Search results for ""New Press""

Named one of the Best Photo Books of the Year by SmithsonianA stunning full-color collection of photographs, old and new, by the renowned photographer and LGBTQIA+ activist Lola Flash Working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics, celebrated photographer Lola Flash has become known for images that manage to both interrogate and transcend preconceptions about gender, sex, and race. Spurred by their experience as an active member of ACT UP and ART+ during the AIDS epidemic in New York City, their art is profoundly connected to their activism, fueling a lifelong commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of queer communities, especially queer communities of color.The seventeenth volume in a groundbreaking series of LGBTQ-themed photobooks from The New Press, Believable draws on the extraordinary body of work that Flash has created over four decades, from their iconic “Cross Colour” images from the 1980s and early 1990s to their more recent photography, which used the framework of Afrofuturism to examine the intersection of Black culture and technoculture and science fiction. Also included in the book are portraits that explore the impact of skin pigmentation on Black identity and consciousness, as well as people who have challenged traditional concepts of gender and trendsetters in the urban underground cultural scene.In all their images, their passion for photography and their belief in the medium’s ability to provide agency and freedom and initiate change shine through. For the first time, Believable brings together the remarkable work of this queer art icon. Believable was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

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Winner, James Beard Foundation Book Award for Reference, History, and ScholarshipWinner, Harriet Tubman Prize“Slaves for Peanuts plumbs a fascinating and disturbing slice of history, shining a light on another glaring example of Western hypocrisy and oppression.” —NPR Books“A complex story crossing time and oceans” (National Public Radio), Jori Lewis’s prizewinning Slaves for Peanuts deftly weaves together the natural and human history of a crop that transformed the lives of millions. “With elegant prose and engaging details” (National Book Award-winner Imani Perry), Lewis reveals how demand for peanut oil in Europe ensured that slavery in Africa would persist well into the twentieth century, long after the European powers had officially banned it in the territories they controlled.“This informative and compassionate account unearths a little-know

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A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energyCalifornia’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the country. It is also ground zero for a new “lithium gold rush”—a race to extract a mineral critical to the rapidly expanding electric vehicle and renewable energy storage markets. With enough lithium lurking beneath the surface to provide a third of global demand, who will benefit from the development of this precious resource?  A work of stunning analysis and reporting, Charging Forward shows that the questions raised by Lithium Valley lie at the heart of the “green transition.” Weaving together movement politics, federal policy, and global supply chains, noted experts Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor stress that extracting lithium is just a first step: the real question is whether the region and the nation will address and overcome the environmental d

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An intimate photographic glimpse into the queer world behind the closed doors of modern Japanese society

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With a new afterword by the authorsA powerful, intimate collection of conversations with Indigenous Americans on the climate crisis and the Earth’s future Although for a great many people, the human impact on the Earth—countless species becoming extinct, pandemics claiming millions of lives, and climate crisis causing worldwide social and environmental upheaval—was not apparent until recently, this is not the case for all people or cultures. For the Indigenous people of the world, radical alteration of the planet, and of life itself, is a story that is many generations long. They have had to adapt, to persevere, and to be courageous and resourceful in the face of genocide and destruction—and their experience has given them a unique understanding of civilizational devastation. An American Library Association Notable Book, We Are the Middle of Forever places Indigenous voices at the ce

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Riveting and inspiring first-person stories of how “taking a knee” triggered a political awakening among athletes of all ages and levels, from the celebrated sportswriter “With profiles of courage that leap of the page, Zirin uncovers a whole national movement of citizen-athletes fighting for racial justice.” —Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning Hailed by Publishers Weekly in a starred review as “an enthralling look at the impact of peaceful protest by sports figures at the high school, college, and professional levels,” The Kaepernick Effect explores the story of how quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s simple act of “taking a knee” spread like wildfire throughout American society, becoming the preeminent public symbol of resistance to America’s persistent racial inequality. In this powerful book, critically acclaimed sports journalist and author Dave Zirin chronicles “the Kaepernick effect” for the first time, through “a riveting collection of first-person stories” (The Nation) from high school athletes and coaches, college stars and high-powered athletic directors, and professional athletes across many different sports—from Megan Rapinoe to Michael Bennett. In each case, he uncovers the fascinating explanations and motivations behind what became a mass political movement in sports. “Necessary reading for all, especially those who want to make a difference in promoting social justice, equity, and inclusion, and end police brutality” (Library Journal, starred review), The Kaepernick Effect is for anyone seeking to get involved in the new movement for racial justice in America: “Take a knee, everyone, and start a revolution” (Kirkus Reviews).

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The U.S. Senator from Oregon who is leading the fight to restore the talking filibuster explains how changing just one rule could save our democracyIf we want to fix what ails America, we have to fix the Senate. And if we want to fix the Senate, we must fix the broken filibuster.In a compelling and powerfully argued book, Senator Jeff Merkley and his longtime chief of staff tell the insiders’ story of how the Senate used to work and how the filibuster came to cripple the self-styled “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” with paralyzing gridlock. And they make the surprising case that restoring a modified version of the old-style, talking filibuster may just be our democracy’s path back from the brink.For nearly two centuries, the Senate designed by the Founders served the purpose they envisioned: it was a deliberative legislative body where the nation’s thorniest challenges we

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A powerful argument for separating immigration enforcement from the criminal legal system, by one of the nation’s foremost “crimmigration” expertsIn the fevered battles over immigration, Democrats and Republicans alike agree on this: that migrants who have committed a crime have no place in this country. But targeting migrants because they have committed a crime is a short-sighted appeal to nativist fear. To predicate a migrant’s right to stay in the country on whether they are law-abiding and therefore deserving or “criminal” and undeserving does little to improve public safety and has an especially devastating impact on low-income migrants of color.While César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández’s first book, Migrating to Prison, focuses on the explosion of migrant detention centers over the past decades, Welcome the Wretched tackles head-on what happens when a deeply flawe

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An original argument that the answer to mass incarceration lies not with experts and pundits, but with ordinary people taking extraordinary actions together—written by a leading authority on bail reform and social movementsFrom reading books on mass incarceration, one might conclude that the way out of our overly punitive, racially disparate criminal system is to put things in the hands of experts, technocrats able to think their way out of the problem. But, as Jocelyn Simonson points out in her groundbreaking new book, the problems posed by the American carceral state are not just technical puzzles; they present profound moral questions for our time. Radical Acts of Justice tells the stories of ordinary people joining together in collective acts of resistance: paying bail for a stranger, using social media to let the public know what everyday courtroom proceedings are like, making a video about someone’s life for a criminal court judge, presenting a budget proposal to the city council. When people join together to contest received ideas of justice and safety, they challenge the ideas that prosecutions and prisons make us safer; that public officials charged with maintaining “law and order” are carrying out the will of the people; and that justice requires putting people in cages. Through collective action, these groups live out new and more radical ideas of what justice can look like. In a book that will be essential reading for those who believe our current systems of policing, criminal law, and prisons are untenable, Jocelyn Simonson shows how to shift power away from the elite actors at the front of the courtroom and toward the swelling collective in the back.

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A timely and paradigm-shifting argument that all members of a democracy must participate in elections, by a leading political expert and Washington Post journalist Americans are required to pay taxes, serve on juries, get their kids vaccinated, get driver’s licenses, and sometimes go to war for their country. So why not ask—or require—every American to vote? In 100% Democracy, E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport argue that universal participation in our elections should be a cornerstone of our system. It would be the surest way to protect against voter suppression and the active disenfranchisement of a large share of our citizens. And it would create a system true to the Declaration of Independence’s aspirations by calling for a government based on the consent of all of the governed. It’s not as radical or utopian as it sounds: in Australia, where everyone is required to vote (Australians can vote “none of the above,” but they have to show up), 91.9 percent of Australians voted in the last major election in 2019, versus 60.1 percent in America’s 2016 presidential race. Australia hosts voting-day parties and actively celebrates this key civic duty. It is time for the United States to take a major leap forward and recognize voting as both a fundamental civil right and a solemn civic duty required of every eligible U.S. citizen.

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A revelatory, moving narrative that offers a harrowing critique of the war on drugs from voices seldom heard in the conversation: drug users who are working on the front lines to reduce overdose deaths Media coverage has established a clear narrative of the overdose crisis: In the 1990s, pharmaceutical corporations flooded America with powerful narcotics while lying about their risk; many patients developed addictions to prescription opioids; then, as access was restricted, waves of people turned to the streets and began using heroin and, later, the dangerous synthetic opioid fentanyl. But that’s not the whole story. It fails to acknowledge how the war on drugs has exacerbated the crisis and leaves out one crucial voice: that of drug users themselves. Across the country, people who use drugs are organizing in response to a record number of overdose deaths. They are banding together to save lives and demanding equal rights. Set against the backdrop of the overdose crisis, Light Up the Night provides an intimate look at how users navigate the policies that criminalize them. It chronicles a rising movement that’s fighting to save lives, end stigma, and inspire commonsense policy reform. Told through embedded reporting focused on two activists, Jess Tilley in Massachusetts and Louise Vincent in North Carolina, this is the story of the courageous people stepping in where government has failed. They are standing on the front lines of an underground effort to help people with addictions use drugs safely, reduce harms, and live with dignity.

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A riveting primer on the growing trend of surveillance, monitoring, and control that is extending our prison system beyond physical walls and into a dark future—by the prize-winning author of Understanding Mass Incarceration “James Kilgore is one of my favorite commentators regarding the phenomenon of mass incarceration and the necessity of pursuing truly transformative change.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow In the last decade, as the critique of mass incarceration has grown more powerful, many reformers have embraced changes that release people from prisons and jails. As educator, author, and activist James Kilgore brilliantly shows, these rapidly spreading reforms largely fall under the heading of “e-carceration”—a range of punitive technological interventions, from ankle monitors to facial recognition apps, that deprive people of their liberty, all in the name of ending mass incarceration. E-carceration can block people’s access to employment, housing, healthcare, and even the chance to spend time with loved ones. Many of these technologies gather data that lands in corporate and government databases and may lead to further punishment or the marketing of their data to Big Tech. This riveting primer on the world of techno-punishment comes from the author of award–winning Understanding Mass Incarceration. Himself a survivor of prison and e-carceration, Kilgore captures the breadth and complexity of these technologies and offers inspiring ideas on how to resist.

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An illuminating portrait of young LGBTQ people in China, the latest addition to the acclaimed photobook series celebrating LGBTQ communities around the world Same-sex relationships have been an accepted part of Chinese culture for centuries. It was only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, under the influence of the West, that homophobia became more prevalent; and under Mao, homosexuality was criminalized. By the turn of the last millennium, same-sex relationships were once again legal, and by 2001, homosexuality had been declassified as a mental disorder. Polling suggests that the younger generation embraces sexual diversity and LGBTQ rights. But the stigma against queer people still remains. Recent reports from China have noted government attempts to clamp down on LGBTQ media and events, and numerous citizens are still being sent by family members to conversion therapy. Photographer Sarah Mei Herman first started photographing young queer people and their personal relationships during an artist residency in Xiamen in Fujian Province on China’s southeastern coast. As she explored what drew these people together, she herself built up close friendships with her subjects and, even after her residency had ended, returned to Xiamen to photograph them, capturing the way they have changed over the course of a number of years. The sixteenth entry in The New Press’s worldwide LGBTQ photobook series, Solace is a stunning collection of full-color photos in a beautiful, affordable volume. It provides a portrait of young people navigating the ambiguities of friendship and sexuality as they enter adulthood and grapple with what it means to be queer in modern-day China. Solace was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

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2018 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award (Nonfiction) FinalistA timely indictment of the corporate takeover of education and the privatizationand profitabilityof separate and unequal schools, published at a critical time in the dismantling of public education in AmericaAn astounding look at America''s segregated school system, weaving together historical dynamics of race, class, and growing inequality into one concise and commanding story. Cutting School puts our schools at the center of the fight for a new commons.Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough and This Changes EverythingPublic schools are among America''s greatest achievements in modern history, yet from the earliest days of tax-supported educationtoday a sector with an estimated budget of over half a billion dollarsthere have been intractable tensions tied to race and poverty. Now, in an era characterized by levels of school

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A groundbreaking look at how America exported mass incarceration around the globe, from a rising young historian“American Purgatory will forever change how we understand the rise of mass incarceration. It will forever change how we understand this country.” —Clint Smith, bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across AmericaIn this explosive new book, historian Benjamin Weber reveals how the story of American prisons is inextricably linked to the expansion of American power around the globe.A vivid work of hidden history that spans the wars to subjugate Native Americans in the mid-nineteenth century, the conquest of the western territories, and the creation of an American empire in Panama, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, American Purgatory reveals how “prison imperialism”—the deliberate use of prisons to control restive, subject populations—is written into our national DNA, extending through to our modern era of mass incarceration. Weber also uncovers a surprisingly rich history of prison resistance, from the Seminole Chief Osceola to Assata Shakur—one that invites us to rethink the scope of America’s long freedom struggle.Weber’s brilliantly documented text is supplemented by original maps highlighting the global geography of prison imperialism, as well as illustrations of key figures in this history by the celebrated artist Ayo Scott. For readers of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, here is a bold new effort to tell the full story of prisons and incarceration—at home and abroad—as well as a powerful future vision of a world without prisons.

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The leading sociologist's brilliant and revelatory argument that the future of politics, work, immigration, and more may be found in California.

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Today''s leading economists weigh in with a new dashboard of metrics for measuring our economic and social health What we measure affects what we do. If we focus only on material well-beingon, say, the production of goods, rather than on health, education, and the environmentwe become distorted in the same way that these measures are distorted.Joseph E. Stiglitz A consensus has emerged among key experts that our conventional economic measures are out of sync with how most people live their lives. GDP, they argue, is a poor and outmoded measure of our well-being. The global movement to move beyond GDP has attracted some of the world''s leading economists, statisticians, and social thinkers who have worked collectively to articulate new approaches to measuring economic well-being and social progress. In the decade since the 2008 economic crisis, these experts have come together to determine what indicators can actually tell

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A sequel to the classic Fires in the Bathroom that illuminates what adolescents most need from teachers in today's upsetting times The context in which adolescents are learning has shifted radically since students first offered blunt advice to high school teachers in the groundbreaking Fires in the Bathroom, a perennial bestseller. Now their world is changing at warp speed, and classrooms too are seething with anxiety. This sequel raises the voices of diverse youth around the nation as they live through the mind-bending quandaries of this era and ask their teachers to notice. In Fires in Our Lives, Kathleen Cushman and her co-authors Kristien Zenkov and Meagan Call-Cummings (both leaders in bringing student voices to teacher education) present new first-person testimony on how today's youth experience the risks and challenges of high school. The students who speak here need their teachers more than ever as they navigate cultural, social, and political borders in their communities. Reinforced by classroom examples and supplemented with helpful takeaways, Fires in Our Lives offers a compelling dialogue about students' emotions, ideas, and developing agency. In a world that sorely needs the thoughtful participation of its rising generation, this new staple belongs on every high school teacher's bookshelf.

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A harrowing and unforgettable look at reporting in Mexico, one of the world's most dangerous countries to be a journalist In 2017, Mexico edged out Iraq and Syria as the deadliest country in the world in which to be a reporter, with at least fourteen journalists killed over the course of the year. The following year another ten journalists were murdered, joining the almost 150 reporters who have been killed since the mid-2000s in a wave of violence that has accompanied Mexico's war on drugs. In Killing the Story, award-winning journalist and filmmaker Témoris Grecko reveals how journalists are risking their lives to expose crime and corruption. From the streets of Veracruz to the national television studios of Mexico City, Grecko writes about the heroic work of reporters at all levels—from the local self-trained journalist, Moises Sanchez, whose body was found dismembered by the side of a road after he reported on corruption by the state's governor, to high-profile journalists such as Javier Valdez Cárdenas, gunned down in the streets of Sinaloa, and Carmen Aristegui, battling the forces attempting to censor her. In the vein of Charles Bowden's Murder City and Anna Politskaya's A Russian Diary, Killing the Story is a powerful memorial to the work of Grecko's lost colleagues, which shows a country riven by brutality, hypocrisy, and corruption, and sheds a light on how those in power are bent on silencing those determined to reveal the truth and bring an end to corruption.

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A beautifully written and revelatory look at the slave origins of a major northern American city.

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Finalist for the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency’s Media for a Just Society AwardsNominated for the 49th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction)A 2017 Washington Post Notable Book A Kirkus Best Book of 2017“Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men.”—The Washington Post “The most readable and provocative account of the consequences of the war on drugs since Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow . . . .”—The New York Times Book Review“Powerful . . . deeply informed from a legal standpoint and yet in some ways still highly personal”—The Times Literary Supplement (London)With the eloquence of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the persuasive research of Michelle Alexander, a former federal prosecutor explains how the system really works, and how to disrupt itCops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread—all with the support of judges and politicians. In his no-holds-barred style, Butler, whose scholarship has been featured on 60 Minutes, uses new data to demonstrate that white men commit the majority of violent crime in the United States. For example, a white woman is ten times more likely to be raped by a white male acquaintance than be the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a black man. Butler also frankly discusses the problem of black on black violence and how to keep communities safer—without relying as much on police. Chokehold powerfully demonstrates why current efforts to reform law enforcement will not create lasting change. Butler's controversial recommendations about how to crash the system, and when it's better for a black man to plead guilty—even if he's innocent—are sure to be game-changers in the national debate about policing, criminal justice, and race relations.

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How the Supreme Court’s decision to treat unreasonable policing as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment has shortened the distance between life and death for Black people The summer of 2020 will be remembered as an unprecedented, watershed moment in the struggle for racial equality. Published on the second anniversary of the global protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Unreasonable is a groundbreaking investigation of the role that the law—and the U.S. Constitution—play in the epidemic of police violence against Black people. In this crucially timely book, celebrated legal scholar Devon W. Carbado explains how the Fourth Amendment became ground zero for regulating police conduct—more important than Miranda warnings, the right to counsel, equal protection and due process. Fourth Amendment law determines when and how the police can make arrests, and it determines the precarious line between stopping Black people and killing Black people. A leading light in the critical race studies movement, Carbado looks at how that text, in the last four decades, has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to protect police officers, not African Americans; how it sanctions search and seizure as well as profiling; and how it has become, ultimately, an amendment of life and death. Accessible, radical, and essential reading, Unreasonable sheds light on a rarely understood dimension of today’s most pressing issue.

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The former special assistant for legislative affairs to President Clinton, president of the American Constitution Society, and author of the damn fine (Elle) Under the Bus shows how the left can undo the right''s damage and take the country back Despite representing the beliefs of a minority of the American public on many issues, conservatives are in power not just in Washington, DC, but also in state capitals and courtrooms across the country. They got there because, while progressives fought to death over the nuances of policy and to bring attention to specific issues, conservatives focused on simply gaining power by gaming our democracy. They understood that policy follows power, not the other way around.Now, in a sensational new book, Caroline Fredricksonwho has had a front-row seat on the political drama in DC for decades while working to shape progressive policies as special assistant for legislative affairs to President Clinton, chief of staff

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From tomato fields to suburban shopping malls, an acclaimed journalist's devastating expose about how sexual assault affects our country's most invisible workers

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A scathing and original look at the racist origins of psychiatry, through the story of the largest mental institution in the worldToday, 90 percent of psychiatric beds are located in jails and prisons across the United States, institutions that confine disproportionate numbers of African Americans. After more than a decade of research, the celebrated scholar and activist Mab Segrest locates the deep historical roots of this startling fact, turning her sights on a long-forgotten cauldron of racial ideology: the state mental asylum system in which psychiatry was born and whose influences extend into our troubled present.In December 1841, the Georgia State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum was founded. A hundred years later, it had become the largest insane asylum in the world with over ten thousand patients. Administrations of Lunacy tells the story of this iconic and infamous southern institution, a history that was all but erased from popular memory and wit

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From a world-renowned expert on creative play and the impact of commercial marketing on children, a timely investigation into how big tech is hijacking childhood—and what we can do about it“Engrossing and insightful . . . rich with details that paint a full portrait of contemporary child-corporate relations.” —Zephyr Teachout, The New York Times Book ReviewEven before COVID-19, digital technologies had become deeply embedded in children’s lives, despite a growing body of research detailing the harms of excessive immersion in the unregulated, powerfully seductive world of the “kid-tech” industry.In the “must read” (Library Journal, starred review) Who’s Raising the Kids?, Susan Linn—one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of Big Tech and big business on children—weaves an “eye-opening and disturbing exploration of how marketing tech to children is creating a passive, dysfunctional generation” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). From birth, kids have become lucrative fodder for tech, media, and toy companies, from producers of exploitative games and social media platforms to “educational” technology and branded school curricula of dubious efficacy. Written with humor and compassion, Who’s Raising the Kids? is a unique and highly readable social critique and guide to protecting kids from exploitation by the tech, toy, and entertainment industries. Two hopeful chapters—“Resistance Parenting” and “Making a Difference for Everybody’s Kids”—chart a path to allowing kids to be the children they need to be.

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The inside story of the U.S.-Chinese superpower conflict playing out behind the scenes of today’s movie industry, from the leading media scholarChina surpassed North America to become the world ’s largest movie market in 2020. Formerly the focus of exotic fascination in the golden age of Hollywood, today the Chinese are a make-or-break audience for Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. And movies are now an essential part of China’s global “soft power” strategy: a Chinese real estate tycoon, who until recently was the major shareholder of the AMC theater chain, built the world’s largest film production facility. Behind the curtains, as this brilliant new book reveals, movies have become one of the biggest areas of competition between the world’s two remaining superpowers. Will Hollywood be eclipsed by its Chinese counterpart? No author is better positioned to untangle this riddle than Ying Zhu, a leading expert on Chinese film and media. In fascinating vignettes, Hollywood in China unravels the century-long relationship between Hollywood and China for the first time. Blending cultural history, business, and international relations, Hollywood in China charts multiple power dynamics and teases out how competing political and economic interests as well as cultural values are manifested in the art and artifice of filmmaking on a global scale, and with global ramifications. The book is an inside look at the intense business and political maneuvering that is shaping the movies and the U.S.-China relationship itself—revealing a headlines-grabbing conflict that is playing out not only on the high seas, but on the silver screen.

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The groundbreaking, bestselling history of slavery, with a new foreword by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed “As vital and necessary a historical document as anyone has ever produced in this country.” —The Boston GlobeWith the publication of the 1619 Project and the national reckoning over racial inequality, the story of slavery has gripped America’s imagination—and conscience—once again.No group of people better understood the power of slavery’s legacies than the last generation of American people who had lived as slaves. Little-known before the first publication of Remembering Slavery over two decades ago, their memories were recorded on paper, and in some cases on primitive recording devices, by WPA workers in the 1930s. A major publishing event, Remembering Slavery captured these extraordinary voices in a single volume for the firs

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