Social Civil

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.

In this deeply inspiring audiobook, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi recount their experiences talking to people from all walks of life about race and identity on a cross-country tour of America. Spurred by the realization that they had nearly completed high school without hearing any substantive discussion about racism in school, the two young women deferred college admission for a year to collect first-person accounts of how racism plays out in this country every day - and often in unexpected ways.

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.

A provocative history that reveals how guns - not abortion, race, or religion - are at the heart of America's cultural divide. Gunfight promises to be a seminal work in its examination of America's four-centuries-long political battle over gun control and the right to bear arms. Adam Winkler uses the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, which invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation's capital, as a springboard for a groundbreaking historical narrative.

As the effects of aggressive policing and mass incarceration harm historically marginalized communities and tear families apart, how do we define safety? In a time when the most powerful institutions in the United States are embracing the repressive and racist systems that keep many communities struggling and in fear, we need to reimagine what safety means. Community leader and lawyer Zach Norris lays out a radical way to shift the conversation about public safety away from fear and punishment and toward growth and support systems for our families and communities.

A masterpiece of American individualism, Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience is considered by many to be one of the most important pieces of political and philosophical writings ever produced by an American. Thoreau wrote the essay because of his opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War. When the government engages in actions that are unjust, he believed that citizens should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxes, even if it results in imprisonment or violence.

Reaching for Glory lets us eavesdrop on LBJ's private, often tortured thoughts during the most crucial year of his presidency - when his dreams of being hailed as the equal of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were destroyed by the war in Vietnam. These original recordings, presented side by side with the stories behind them, offer unprecedented insight into the Johnson presidency.

John Locke (1632 - 1704), the English philosopher and physician, is widely regarded as one of the Enlightenment's most influential thinkers. "A Letter Concerning Toleration" (1689) addresses the problem of religion and government by proposing religious toleration as the answer. In the "Second Treatise", Locke claims that civil society was created for the protection of life, liberty, and estate.

Noah Webster's name is now synonymous with the dictionary he created, but his story is not nearly so ubiquitous. Webster hobnobbed with various Founding Fathers and was a young confidant of George Washington and Ben Franklin. But perhaps most important, Webster was an ardent supporter of a unified, definitively American culture, distinct from the British, at a time when the United States of America were anything but unified - and his dictionary of American English is a testament to that.

What has happened to the dream of beloved community embraced by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement of the early 1960s—the vision of a just, humane, and colorblind America, a nation of "black and white together" animated by mutual respect and strengthened by the bonds of brotherly love? As Adam Gussow shows, the dream, although pressured on every front, remains alive. At the heart of My Family and I is Gussow's determination to live out the meaning of America's creed.

When Jasmine discovers a tiny pup hiding under a hedge on her family’s farm, she can’t believe her eyes. The poor thing hasn’t had anything to eat or drink in a long time, and he is so weak he can barely lift his head. Luckily, Jasmine’s mother is a veterinarian, and the Green family can give the puppy lots of love and care. But even if the pup survives, he has a long recovery ahead, and it will be hard for him to trust after being hurt before. Will Jasmine be able to form a bond with her new animal friend? Or will his owner try to take him back?

Decades before the impeachment of an American president for a similar offense, Angelo Herndon was charged under Georgia law with "attempting to incite insurrection"—a crime punishable by death. In 1932, the eighteen-year-old Black Communist Party organizer was arrested and had his room illegally searched and his radical literature seized. Charged under an old slave insurrection statute, Herndon was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to eighteen to twenty years on a chain gang.

In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a 24-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer to Abbeville. Her name was Rosa Parks.

This groundbreaking study of agriculture's role in the war defies long-held notions that Northern industrialization and urbanization led to clashes between North and South. Huston argues that the ideological chasm between plantation owners in the South and family farmers in the North led to the political eruption of 1854-1856 and the birth of a sectionalized party system.

Militarized police officers with tanks and drones. Pervasive government surveillance and profiling. Social media that distract and track us. All of these, contends Bernard E. Harcourt, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States - one rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror. The Counterrevolution is a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy but increasingly as a way of ruling ordinary Americans.

जाति और पितृसत्ता ई.वी. रामासामी नायकर 'पेरियार' के चिन्तन, लेखन और संघर्षों की केन्द्रीय धुरी रही है। उनकी दृढ़ मान्यता थी कि इन दोनों के विनाश के बिना किसी आधुनिक समाज का निर्माण नहीं किया जा सकता है। जाति और पितृसत्ता के सम्बन्ध में पेरियार क्या सोचते थे और क्यों वे इसके विनाश को आधुनिक भारत के निर्माण के लिए अपरिहार्य एवं अनिवार्य मानते थे? इन प्रश्नों का हिन्दी में एक मुकम्मल जवाब पहली बार यह किताब देती है।ऑडियो में यह किताब साहित्य प्रेमियों के लिए उपहार है, जहाँ वो एक तरफ़ आवाज़ के जादू में बंधते चले जाते हैं, वहीं दूसरी तरफ़ समाज को देखने का एक नज़रिया भी उन्हें हासिल होता है।

Even before the first rumblings of secession shook the halls of Congress, British involvement in the coming schism was inevitable. Britain was dependent on the South for cotton, and in turn the Confederacy relied almost exclusively on Britain for guns, bullets, and ships. The Union sought to block any diplomacy between the two and consistently teetered on the brink of war with Britain. For four years the complex web of relationships between the countries led to defeats and victories both minute and history-making.

The grandson of a slave, Dr. Ossian Sweet moved his family to an all-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. When his neighbors attempted to drive him out, Sweet defended himself, resulting in the death of a white man and a murder trial for Sweet. There followed one of the most important (and shockingly unknown) cases in Civil Rights history. Also caught up in the intense courtroom drama were legal giant Clarence Darrow and the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

For five long years in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusade dominated the American scene, terrified politicians, and destroyed the lives of thousands of our citizens. In this masterful history, Haynes Johnson re-creates that time of crisis. Johnson tells this monumental story through the lens of its relevance to our own time, when fear again affects American behavior and attitudes.

When planes crash, bridges collapse, and automobile gas tanks explode, we are quick to blame poor design. But Henry Petroski says we must look beyond design for causes and corrections. Known for his masterly explanations of engineering successes and failures, Petroski here takes his analysis a step further, to consider the larger context in which accidents occur. In To Forgive Design he surveys some of the most infamous failures of our time.