Right Politics

In his 60-plus years as a trial lawyer, Gerry Spence has never represented a person accused of a crime in which the police hadn't themselves violated the law. Whether by covering up their own corrupt dealings, by the falsification or manufacture of evidence, or by the outright murder of innocent civilians, those individuals charged with upholding the law break it every day - in ways more scandalous than the courts have dared admit.

This audiobook is a vital guide to understanding the Alt-Right - the white nationalist, anti-feminist, far-right movement that rose to prominence during Donald Trump's successful election campaign in the United States. It looks at the support for this reactionary network, arguing that while Trump is in office and the far-right grows across Europe, we need to gain a deeper understanding of the movement's philosophy, history and role in politics today.

A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will." So writes Jonathan Rauch in Kindly Inquisitors, which has challenged listeners for more than 20 years with its bracing and provocative exploration of the issues surrounding attempts to limit free speech.

Since its original publication in 1975, Animal Liberation has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"—our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals—inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. Now, for the first time since its original publication, Singer returns to the major arguments and examples and brings us to the current moment.

Originally meant to be brief and exceptional, solitary confinement in US prisons has become long-term and common. Prisoners spend 23 hours a day in featureless cells, with no visitors or human contact for years on end, and they are held entirely at administrators' discretion. Keramet Reiter tells the history of one "supermax", California's Pelican Bay State Prison, whose extreme conditions recently sparked a statewide hunger strike by 30,000 prisoners.

In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney Lopez offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog-whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich.

How can we summon a moment of lift for human beings - and especially for women? Because, when you lift up women, you lift up humanity. For the last 20 years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift society up, you need to stop keeping women down.

Recent years have seen a revival of the heated culture wars of the 1990s, but this time its battleground is the Internet. On one side the alt-right ranges from the once obscure neo-reactionary and white separatist movements, to geeky subcultures like 4chan, to more mainstream manifestations such as the Trump-supporting gay libertarian Milo Yiannopolous. On the other side, struggle sessions and virtue signaling lurk behind a therapeutic language of trigger warnings and safe spaces. The feminist side of the online culture wars has its equally geeky subcultures.

America's political leaders have considered suffrage not a natural right but a privilege restricted by wealth, sex, race, residence, literacy, criminal conviction, and citizenship. Today, voter identification laws, political gerrymandering, registration requirements, felon disenfranchisement, and voter purges deny many millions of citizens the opportunity to express their views at the ballot box. We cannot blame the founders alone for America's embattled vote. Best-selling author Allan Lichtman notes that subsequent generations have failed to establish suffrage as a universal right.

In Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, longtime intrepid war correspondent Christina Lamb makes us witness to the lives of women in wartime. An award-winning war correspondent for 25 years (she’s never had a female editor) Lamb reports two wars - the “bang-bang” war and the story of how the people behind the lines live and survive.

By the acclaimed biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Nat Turner, and John Brown, Stephen B. Oates' prizewinning Let the Trumpet Sound is the definitive one-volume life of Martin Luther King Jr. This brilliant examination of the great civil rights icon and the movement he led provides a lasting portrait of a man whose dream shaped American history.

A finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize: A stunning work of investigative reporting by a Canadian journalist who has risked her own life to bring us a deeply disturbing history of the Rwandan genocide that takes the true measure of Rwandan head of state Paul Kagame.

When Elizabeth Neumann began her anti-terrorism career as part of President George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Counsel in the wake of the September 11 attacks, she expected to spend her life protecting her country from the threat of global terrorism. But as her career evolved, she began to perceive that the greatest threat to American security came not from religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan or Iraq but from white nationalists and radicalized religious fundamentalists within the very institution that was closest to her heart—the American evangelical church.

Over two decades, Rick Perlstein has published three definitive works about the emerging dominance of conservatism in modern American politics. With the saga's final installment, he has delivered yet another stunning literary and historical achievement. In late 1976, Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a man without a political future: defeated in his nomination bid against a sitting president of his own party, blamed for President Gerald Ford's defeat, too old to make another run.

Writing from the perspective of a friend, Frederick Joseph offers candid reflections on his own experiences with racism and conversations with prominent artists and activists about theirs - creating an essential listen for white people who are committed anti-racists and those newly come to the cause of racial justice.

Continuing the work of the award-winning Sand Talk, Tyson Yunkaporta casts an Indigenous lens on contemporary society, challenging us to face conflict and embrace conversation to find our way onto the right track. With Right Story, Wrong Story, Apalech Clan member Tyson Yunkaporta, from far north Queensland, tackles the divisions that prevent us from talking to one another. Yunkaporta invites us to confront life’s biggest questions and arms us with the tools we need to really listen, and to open our minds to change based upon our connections with others.

This is the story of four visionaries who profoundly shaped the world we live in today. Together, these women - linked not by friendship or field, but by their choice to break with convention - showed what one person speaking truth to power can do. Jane Jacobs fought for livable cities and strong communities; Rachel Carson warned us about poisoning the environment; Jane Goodall demonstrated the indelible kinship between humans and animals; and Alice Waters urged us to reconsider what and how we eat.

The Party is Financial Times reporter Richard McGregor's eye-opening investigation into China's Communist Party, and the integral role it has played in the country's rise as a global superpower and rival to the United States. Many books have examined China's economic rise, human rights record, turbulent history, and relations with the US; none until now, however, have tackled the issue central to understanding all of these issues: how the ruling communist government works. The Party delves deeply into China's secretive political machine.

For more than half a century, the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy with the aim of staking out the globe. Our leaders have shown themselves willing, as in the Cuban missile crisis, to follow the dream of dominance no matter how high the risks. Now the Bush administration is intensifying this process, driving us toward the final frontiers of imperial control, toward a choice between the prerogatives of power and a livable Earth.

Over his 50-year career in Washington, Joe Biden has become known for his wild dishonesty, embarrassing policy failings, and an absolute lack of accountability, culminating in his predictably unpopular presidency. But what has not yet been revealed is the vast web of consultants, bureaucrats, corporate titans, foreign interests, and various extended family members (it’s not just Hunter!) who have achieved unfathomable wealth and power while keeping Biden in charge.