Civil Liberties

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.

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty is the first book to show how and why we have come to see sexual expression, sexual practice, and sexual privacy as fundamental rights. Using rich archival sources and oral interviews, historian Leigh Ann Wheeler shows how the private lives of women and men in the American Civil Liberties Union shaped their understanding of sexual rights as they built the constitutional foundation for the twentieth-century's sexual revolutions.

In a time of deep political division, few plans have stirred as much controversy as Project 2025—the conservative blueprint to radically transform American governance, economy, healthcare, and more. But what exactly does this plan propose? And will it safeguard our future, or jeopardize the democracy, civil liberties, and freedoms we hold dear?

Alan Dershowitz has been called “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America” by Politico and “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights” by Newsweek. Get Trump makes clear that unconstitutional efforts to stop Trump from retaking the presidency challenge the very foundations of our liberty: due process, right to counsel, and free speech.

Anthony Comstock was one of the most important men in the lives of 19th-century women. His eponymous law, passed in 1873, penalized the mailing of contraception and obscenity with long prison sentences and steep fines. Between 1873 and Comstock’s death in 1915, eight remarkable women were charged with violating state and federal Comstock laws. These “sex radicals” supported contraception, sexual education, gender equality, and women’s right to pleasure. Amy Sohn tells the overlooked story of their valiant attempts to fight Comstock in court and in the press.

Though battle-wounded and scarred, Raphael has survived the criminal underworld in Benin with the help of the US government. Together with his wife, Essie, and their adoptive son, Kaion, they enjoy a seemingly picture-perfect life. Their harmony is shattered when CIA agent Rhys unexpectedly shows up at their doorstep. No aspect of life comes without a cost, and Raphael soon realizes that even his comfortable existence has a price.

Against the backdrop of post-9/11 America, listeners are taken behind the scenes of some of the most important civil liberties cases in America. From the story of the "American Taliban" to the battle against the National Security Agency's warrantless spying program, In Defense of Our America tracks a roster of skirmishes in the larger fight for civil liberties in this country.

FDR Goes to War expands on the premise that FDR's legacy has damaged America and helped lay the groundwork for the current economic crisis.

The Folsoms continue to expose the idyllic legend of Franklin D. Roosevelt as a myth of epic proportions. Many government programs that are widely used today have their seeds in the New Deal.

In Eisenhower vs. Warren, two-time New York Times Notable Book author James F. Simon examines the years of strife between them that led Eisenhower to say that his biggest mistake as president was appointing that "dumb son of a bitch Earl Warren." This momentous, poisonous relationship is presented here at last in one volume. Compellingly written, Eisenhower vs. Warren brings to vivid life the clash that continues to reverberate in political and constitutional debates today.

In this remarkable collection, ten premier scholars of nineteenth-century America address the epochal impact of the Civil War by examining the conflict in terms of three Americas - antebellum, wartime, and postbellum nations. Moreover, they recognize the critical role in this transformative era of three groups of Americans - white northerners, white southerners, and African Americans in the North and South.