Search results for ""The New Press""

A new breed of reform-minded prosecutors tells their stories about the challenges and successes of making change from inside the system Growing up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Kim Foxx never anticipated that she would become the chief prosecutor in the country’s second-biggest county. When Chesa Boudin was a baby, his parents were arrested and incarcerated. Visiting them in prison for decades helped shape his convictions about what justice does—and doesn’t—look like in the United States. Now, along with eleven other reform-minded prosecutors voters put in office throughout the country, they reflect on the task they set for themselves: making change from within. Using the power of their office, which has traditionally fueled mass incarceration and harsh punishments, this new breed of elected prosecutors has joined the movement to shake up the justice system. In Change from Within, these visionaries describe their journeys to office, what they are doing to change “business as usual,” the pushback they’ve experienced, and their thoughts on reforms that are possible working from the inside. Published in partnership with Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), drawing from interviews conducted by FJP executive director Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor, this unprecedented book includes intensely personal first-person profiles of thirteen transformative DAs. Each story is accompanied by an image inspired by the prosecutor and created by a formerly incarcerated artist.

Read more less

Finalist for the National Jewish Book AwardsFinalist, National Translation Award in Prose An exquisitely original collection of darkly funny stories that explore the panorama of Jewish experience in contemporary Poland, from a world-class contemporary writer “These small, searing prose pieces are moving and unsettling at the same time. If the diagnosis they present is right, then we have a great problem in Poland.” —Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize laureate and author of Flights Mikołaj Grynberg is a psychologist and photographer who has spent years collecting and publishing oral histories of Polish Jews. In his first work of fiction—a book that has been widely praised by critics and was shortlisted for Poland’s top literary prize—Grynberg recrafts those histories into little jewels, fictionalized short stories with the ring of truth. Both biting and knowing, I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To takes the form of first-person vignettes, through which Grynberg explores the daily lives and tensions within Poland between Jews and gentiles haunted by the Holocaust and its continuing presence. In “Unnecessary Trouble,” a grandmother discloses on her deathbed that she is Jewish; she does not want to die without her family knowing. What is passed on to the family is fear and the struggle of what to do with this information. In “Cacophony,” Jewish identity is explored through names, as Miron and his son Jurek demonstrate how heritage is both accepted and denied. In “My Five Jews,” a non-Jewish narrator remembers five interactions with her Jewish countrymen, and her own anti-Semitism, ruefully noting that perhaps she was wrong and should apologize, but no one is left to say “I’m sorry” to. Each of the thirty-one stories is a dazzling and haunting mini-monologue that highlights a different facet of modern Poland’s complex and difficult relationship with its Jewish past.

Read more less

An instant national best sellerA persuasive primer on police abolition from two veteran organizers “One of the world’s most prominent advocates, organizers and political educators of the [abolitionist] framework.” —NBCNews.com on Mariame Kaba In this powerful call to action, New York Times bestselling author Mariame Kaba and attorney and organizer Andrea J. Ritchie detail why policing doesn’t stop violence, instead perpetuating widespread harm; outline the many failures of contemporary police reforms; and explore demands to defund police, divest from policing, and invest in community resources to create greater safety through a Black feminist lens. Centering survivors of state, interpersonal, and community-based violence, and highlighting uprisings, campaigns, and community-based projects, No More Police makes a compelling case for a world where the tools required to prevent, interrupt, and transform violence in all its forms are abundant. Part handbook, part road map, No More Police calls on us to turn away from systems that perpetrate violence in the name of ending it toward a world where violence is the exception, and safe, well-resourced and thriving communities are the rule.

Read more less

A provocative, strategic plan for a humane immigration system from the nation’s leading immigration scholars and activists During the past decade, right-wing nativists have stoked popular hostility to the nation’s foreign-born population, forcing the immigrant rights movement into a defensive posture. In the Trump years, preoccupied with crisis upon crisis, advocates had few opportunities to consider questions of long-term policy or future strategy. Now is the time for a reset. Immigration Matters offers a new, actionable vision for immigration policy. It brings together key movement leaders and academics to share cutting-edge approaches to the urgent issues facing the immigrant community, along with fresh solutions to vexing questions of so-called “future flows” that have bedeviled policy makers for decades. The book also explores the contributions of immigrants to the nation’s identity, its economy, and progressive movements for social change. Immigration Matters delves into a variety of topics including new ways to frame immigration issues, fresh thinking on key aspects of policy, challenges of integration, workers’ rights, family reunification, legalization, paths to citizenship, and humane enforcement. The perfect handbook for immigration activists, scholars, policy makers, and anyone who cares about one of the most contentious issues of our age, Immigration Matters makes accessible an immigration policy that both remediates the harm done to immigrant workers and communities under Trump and advances a bold new vision for the future.

Read more less

Finalist for the 2020 PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing AwardAcclaimed on its hardcover publication, a global journey that reminds us of how magical the planet we''re about to lose really is (Bill McKibben)With a new epilogue by the authorAfter nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisisfrom Alaska to Australia''s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforestin order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Pacific only to find ghostly coral ree

Read more less

A Pulitzer Prize finalist's powerful examination of the hidden stories of workers overlooked by #MeToo.

Read more less

A sweeping history of the federal legislation that prohibits sex discrimination in education, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” —Title IX’s first thirty-seven words By prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education, the 1972 legislation popularly known as Title IX profoundly changed the lives of women and girls in the United States, accelerating a movement for equal education in classrooms, on sports fields, and in all of campus life. 37 Words is the story of Title IX. Filled with rich characters—from Bernice Resnick Sandler, an early organizer for the law, to her trans grandchild—the story of Title IX is a legislative and legal drama with conflicts over regulations and challenges to the law. It’s also a human story about women denied opportunities, students struggling for an education free from sexual harassment, and activists defying sexist discrimination. These intersecting narratives of women seeking an education, playing sports, and wanting protection from sexual harassment and assault map gains and setbacks for feminism in the last fifty years and show how some women benefit more than others. Award-winning journalist Sherry Boschert beautifully explores the gripping history of Title IX through the gutsy people behind it. In the tradition of the acclaimed documentary She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, 37 Words offers a crucial playbook for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and who is horrified by current attacks on women’s rights.

Read more less

From one of America's leading biographers, the definitive story of the radical feminist and anti-pornography activist, based on exclusive access to her archives Fifteen years after her death, Andrea Dworkin remains one of the most important and challenging figures in second-wave feminism. Although frequently relegated to its more radical fringes, Dworkin was without doubt a formidable and influential writer, a philosopher, and an activist—a brilliant figure who inspired and infuriated in equal measure. Her many detractors were eager to reduce her to the caricature of the angry, man-hating feminist who believed that all sex was rape, and as a result, her work has long been misunderstood. It is in recent years, especially with the rise of the #MeToo movement, that there has been a resurgence of interest in her ideas. This biography is the perfect complement to the widely reviewed anthology of her writing, Last Days at Hot Slit, published in 2019, providing much-needed context to her work. Given exclusive access to never-before-published photographs and archives, including her letters to many of the major figures of second-wave feminism, award-winning biographer Martin Duberman traces Dworkin's life, from her abusive first marriage through her central role in the sex and pornography wars of the following decades. This is a vital, complex, and long overdue reassessment of the life and work of one of the towering figures of second-wave feminism.

Read more less

The shocking and significant story of how the White House and Pentagon scuttled an epic Hollywood production. Soon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called “the most important story” he would ever film: a big budget dramatization of the Manhattan Project and the invention and use of the revolutionary new weapon. Over at Paramount, Hal B. Wallis was ramping up his own film version. His screenwriter: the novelist Ayn Rand, who saw in physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer the model for a character she was sketching for Atlas Shrugged. Greg Mitchell’s The Beginning or the End chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military—for reasons of propaganda, politics, and petty human vanity (this was Hollywood). Mitchell has found his way into the lofty rooms, from Washington to California, where it happened, unearthing hundreds of letters and dozens of scripts that show how wise intentions were compromised in favor of defending the use of the bomb and the imperatives of postwar politics. As in his acclaimed Cold War true-life thriller The Tunnels, he exposes how our implacable American myth-making mechanisms distort our history.

Read more less

A beautiful series of full-color portraits of LGBTQ people over the age of fifty.

Read more less

The progressive economics writer redefines the national conversation about American freedom “Mike Konczal [is] one of our most powerful advocates of financial reform‚ [a] heroic critic of austerity‚ and a huge resource for progressives.”—Paul KrugmanHealth insurance, student loan debt, retirement security, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership—these are the issues driving America’s current political debates. And they are all linked, as this brilliant and timely book reveals, by a single question: should we allow the free market to determine our lives? In the tradition of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, noted economic commentator Mike Konczal answers this question with a resounding no. Freedom from the Market blends passionate political argument and a bold new take on American history to reveal that, from the earliest days of the republic, Americans have defined freedom as what we keep free from the control of the market. With chapters on the history of the Homestead Act and land ownership, the eight-hour work day and free time, social insurance and Social Security, World War II day cares, Medicare and desegregation, free public colleges, intellectual property, and the public corporation, Konczal shows how citizens have fought to ensure that everyone has access to the conditions that make us free. At a time when millions of Americans—and more and more politicians—are questioning the unregulated free market, Freedom from the Market offers a new narrative, and new intellectual ammunition, for the fight that lies ahead.

Read more less

A groundbreaking collective work of history by a group of incarcerated scholars that resurrects the lost truth about the first women’s prisonWhat if prisoners were to write the history of their own prison? What might that tell them—and all of us—about the roots of the system that incarcerates so many millions of Americans? In this groundbreaking and revelatory volume, a group of incarcerated women at the Indiana Women’s Prison have assembled a chronicle of what was originally known as the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls, founded in 1873 as the first totally separate prison for women in the United States. In an effort that has already made the national news, and which was awarded the Indiana History Outstanding Project for 2016 by the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project worked under conditions of sometimes-extreme duress, excavating documents, navigating draconian limitations on what information incarcerated scholars could see or access, and grappling with the unprecedented challenges stemming from co-authors living on either side of the prison walls. With contributions from ten incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women, the result is like nothing ever produced in the historical literature: a document that is at once a shocking revelation of the roots of America’s first prison for women, and also a meditation on incarceration itself. Who Would Believe a Prisoner? is a book that will be read and studied for years to come as the nation continues to grapple with the crisis of mass incarceration.

Read more less

Former policy maker and Harvard Law professor Peter Edelman pens a incisive investigation into the dire state of America's poor.

Read more less

A first-of-its kind collection of the most vivid reporting about the most lethal addiction crisis everJust a few years ago, the opioid crisis could be referred to as a silent epidemic, but it is no longer possible to argue that the scourge of opiate addiction being overlooked. This is in large part thanks to the extraordinary writings featured in this volume, which includes some of the most impactful reporting in the United States in recent years addressing the opiate addiction crisis. American Epidemic collects, for the first time, the key works of reportage and analysis that provide the best picture available of the origins, consequences, and human calamity associated with the epidemic.Spirited, informed, and eloquently written, American Epidemic will serve as an essential introduction for anyone seeking insight into the deadliest drug crisis in American history.

Read more less

From a leading scholar on conservatism, the extraordinary chronicle of how the transformation of the American far right made the Trump presidency possible—and what it portends for the future Since Trump's victory and the UK's Brexit vote, much of the commentary on the populist epidemic has focused on the emergence of populism. But, Lawrence Rosenthal argues, what is happening globally is not the emergence but the transformation of right-wing populism. Rosenthal, the founder of UC Berkeley's Center for Right-Wing Studies, suggests right-wing populism is a protean force whose prime mover is the resentment felt toward perceived cultural elites, and whose abiding feature is its ideological flexibility, which now takes the form of xenophobic nationalism. In 2016, American right-wing populists migrated from the free marketeering Tea Party to Donald Trump's "hard hat," anti-immigrant, America-First nationalism. This was the most important single factor in Trump's electoral victory and it has been at work across the globe. In Italy, for example, the Northern League reinvented itself in 2018 as an all-Italy party, switching its fury from southerners to immigrants, and came to power. Rosenthal paints a vivid sociological, political, and psychological picture of the transnational quality of this movement, which is now in power in at least a dozen countries, creating a de facto Nationalist International. In America and abroad, the current mobilization of right-wing populism has given life to long marginalized threats like white supremacy. The future of democratic politics in the United States and abroad depends on whether the liberal and left parties have the political capacity to mobilize with a progressive agenda of their own.

Read more less

Two leading figures from the world of finance show how progressives can take their money away from conservative financial institutions and put it to good, lasting social useThe U.S. financial system may be working for some people, but it isn''t working for most of us who care about progressive causes. In fact, our financial system taps your money to pay for a conservative agenda. It''s a heads-they-win, tails-you-lose game when the fees you pay to use your credit card finance fossil fuels even when you buy green products. Conservative money muscle shapes our culture, society, politics, and public policy.In this bold call to action, two leaders from the world of progressive finance propose a strategy to challenge this conservative dominance of the financial sector: organized progressive money. It''s a $10 trillion plan for a full- service, market-scale progressive financial system. Mestrich and Pinsky explain how progressives can take control with finan

Read more less

The extraordinary story of how Georgia State University tore up the rulebook for educating lower-income studentsGeorgia State . . . has been reimaginedamid a moral awakening and a raft of data-driven experimentationas one of the South''s more innovative engines of social mobility.The New York TimesWon''t Lose This Dream is the inspiring story of a public university that has blazed an extraordinary trail for lower-income and first-generation students in downtown Atlanta, the birthplace of the civil rights movement.Over the past decade Georgia State University has upended the conventional wisdom that large numbers of students are doomed to fail simply because of their economic background or the color of their skin. Instead, it has harnessed the power of big data to identify and remove the obstacles that previously stopped them from graduating and completely transformed their prospects. A student from a mediocre h

Read more less

A beautiful and engaging guide to global warming’s impacts around the world Our planet is in peril. Seas are rising, oceans are acidifying, ice is melting, coasts are flooding, species are dying, and communities are faltering. Despite these dire circumstances, most of us don’t have a clear sense of how the interconnected crises in our ocean are affecting the climate system, food webs, coastal cities, and biodiversity, and which solutions can help us co-create a better future. Through a rich combination of place-based storytelling, clear explanations of climate science and policy, and beautifully rendered maps that use a unique ink-on-dried-seaweed technique, The Atlas of Disappearing Places depicts twenty locations across the globe, from Shanghai and Antarctica to Houston and the Cook Islands. The authors describe four climate change impacts—changing chemistry, warming waters, strengthening storms, and rising seas—using the metaphor of the ocean as a body to draw parallels between natural systems and human systems. Each chapter paints a portrait of an existential threat in a particular place, detailing what will be lost if we do not take bold action now. Weaving together contemporary stories and speculative “future histories” for each place, this work considers both the serious consequences if we continue to pursue business as usual, and what we can do—from government policies to grassroots activism—to write a different, more hopeful story. A beautiful work of art and an indispensable resource to learn more about the devastating consequences of the climate crisis—as well as possibilities for individual and collective action—The Atlas of Disappearing Places will engage and inspire readers on the most pressing issue of our time.

Read more less

A powerful argument against idealizing the F.B.I. and overlooking its troubling record for the sake of short-term political convenience.The New York Times Book Review A former FBI undercover agent and whistleblower gives us a riveting and troubling account of the contemporary FBIessential reading for our timesImpressively researched and eloquently argued, former special agent Mike German''s Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide tells the story of the transformation of the FBI after the 9/11 attacks from a law enforcement agency, made famous by prosecuting organized crime and corruption in business and government, into arguably the most secretive domestic intelligence agency America has ever seen.German shows how FBI leaders exploited the fear of terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 to shed the legal constraints imposed on them in the 1970s in the wake of Hoover-era civil rights ab

Read more less

How Bill de Blasio's mayoral victory triggered a seismic shift in the nation's urban political landscapeand what it portends for our cities in the futureIn November 2013, a little-known progressive stunned the elite of New York City by capturing the mayoralty by a landslide. Bill de Blasio''s promise to end the Tale of Two Cities had struck a chord among ordinary residents still struggling to recover from the Great Recession. De Blasio''s election heralded the advent of the most progressive New York City government in generations. Not since the legendary Fiorello La Guardia in the 1930s had so many populist candidates captured government office at the same time. Gotham, in other words, had been suddenly reclaimed in the name of its people. How did this happen? De Blasio''s victory, journalist legend Juan González argues, was not just a routine change of government but a popular rebellion against corporate-friendly policies that had dominated New Yor

Read more less

The education wars have been demoralizing for teachers. . . . After the Education Wars helps us to see a better way forward.Cathy N. Davidson, The New York Times Book ReviewAfter the Education Wars is an important book that points the way to genuine reform.Diane Ravitch, author of Reign of Error and The Death and Life of the Great American School SystemA bestselling business journalist critiques the top-down approach of popular education reforms and profiles the unexpected success of schools embracing a nimbler, more democratic entrepreneurialismIn an entirely fresh take on school reform, business journalist and bestselling author Andrea Gabor argues that Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and other leaders of the prevailing education-reform movement have borrowed all the wrong lessons from the business world. After the Education Wars explains how the market-based measures and carrot-and-stick incentives inform

Read more less

Washington''s progressive champion explains how we can achieve a truly inclusive America that works for all of usIn November 2016, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first Indian American woman to serve in that role. Two years later, the fast-rising Democratic star and determined critic of President Donald Trump, according to Politico''s Playbook 2017 Power List, won reelection with more votes than any other member of the House. Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, proved her progressive bonafides when she introduced the most comprehensive Medicare-for-all bill to Congress in February.Behind the story of Jayapal''s rise to political prominence lie over two decades of devoted advocacy on behalf of immigrants and progressive causesand years of learning how to turn activism into public policy that serves all Americans. Use the Power You Have is Jayapal''s

Read more less

Journalist Any McSmith brings together the stories of artists who worked at great risk during Stalinist Russia, one of the most oppressive regimes in world history.

Read more less

In writing his Self-Portrait of Black America, anthropologist, folklorist, and humanist John Gwaltney went in search of "Core Black People"—the ordinary men and women who make up black America—and asked them to define their culture. Their responses, recorded in Drylongso, are to American oral history what blues and jazz are to American music. If the people in William H. Johnson's and Jacob Lawrence's paintings could talk, this is what they would say.

Read more less

A beautifully written, deeply provocative inquiry into the intersection of animal and disability liberation—and the debut of an important new social criticHow much of what we understand of ourselves as “human” depends on our physical and mental abilities—how we move (or cannot move) in and interact with the world? And how much of our definition of “human” depends on its difference from “animal”?Drawing on her own experiences as a disabled person, a disability activist, and an animal advocate, author Sunaura Taylor persuades us to think deeply, and sometimes uncomfortably, about what divides the human from the animal, the disabled from the nondisabled—and what it might mean to break down those divisions, to claim the animal and the vulnerable in ourselves, in a process she calls “cripping animal ethics.”Beasts of Burden suggests that issues of disability and animal justice—which have heretofore primarily been presented in opposition—are in fact deeply entangled. Fusing philosophy, memoir, science, and the radical truths these disciplines can bring—whether about factory farming, disability oppression, or our assumptions of human superiority over animals—Taylor draws attention to new worlds of experience and empathy that can open up important avenues of solidarity across species and ability. Beasts of Burden is a wonderfully engaging and elegantly written work, both philosophical and personal, by a brilliant new voice.

Read more less

New paperback edition of the definitive work on America's response to the Holocaust.

Read more less

Influential art writer Lippard weaves together cultural studies, history, geography and contemporary art to provide a fascinating examination of our multiple senses of place.

Read more less

In the past few years, a new generation of progressive intellectuals has dramatically transformed how law, race, and racial power are understood and discussed in America. Questioning the old assumptions of both liberals and conservatives with respect to the goals and the means of traditional civil rights reform, critical race theorists have presented new paradigms for understanding racial injustice and new ways of seeing the links between race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. This reader, edited by the principal founders and leading theoreticians of the critical race theory movement, gathers together for the first time the movement's most important essays.

Read more less

An instant national best sellerA persuasive primer on police abolition from two veteran organizers “One of the world’s most prominent advocates, organizers and political educators of the [abolitionist] framework.” —NBCNews.com on Mariame Kaba In this powerful call to action, New York Times bestselling author Mariame Kaba and attorney and organizer Andrea J. Ritchie detail why policing doesn’t stop violence, instead perpetuating widespread harm; outline the many failures of contemporary police reforms; and explore demands to defund police, divest from policing, and invest in community resources to create greater safety through a Black feminist lens. Centering survivors of state, interpersonal, and community-based violence, and highlighting uprisings, campaigns, and community-based projects, No More Police makes a compelling case for a world where the tools required to prevent, interrupt, and transform violence in all its forms are abundant. Part handbook, part road map, No More Police calls on us to turn away from systems that perpetrate violence in the name of ending it toward a world where violence is the exception, and safe, well-resourced and thriving communities are the rule.

Read more less

From the Orwell Prize winning author of Palestinian Walks, a moving portrait of Palestine's Ramallah.

Read more less

The latest edition to an explosive bestseller, that reveals shocking truths about the revisionist history rife in American schools.

Read more less

A moving and timely collection of testimonials from people impacted by hate speech and hate crimes before and after the 2016 presidential election.

Read more less

From the minds of Islamic radicals in French prisons to the role of the Internet in the global jihad, a stunning inquiry into the sources of terrorist violence

Read more less