Civil Government

During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president—the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate—but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium.

Is privilege real or imagined? It's clear that issues of race and equality have come to the forefront in our nation's consciousness. Every week yet another incident involving racial tension splashes across headlines and dominates our news feeds. But it's not easy to unpack the origins of these tensions, and perhaps we wonder whether any of these issues really has anything to do with us. Ken Wytsma, founder of The Justice Conference, understands these questions.

Ever since the guns fell silent in July 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg has emerged as the defining conflict in our nation's history. American memory has established Gettysburg as the most important, most heroic, most savage battle this nation has ever fought. It has become our Waterloo, our battle of Marathon, our siege of Troy. In this riveting historical reappraisal, esteemed Civil War historian, Thomas A. Desjardin, sets out to examine the truth behind the myth by probing how this battle became legend in American hearts and minds.

If you think that most of the world consists of unicorns and rainbows, think again. Perhaps you think that living in the West is particularly harsh and that the problems we face in the United States or Europe are more brutal than in other parts of the world. Again, think again.

In Proverb Masters: Shaping the Civil Rights Movement, author Raymond Summerville explores how proverbs and proverbial language played a significant role in the long civil rights era. Proverbs have been used throughout history to share and disseminate brief, powerful statements of truth and philosophical insight.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City comes the fascinating story of America’s national day of thanks and of the tenacious and inspiring Sarah Josepha Hale, a 19th-century woman who made establishing this holiday her life’s mission - one brought to fruition by the wise support of Abraham Lincoln.

This audio adaptation focuses primarily on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the key moments that defined his rise to the forefront of the civil rights movement. From Rosa Parks' monumental arrest in Montgomery to King's imprisonment in Birmingham and his triumphant march on Washington, Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness.

War-organized violence against an enemy of the state-seems part and parcel of the American journey. Indeed, the United States was established by means of violence as ordinary citizens from New Hampshire to Georgia answered George Washington's call to arms. Since then, war has become a staple of American history. Counting the War for Independence, the United States has fought the armed forces of other nations at least twelve times, averaging a major conflict every twenty years.

Ballot box voting is often considered the essence of political freedom. But it has two major shortcomings: individual voters have little chance of making a difference, and they also face strong incentives to remain ignorant about the issues at stake. "Voting with your feet", however, avoids both of these pitfalls and offers a wider range of choices. In Free to Move, Ilya Somin explains how broadening opportunities for foot voting can greatly enhance political liberty for millions of people around the world.

One promise of democracy is the right of every citizen to vote. And yet, from our founding, strong political forces were determined to limit that right. The Supreme Court, Alexander Hamilton wrote, would protect the weak against this very sort of tyranny. Still, as On Account of Race forcefully demonstrates, through the better part of American history the Court has instead been a protector of white rule. And complex threats against the right to vote persist even today.

From learning about Lenin and the Red Army to discovering how and why Stalin rose to power and his eventual leadership during World War II and beyond, this book provides an essential look at one of the most important periods in Russian history. Listeners will be enthralled by this fascinating tale that delves into every aspect of Russia's struggles and successes.

In 1967, when Jo Ivester was 10 years old, her father transplanted his young family from a suburb of Boston to a small town in the heart of the Mississippi cotton fields, where he became the medical director of a clinic that served the poor population for miles around. But ultimately it was not Ivester’s father but her mother - a stay-at-home mother of four who became a high school English teacher when the family moved to the South - who made the most enduring mark on the town.

Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States - one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror. The Counterrevolution is a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy but increasingly as a way of ruling ordinary Americans.

Sur un ton énergique, ironique et engagé, l'une des plus grandes voix féminines de la Révolution française, Olympe de Gouges, rédige le premier document à évoquer l'égalité juridique et légale des femmes avec celle des hommes. “Femme, réveille-toi; le tocsin de la raison se fait entendre dans tout l'univers ; reconnais tes droits. Le puissant empire de la nature n'est plus environné de préjugés, de fanatisme, de superstition et de mensonges. Le flambeau de la vérité a dissipé tous les nuages de la sottise et de l'usurpation."

Née à Montauban en 1748, Olympe de Gouges devient femme de lettres et s'engage politiquement luttant par ses écrits contre l'esclavagisme puis contre les inégalités en général. On lui doit cette déclaration des droit de la femme. "La femme a le droit de monter sur l'échafaud ; elle doit avoir également celui de monter à la Tribune." Ses combats la mèneront à la guillotine à 45 ans. Ce titre comprend "Forme du Contrat social de l'Homme et de la Femme" et une courte "Biographie d'Olympe de Gouges".

For Henry David Thoreau, there was no separation between public politics and personal principle. "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" is his famous account of the night he spent in jail for refusing to pay taxes to a government that supported slavery and waged war. His impassioned stand for justice later inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many other peaceful revolutionaries. This volume includes Thoreau's other important political writings: "A Plea for Captain John Brown", "Life Without Principle", and the poem "Independence".

Blending the journalistic rigor of Masha Gessen with the call to action of We Should All Be Feminists, a startling denunciation of Vladimir Putin’s war on women that reveals how modern Russia’s history of weaponizing sexual violence against women is part of the Russian leader’s strategy to retain political influence and domination.

In 1849, Henry David Thoreau argued in his essay “Civil Disobedience” that people should not allow governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have the right to avoid such submission to permit the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was partly motivated by his abhorrence with slavery and the Mexican-American War. His work has inspired great leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Martin Buber.

Does free speech have limits? Can torture be justified? Who is really in charge of your rights? Every day we are confronted with news of foreign governments who refuse to acknowledge liberties that we in the Western world take for granted. But civil liberties are nearly always under threat, no matter where you live. Tom Head traverses the globe in order to provide a clear introduction to what civil liberties are and why they're worth defending.

Johannesburg, Easter weekend, 1993. Nelson Mandela had been released after twenty-seven years in prison and was in power sharing talks with President F.W. de Klerk. After decades of resistance, the apartheid regime seemed poised to fall…until a white supremacist shot and killed Mandela’s popular heir apparent, Chris Hani, in a last desperate attempt to provoke civil war.