Government Fiction

Biographer Michael Shelden called Orwell’s Politics and the English Language “his most important essay on style”. First published in 1946, the essay exploded the language trends of the time and served as an inflection point in the debate about communication in the 20th century. This collection of essays published 1946-48 provides a comprehensive critique of the status of politics and speech in the mid-century.

In September 1870 a train leaves Manchester bound for London. Onboard is Lizzie Burns, a poor worker from the Irish slums who is embarking on the journey that will change her forever. Sitting in the first-class carriage beside her lover, the wealthy mill owner Frederick Engels, the vision of a life of peace and comfort takes shape before her eyes: finally, at nearly 50, she is to be the lady of a house and the wife to a man. Perhaps now she can put the difficulties of the past behind her and be happy.

In A Moonless, Starless Sky Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram.

Born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, Earl “Trey” Singleton III leaves his overbearing parents and their expectations behind by running away to New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket. Vibrant, humorous, and fraught with entanglements, Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me is an exhilarating, fast-paced coming-of-age story that lends itself to a larger discussion about what it means for a young gay Black man in the mid-1980s to come to terms with his role in the midst of a political and social reckoning.

This book chronicles the long history of the fight for women's voting rights, beginning in 1848, with a focus on the years between 1913 and 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. The book includes profiles of notable women in the struggle.

Chronicling Andrew Solomon's stint on the barricades in Moscow in 1991, when he joined artists in resisting the coup whose failure ended the Soviet Union; his 2002 account of the rebirth of culture in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban; his insightful appraisal of a Myanmar steeped in contradictions as it slowly, fitfully pushes toward freedom; and many other stories of profound upheaval, this book provides a unique window onto the very idea of social change.

In The H-Spot, Filipovic argues that the main obstacle standing in between women and happiness is a rigged system. In this world of unfinished feminism, men have long been able to "have it all" because of free female labor while the bar of achievement for women has only gotten higher. Never before have women at every economic level had to work so much (whether it's to be an accomplished white-collar employee or just make ends meet). Never before have the standards of feminine perfection been so high.

It is where Fidel Castro raised money to overthrow Batista and where two generations of Castro's enemies have raised armies to overthrow him, so far without success. It is where the bitter opera of Cuban exile intersects with the cynicism of U.S. foreign policy. It is a city whose skyrocketing murder rate is fueled by the cocaine trade, racial discontent, and an undeclared war on the island 90 miles to the south.

The downfall of Bo Xilai in China was more than a darkly thrilling mystery. It revealed a cataclysmic internal power struggle between Communist Party factions, one that reached all the way to China’s new president Xi Jinping. The scandalous story of the corruption of the Bo Xilai family - the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood; Bo’s secret lovers; the secret maneuverings of Bo’s supporters; the hasty trial and sentencing of Gu Kailai, Bo’s wife - was just the first rumble of a seismic power struggle that continues to rock the very foundation of China’s all-powerful Communist Party.

In the dead of night, a man’s body is found strapped to a chair in Glasgow’s Elder Park, his identity unknown. As forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod examines the scene, the violence on display suggests a gangland feud could be the cause. At the post-mortem, a bullet engraved with a snake’s head is found in the man’s stomach, lending weight to the theory. Elsewhere in the city, a major Hollywood movie is being filmed but comes to a standstill when its lead actor is reported missing. As the news spreads, Police Scotland believe the two cases may be connected.

In an immersive, exciting narrative nonfiction format, this powerful book follows a selection of people who experienced the events surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

How to Win an Election is an ancient Roman guide for campaigning that is as up-to-date as tomorrow's headlines. In 64 BC when idealist Marcus Cicero, Rome's greatest orator, ran for consul (the highest office in the Republic), his practical brother Quintus decided he needed some no-nonsense advice on running a successful campaign.

The story of America has always been shaped by people from all corners of the Earth who came in search of a better life and a brighter future. Immigration remains one of the critical topics in 21st century America, and how our children learn the lessons of the past will shape all our futures. The patriotic stories of hope that shape most immigration books are supplemented here by the lesser-known stories of those denied, detained, and deported.

Peggy Noonan is one of the most brilliant and influential political thinkers and writers of our time. The author of five best-selling books ( What I Saw at the Revolution is now a classic), her column in The Wall Street Journal is a must-read for millions of Americans. Witty, incisive, and always original, Peggy Noonan is a conservative intellectual with wide-reaching appeal across the political spectrum. Now, for the first time, the best of Noonan's writing will be collected in one indispensable volume.

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

The place is El Salvador in 1982, at the ghastly height of its civil war. The writer is Joan Didion, who delivers an anatomy of that country's particular brand of terror - its mechanisms, rationales, and intimate relation to United States foreign policy. As ash travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, and considers the distinctly Salvadoran grammar of the verb "to disappear," Didion gives us a book that is germane to any country in which bloodshed has become a standard tool of politics.

Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women. Traveling on China's new "Sky Train", she celebrates Tibetan New Year with the Lhasa family whom she'd befriended decades earlier and concludes an oral-history project with women elders.

Your sovereignty is under attack. You don't need the red pill to see it because you've already been unplugged. It's all around you. Within this audiobook lies top secrets known only to the FBI and a few law enforcement agencies: How to disappear in style and retain assets. How to switch up multiple identities on the fly and be invisible such that no one; not your ex, not your parole officer, nor even the federal government can find you. Ever.

The United States has survived clueless presidential administrations before. But no matter how enormous the crisis, the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate, or Monica Lewinsky's thong, America always comes out looking like, well, America.

This is one of the true classics in world legal literature. Written by a master of law and language, it is a primary source book for anyone interested either in legal theory or political science. For the layman, it serves to clarify the very essence of the common law, the cornerstone of our present legal system.