Civil Government

Is a fight against equality and for privilege a fight for religious supremacy? Andrew L. Seidel, a constitutional attorney and author of the critically acclaimed book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American, dives into the debate on religious liberty, the modern attempt to weaponize religious freedom, and the Supreme Court's role in that “crusade.”

In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization’s 100-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in - Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona - need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now.

In this stirring and insightful analysis, activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and the persistence of structural inequality such as mass incarceration and Black unemployment. In this context, she argues that this new struggle against police violence holds the potential to reignite a broader push for Black liberation.

Imagine a blackout lasting not days, but weeks or months. Tens of millions of people over several states are affected. For those without access to a generator, there is no running water, no sewage, no refrigeration or light. Food and medical supplies are dwindling. Devices we rely on have gone dark. Banks no longer function, looting is widespread, and law and order are being tested as never before.

The period following the Civil War was one of the most controversial eras in American history. This comprehensive account of the period captures the drama of those turbulent years that played such an important role in shaping modern America.

Exploring more than 100 of the most important ideas, organizations, and events to have defined the feminist movement, this is an essential introduction to feminism. Joining DK's best-selling Big Ideas series, The Feminism Book, narrated by Antonia Beamish, is a complete study of feminism. Trace the subject from its origins, through the suffrage campaigns of the late 19th century, to recent developments such as the Everyday Sexism Project and the #MeToo movement.

Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can’t escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago’s North Shore, a multiracial mom joins an ultraprogressive challenge to the town’s liberal status quo. In Compton, California, whose suburban roots are now barely recognizable, undocumented Hispanic parents place their gifted son’s future in the hands of educators at a remarkable elementary school.

Thomas B. Allen’s expertise in military history and strategy is combined with Roger MacBride Allen’s knowledge of technology to reveal a lesser-known yet fascinating side of the 16th president of the United States. Their authoritative narrative reveals Lincoln as our nation’s first hands-on commander in chief, whose appreciation for the power of technology plays a critical role in the North’s Civil War victory over the less-developed South.

In the fall of 1969 eight prominent anti-Vietnam War activists were put on trial for conspiring to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the eight, Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale, was literally bound and gagged in court by order of the judge, Julius Hoffman, and his case was separated from that of the others.

When Laura Coates joined the Department of Justice as a prosecutor, she wanted to advocate for the most vulnerable among us. But she quickly realized that even with the best intentions, “the pursuit of justice creates injustice.”

In this unforgettable work, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges provides an intimate and moving look at the lives of the students he teaches in a maximum-security prison. He and 28 students (who together are serving a combined sentence of 515 years) read and discussed plays by Amiri Baraka, John Herbert, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Miguel Piñero, and August Wilson, among others. Together they set out to write an original play drawing on their experiences of poverty, institutionalized racism, police brutality, and mass incarceration.

Buried for decades, the Up Stairs Lounge tragedy has only recently emerged as a catalyzing event of the gay liberation movement. In revelatory detail, Robert W. Fieseler chronicles the tragic event that claimed the lives of 31 men and one woman on June 24, 1973, at a New Orleans bar, the largest mass murder of gays until 2016. Relying on unprecedented access to survivors and archives, Fieseler creates an indelible portrait of a closeted, blue-collar gay world that flourished before an arsonist ignited an inferno that destroyed an entire community.

In 1871, the Franco-Prussian War was raging. The workers of Paris, fed up with a government that had begun the hated war, and the exploitation, repression, and abuse of "their" government, took matters into their own hands. They instituted the Paris Commune - of, by, and for the workers. Observing these events through news reports of the time, one of the foremost thinkers of the 19th century, Karl Marx, made three speeches to the International Workmen's Association.

This prize-winning and critically acclaimed history uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from 13 disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower.

James Comey might best be known as the FBI director that Donald Trump fired in 2017, but he’s had a long, varied career in the law and justice system. He knows better than most just what a force for good the US justice system can be - and how far afield it has strayed during the Trump presidency. In his much-anticipated follow-up to A Higher Loyalty, Comey uses anecdotes and lessons from his career to show how the federal justice system works.

Written by two psychologists and experts in race, identity, equity, and inclusion, The Antiracism Handbook will empower you to make your own personal contribution to creating an antiracist society. You'll find practical, evidence-based tools grounded in psychology to help you recognize and resist racial stereotypes in day-to-day interactions; and strategies to help you communicate with family, loved ones, and children about race and racism.

Law professor James J. Duane became a viral sensation thanks to a 2008 lecture outlining the reasons why you should never agree to answer questions from the police - especially if you are innocent and wish to stay out of trouble with the law. In this timely, relevant, and pragmatic new book, he expands on that presentation, offering a vigorous defense of every citizen's constitutionally protected right to avoid self-incrimination.

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals plays a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power.

Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was an orator of Black Nationalism, and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. He advanced a Pan-African philosophy which inspired a global movement, known as Garveyism. This book, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1923) was compiled by his wife, Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey, mainly from his speeches. Promoting unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he campaigned for an end to European colonial rule in Africa and encouraged the political unification of the continent.

The received idea of Native American history - as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did 150 Sioux die at the hands of the US Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative.