Right Politics

Tanya Talaga, the best-selling author of Seven Fallen Feathers and the 2017-2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy, calls attention to an urgent global humanitarian crisis among Indigenous Peoples - youth suicide.

Opinionated talk show host and columnist Michael Smerconish has been chronicling local, state, and national events for the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 15 years. He has sounded off on topics as diverse as the hunt for Osama bin Laden and what the color of your Christmas lights says about you. In this collection of 100 of his most memorable columns, Smerconish reflects on American political life with his characteristic feistiness.

Wolf outlines in this citizen call to action - which is reminiscent of Thomas Paine's revered Common Sense - the real threats to our civil liberties that exist and explains how by working together we can stop the growing threat.

In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people'" (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent meaningful cross-racial dialogue.

From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves—now updated, with a new preface.

With authority and insight, Truth Telling examines a wide range of Indigenous issues framed by Michelle Good’s personal experience and knowledge. From racism, broken treaties, and cultural pillaging, to the value of Indigenous lives and the importance of Indigenous literature, this collection reveals facts about Indigenous life in Canada that are both devastating and enlightening. Truth Telling also demonstrates the myths underlying Canadian history and the human cost of colonialism, showing how it continues to underpin modern social institutions in Canada.

Cobalt Red is the searing first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt.

Alec Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings - an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color. Usual Cruelty is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it.

From leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to lesser-known figures such as Barbara Rose Johns and Jim Zwerg, each man and woman made the decision that something had to be done to stop discrimination. These moving accounts of the first decade of the civil rights movement are a tribute to the people, black and white, who took part in the fight for justice and the struggle they endured.

Winner of three book awards, The Lavender Scare masterfully traces the origins of contemporary sexual politics to Cold War hysteria over national security. Drawing on newly declassified documents and interviews with former government officials, historian David Johnson chronicles how the myth that homosexuals threatened national security determined government policy for decades, ruined thousands of lives, and pushed many to suicide. As Johnson shows, this myth not only outlived McCarthy but, by the 1960s, helped launch a new civil rights struggle.

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.

The war in Afghanistan has consumed vast amounts of blood and treasure, causing the Western powers to seek an exit without achieving victory. Seemingly never-ending, the conflict has become synonymous with a number of issues-global jihad, rampant tribalism, and the narcotics trade - but even though they are cited as the causes of the conflict, they are in fact symptoms.

From its origins in the 1750s, the White-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of "moral suasion" and nonviolent resistance as both religious tenet and political strategy. Through tactical violence, argues Carter Jackson, Black abolitionist leaders accomplished what White nonviolent abolitionists could not: creating the conditions that necessitated the Civil War.

Though often taken for granted, the modern American public defender is a recent invention with a surprisingly contentious history - one that offers insights not only about the "carceral state" but also about the contours and compromises of 20th-century liberalism.

Punjab was the arena of one of the first major armed conflicts of postcolonial India. During its deadliest decade, as many as 250,000 people were killed. This audiobook makes an urgent intervention in the history of the conflict, which to date has been characterized by a fixation on sensational violence - or ignored altogether. Mallika Kaur unearths the stories of three people who found themselves at the center of Punjab’s human rights movement.

The world is not as God intends it to be. God's heart is to make things right, and for the world to be just. But complex problems warrant more sustained attention than quick posts on social media. How can we actually make a difference? Activist Mae Elise Cannon takes us beyond the hashtags to serious engagement with real issues. God calls the church to respond substantively to the needs of the poor, the realities of racial inequity, and the mistreatment of women and the marginalized.

In 1960, Ishmael Reed, then an aspiring young writer, interviewed Malcolm X for a local radio station in Buffalo, and the encounter cost Reed his job and changed his life. In Malcolm and Me, Reed, the author of such classic novels as Mumbo Jumbo and the winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, reveals a side of Malcolm X the public has never seen before, and explores how the civil rights firebrand influenced his own views on working and living and speaking out, and left a mark on generations of artists and activists.

Operation Protective Edge, launched in early July 2014, was the third major Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in six years. It was also the most deadly. By the conclusion of hostilities some seven weeks later, 2,200 of Gaza's population had been killed, and more than 10,000 injured. In this book, journalist Mohammed Omer, a resident of Gaza who lived through the terror of those days with his wife and then three-month-old son, provides a first-hand account of life on-the-ground during Israel's assault.

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.

Constitutional fundamentalists read the Constitution selectively and self-servingly. Fundamentalist interpretations of the Constitution elevate certain constitutional rights above all others, benefit the most powerful members of society, and undermine the integrity of the document as a whole. The conservative fetish for the Second Amendment (enforced by groups such as the NRA) provides an obvious example of constitutional fundamentalism; the liberal fetish for the First Amendment (enforced by groups such as the ACLU) is less obvious but no less influential.