense of a shared future and near-contempt for the idea of the common good. In the contest for the American imagination, liberals have abdicated.Now they have an opportunity to reset. The left is motivated, and the Republican Party, led by an unpredictable demagogue, is in ideological disarray. To seize this opportunity, Lilla insists, liberals must concentrate their efforts on recapturing our institutions by winning elections. The time for hectoring is over. It is time to reach out and start persuading people from every walk of life and in every region of the country that liberals will stand up for them. We must appeal to – but also help to rebuild – a sense of common feeling among Americans, and a sense of duty to each other.A fiercely-argued, no-nonsense book, enlivened by Lilla’s acerbic wit and erudition, The Once and Future Liberal is essential reading for our momentous times.
Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible
Yomi Adegoke - 2018
From authors to politicians, to entrepreneurs to artists, black women in the UK continue to thrive against all odds and well outside of the world’s expectations. Women who look like us, grew up in similar places to us, talk like us, are shaping almost every societal sector, from the bottom and, finally, from all the way up at the top.Black women today are facing uniquely challenging experiences in all aspects of their lives. Yet when best friends Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené’s searched for a book that addressed these challenges they realised none existed. So Slay in Your Lane – the lovechild of exasperation and optimism – was born.From education, to work, to dating, to representation, money and health, this inspirational, honest and provocative Black Girl Bible explores the ways in which being black and female affects each of these areas – and offers advice and encouragement on how to navigate them.Illustrated with stories from Elizabeth and Yomi’s own lives, and from interviews with dozens of the most successful black women in Britain – including Amma Asante, Charlene White, Jamelia, Denise Lewis, Malorie Blackman and Dawn Butler MP – Slay in Your Lane recognizes and celebrates the strides black women have already made, whilst providing practical advice and inspiration for those who want to do the same and forge a better, visible future.
You Don't Have to Like Me: Essays on Growing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding Feminism
Alida Nugent - 2015
Now, she takes on one of today’s hottest cultural topics: feminism. Nugent is a proud feminist—and she’s not afraid to say it. From the “scarlet F” thrust upon you if you declare yourself a feminist at a party to how to handle judgmental store clerks when you buy Plan B, You Don’t Have to Like Me skewers a range of cultural issues, and confirms Nugent as a star on the rise.