Search results for ""New Press""

A clear, expert, and inspiring guide to social change, based on case studies of grassroots movements that won, from two leading community and labor experts“Our movements must seek and win governing power to achieve our visions for a more just society. This book is a vital resource for progressives who want to win.” —Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair, Congressional Progressive CaucusHow do underdogs, facing far stronger opponents, sometimes win? In the tradition of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce’s Practical Radicals offers winning strategies, history, and theory for a new generation of activists.Based on interviews with leading organizers, this groundbreaking book describes seven strategies to bring about transformative change. It incorporates stories of organizations and movements that have won, including Make the Road NY, the St. Paul Federation of Educators, the welfare rights movement, the Working Families Party, New Georgia Project, Occupy Wall Street, 350.org, the Fight for 15, and Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Two overarching case studies anchor the book: the brilliant techniques used by enslaved people and their allies to end slavery, and the sinister but effective ways elites imposed our current system.Practical Radicals offers insights on strategy used by business, military, and political elites, addresses the challenges of overcoming conflict within organizations and movements, and concludes with a discussion of how our movements must adapt to meet new challenges in the twenty-first century.A book for activists, organizers, and anyone hoping to win the fight for a better society, Practical Radicals is a deeply informed resource designed to help us win on the big issues of our time.

Read more less

Hopeful and forward-looking futuristic short stories that explore how the power of storytelling can help create the world we need “This is a glorious book that challenges our conceptions of bookmaking as much as it questions our conceptions of world-building. We, as earthlings, will be better to the earth after experiencing this book. That is not hyperbole.” —New York Times bestselling author Kiese LaymonAfterglow is a stunning collection of original short stories in which writers from many different backgrounds envision a radically different climate future. Published in collaboration with Grist, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions, these stirring tales expand our ability to imagine a better world. Inspired by cutting-edge literary movements, such as Afrofuturism, hopepunk, and solarpunk, Afterglow imagines intersectional worlds in which no one is left behind—where humanity prioritizes equitable climate solutions and continued service to one’s community. Whether through abundance or adaptation, reform, or a new understanding of survival, these stories offer flickers of hope, even joy, as they provide a springboard for exploring how fiction can help create a better reality. Afterglow welcomes a diverse range of new voices into the climate conversation to envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress. A creative work rooted in the realities of our present crisis, Afterglow presents a new way to think about the climate emergency—one that blazes a path to a clean, green, and more just future.

Read more less

Next Big Idea Book Club Nominee October 2022An eye-opening look at how America’s elite colleges and suburbs help keep the rich rich—making it harder than ever to fight the inequality dividing us today The front-page news and the trials that followed Operation Varsity Blues were just the tip of the iceberg. Poison Ivy tells the bigger, seedier story of how elite colleges create paths to admission available only to the wealthy, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Evan Mandery reveals how tacit agreements between exclusive “Ivy-plus” schools and white affluent suburbs create widespread de facto segregation. And as a college degree continues to be the surest route to upward mobility, the inequality bred in our broken higher education system is now a principal driver of skyrocketing income inequality everywhere. Mandery—a professor at a public college that serves low- and middle-income students—contrasts the lip service paid to “opportunity” by so many elite colleges and universities with schools that actually walk the walk. Weaving in shocking data and captivating interviews with students and administrators alike, Poison Ivy also synthesizes fascinating insider information on everything from how students are evaluated, unfair tax breaks, and questionable fundraising practices to suburban rituals, testing, tutoring, tuition schemes, and more. This bold, provocative indictment of America’s elite colleges shows us what’s at stake in a faulty system—and what will be possible if we muster the collective will to transform it.

Read more less

The MacArthur grant–winning environmental justice activist’s riveting memoir of a life fighting for a cleaner future for America’s most vulnerable A Smithsonian Magazine Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 Catherine Coleman Flowers, a 2020 MacArthur “genius,” grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that’s been called “Bloody Lowndes” because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it’s Ground Zero for a new movement that is also Flowers’s life’s work—a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets and, as a consequence, live amid filth. Flowers calls this America’s dirty secret. In this “powerful and moving book” (Booklist), she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West. In this inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative, Flowers shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards—not only those of poor minorities.

Read more less

A trenchant analysis of how public education is being destroyed in overt and deceptive ways—and how to fight back “A powerful analysis of the predatory, profit-seeking forces that threaten our nation’s public schools. . . . If you care about the future of our society, read this book.” —Diane Ravitch, author of Slaying Goliath and Reign of ErrorIn the “vigorous, well-informed” (Kirkus Reviews) A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, the co-hosts of the popular education podcast Have You Heard expose the potent network of conservative elected officials, advocacy groups, funders, and think tanks that are pushing a radical vision to do away with public education. “Cut[ing] through the rhetorical fog surrounding a host of free-market reforms and innovations” (Mike Rose), Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire lay bare the dogma of privatization and reveal how it fits into the current context of right-wing political movements. A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door “goes above and beyond the typical explanations” (SchoolPolicy.org), giving readers an up-close look at the policies—school vouchers, the war on teachers’ unions, tax credit scholarships, virtual schools, and more—driving the movement’s agenda. Called “well-researched, carefully argued, and alarming” by Library Journal, this smart, essential book has already incited a public reckoning on behalf of the millions of families served by the American educational system—and many more who stand to suffer from its unmaking. “Just as with good sci-fi,” according to Jacobin, “the authors make a compelling case that, based on our current trajectory, a nightmare future is closer than we think.”

Read more less

Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself.Howard ZinnA new edition of the national bestseller and American Book Award winner, with a new preface by the authorSince its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most importantand successfulhistory books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times.For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems, and calls out academic historians for abandoning the conce

Read more less

An ambitious and shocking exposé of America’s hidden empire in Liberia, run by the storied Firestone corporation, and its long shadow In the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world’s automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world’s rubber. But only one percent of the world’s rubber grew under the U.S. flag, creating a bottleneck that hampered the nation’s explosive economic expansion. To solve its conundrum, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company turned to a tiny West African nation, Liberia, founded in 1847 as a free Black republic. Empire of Rubber tells a sweeping story of capitalism, racial exploitation, and environmental devastation, as Firestone transformed Liberia into America’s rubber empire. Historian and filmmaker Gregg Mitman scoured remote archives to unearth a history of promises unfulfilled for the vast numbers of Liberians who toiled on rubber plantations built on taken land. Mitman reveals a history of racial segregation and medical experimentation that reflected Jim Crow America—on African soil. As Firestone reaped fortunes, wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few elites, fostering widespread inequalities that fed unrest, rebellions and, eventually, civil war. A riveting narrative of ecology and disease, of commerce and science, and of racial politics and political maneuvering, Empire of Rubber uncovers the hidden story of a corporate empire whose tentacles reach into the present.

Read more less

A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller - with a new preface by the author.

Read more less

An essential guide to transforming the quotidian communication that feeds inequality in our schools - from the award-winning editor of Everyday Antiracism (The New Press, 2008).

Read more less

An intimate conversation between towering public intellectuals examining the contentious interplay between the Cuban Revolution and U.S. empireAn audacious revolutionary experiment in the backyard of empire, Cuba has occupied a vexed role in the international order for decades. Though its doctors (and fighters)and the outsized influence of its examplehave traversed the globe, from Venezuela to Angola, its political and economic future remain uncertain as the Castro era comes to a close and the U.S. embargo proceeds unabated. Through an intimate conversation between two of the country's most astute observers of international politics, Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad, On Cuba traces Cuban history from the early days of the 1950s revolution to the present, interrogating U.S. interventions and extracting lessons on U.S. power and influence in the Western Hemisphere along the way. Neither a jingoistic condemnation nor an uncritical celebration, Chomsky's heterodox approach to world affairs

Read more less

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPRAn NPR Best Book of the Year, exploring the impact of Latinos’ new collective racial identity on the way Americans understand race, with a new afterword by the authorWho are Latinos and where do they fit in America’s racial order? In this “timely and important examination of Latinx identity” (Ms.), Laura E. Gómez, a leading critical race scholar, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity. And the catalyst for this emergent identity, she argues, has been the ferocity of anti-Latino racism.In what Booklist calls “an incisive study of history, complex interrogation of racial construction, and sophisticated legal argument,” Gómez “packs a knockout punch” (Publishers Weekly), illuminating for readers the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making processes that Latinos have undergone over time, indelibly changing the way race functions in this country.Building on the “insightful and well-researched” (Kirkus Reviews) material of the original, the paperback features a new afterword in which the author analyzes results of the 2020 Census, providing brilliant, timely insight about how Latinos have come to self-identify.

Read more less

An explosive expose on the world's most influential agricultural corporation.

Read more less

A portrait of life inside the monolith by dissidents, activists and journalists inside China.

Read more less

An exhilarating journey through the subcultures, the occupied squats, and late-night scenes in the anarchic first few years of Berlin after the fall of the Wall Berlin Calling is a never-before-told account of the Berlin Wall’s momentous crash, seen through the eyes of the divided city’s street artists and punk rockers, impresarios and underground agitators. Berlin-based writer Paul Hockenos offers us an original chronicle of 1989’s “peaceful revolution,” which upended communism in East Germany, and the wild, permissive years of artistic ferment and pirate utopias that followed when protest and idealism, techno clubs and sprawling squats were the order of the day. This is a story stocked with larger-than-life characters from Berlin’s highly political subcultures—including David Bowie and Iggy Pop, the internationally known French Wall artist Thierry Noir, cult figure Blixa Bargeld of the industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, and a clandestine cell of East Berlin anarchists. Hockenos argues that the do-it-yourself energy and raw urban vibe of the early 1990s shaped the new Berlin and still pulses through the city today.

Read more less

The bestselling author pulls no punches on what America needs to defeat white supremacy National political commentator Steve Phillips’s “politically charged and thoughtfully reasoned” (Kirkus Reviews) How We Win the Civil War helped chart the way forward for progressives and people of color, arguing that Democrats must recognize the nature of the fight we’re in, which is a contest between democracy and white supremacy left unresolved after the Civil War. Combining a powerful grasp of history with Phillips’s trademark, no-nonsense political critique, this “spirited and persuasive . . . rousing call for change” (Publishers Weekly) argues that we will not overcome until we govern as though we are under attack—until we finally recognize that the time has come to finish the conquest of the Confederacy and all that it represents. With a new preface laying out what is at stake

Read more less

A year in the life of a Chicago high school with one of the nation’s highest proportions of refugees, told with “strong novel-like pacing” (Milwaukee Magazine)“A stunning and heart-wrenching work of nonfiction.”—Chicago ReaderWinner of the Studs and Ida Terkel AwardFor a century, Chicago’s Roger C. Sullivan High School has been a home to immigrant and refugee students. In 2017, during the worst global refugee crisis in history, its immigrant population numbered close to three hundred—or nearly half the school—and many were refugees new to the country. These young people came from thirty-five different countries, speaking more than thirty-eight different languages. Called “a feat of immersive reporting” (National Book Review), and “a powerful portrait of resilience in the face of long odds” (Publishers Weekly), Refugee High, by award-winning journalist Elly Fishman, offers a riveting chronicle of the 2017–8 school year at Sullivan High, a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric was at its height in the White House. Even as we follow teachers and administrators grappling with the everyday challenges facing many urban schools, we witness the complicated circumstances and unique needs of refugee and immigrant children: Alejandro may be deported just days before he is scheduled to graduate; Shahina narrowly escapes an arranged marriage; and Belenge encounters gang turf wars he doesn’t understand. Heartbreaking and inspiring in equal measure, Refugee High raises vital questions about the priorities and values of a public school and offers an eye-opening and captivating window into the present-day American immigration and education systems.

Read more less

The essential anthology on the most effective ways to organize a labor movement for environmental justice, from leading organizers in the fieldThe corporate elite have long pitted climate and labor movements against each other through a “jobs vs. the environment” narrative that maximizes profits. But over the last few years, labor unions and climate organizers have been pushing back against this framework and organizing for a real just transition.Featuring contributions from key organizers in climate justice and labor, Power Lines tackles the most pressing questions facing those who are trying to build a movement for economic and environmental justice. The collection provides practical organizing models and strategies as well as inspiration for the possibility of making change on climate.Power Lines moves beyond an analysis of the class politics of climate change or the strategic imperative

Read more less

“A well-rendered and -documented tale of exploitation in the developing world” (Kirkus Reviews) with deep resonance in the present day In a book Paul Farmer called “a gem of a social history linking two countries stuck in uncomfortable embrace for well over a century,” award-winning author and filmmaker Gregg Mitman tells a sweeping story of capitalism, racial exploitation, and environmental devastation, as Firestone transformed Liberia into America’s rubber empire. Scouring remote archives to unearth a story of promises unfulfilled for the vast numbers of Liberians who toiled on rubber plantations built on taken land, Mitman “peppers this history with a wealth of fascinating details and interesting characters” (Foreign Affairs), revealing a system of racial segregation and medical experimentation that reflected Jim Crow America—on African soil. Called “a brilliant, compelling read” by Princeton scholar Rob Nixon, Empire of Rubber, now available in paperback, provides a riveting narrative of ecology and disease, of commerce and science, and of racial politics and political maneuvering—the hidden story of a corporate empire whose tentacles reach into the present.

Read more less

Greedy corporate interests have been lying to us for centuries. Here’s an illustrated, entertaining road map for navigating through their hypocrisy and deceptionFrom praising the health benefits of cigarettes to moralizing on the character-building qualities of child labor, rich corporate overlords have gone to astonishing, often morally indefensible lengths to defend their profits. Since the dawn of capitalism, they’ve told the same lies over and over to explain why their bottom line is always more important than the greater good: You say you want to raise the federal minimum wage? Why, you’ll only make things worse for the very people you want to help! Should we hold polluters accountable for the toxins they’re dumping in our air and water? No, the free market will save us! Can we raise taxes on the rich to pay for universal healthcare? Of course not—that will kill jobs! Affordable childcare? Socialism! It’s always the same tired threats and finger-pointing, in a concentrated campaign to keep wealth and power in the hands of the wealthy and powerful. Corporate Bullsh*t will help you identify this pernicious propaganda for the wealthiest 1 percent, and teach you how to fight back. Structured around some of the most egregious statements ever made by the rich and powerful, the book identifies six categories of falsehoods that repeatedly thwart progress on issues including civil rights, wealth inequality, climate change, voting rights, gun responsibility, and more. With amazing illustrations and a sharp sense of humor, Corporate Bullsh*t teaches readers how to never get conned, bamboozled, or ripped off ever again.

Read more less

How to envision a justice system that combines the least possible punishment with the greatest possible healing, from an all-star cast of contributors “An extraordinary and long overdue collection offering myriad ways that we can and must completely overhaul the way we imagine as well as implement ‘justice.’” —Heather Ann Thompson, historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Blood in the Water After decades of overpolicing and ever-more punitive criminal justice measures, the time has come for a new approach to violence and community safety. Parsimony and Other Radical Ideas About Justice brings together leading activists, legal practitioners, and researchers, many of them justice-involved, to envision a justice system that applies a less-is-more framework to achieve the goal of public safety. Grounded in a new social contract heralding safety not punishment, community power not state power, the book describes a paradigm shift where justice is provided not by police and prisons, but in healing from harm. A distinguished cast of contributors from the Square One Project at Columbia University’s Justice Lab shows that a parsimonious approach to punishment, alongside a reckoning with racism and affirming human dignity, would fundamentally change how we respond to harm. We would encourage mercy in the face of violence, replace police with community investment, address the trauma lying at the heart of mass incarceration, reduce pre-trial incarceration, close the democracy gap between community residents and government policymakers, and eliminate youth prisons, among other significant changes to justice policy.

Read more less

A groundbreaking and visionary call to action on educating and supporting girls of color, from the highly acclaimed author of Pushout "Monique Morris is a personal shero of mine and a respected expert in this space."—Ayanna Pressley, U.S. congresswoman and the first woman of color elected to Boston's city council Wise Black women have known for centuries that the blues have been a platform for truth-telling, an underground musical railroad to survival, and an essential form of resistance, healing, and learning. In this “powerful call to action” (Rethinking Schools), leading advocate Monique W. Morris invokes the spirit of the blues to articulate a radically healing and empowering pedagogy for Black and Brown girls. Morris describes with candor and love what it looks like to meet the complex needs of girls on the margins. Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues is a “vital, generous, and sensitively reasoned argument for how we might transform American schools to better educate Black and Brown girls” (San Francisco Chronicle). Morris brings together research and real life in this chorus of interviews, case studies, and the testimonies of remarkable people who work successfully with girls of color. The result is this radiant guide to moving away from punishment, trauma, and discrimination toward safety, justice, and genuine community in our schools.

Read more less

“A damning investigation of dark money by a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee” (Kirkus Reviews) with a new preface on recent disclosures about efforts to influence the Court “There’s no senator I can think of who’s done more sleuthing to figure out the money trail in American politics, particularly as it affects the courts.”—Jane Mayer, author of the national bestseller Dark MoneyAs the story of Supreme Court malfeasance and ethics violations repeatedly makes front-page news, the paperback version of The Scheme comes at a time of crisis for the American judiciary.Following his book Captured on corporate capture of regulatory and government agencies, and his years of experience as a prosecutor, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, whom Senator Elizabeth Warren calls a “a powerful voice in defending our American democracy against the relentless, pervasive—and often hidden—power of corporate special interests,” here turns his attention to the right-wing scheme to capture the United States Supreme Court. Whitehouse chronicles a hidden-money campaign using an armada of front groups, helped by the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, employing the Federalist Society as an appointments turnstile, and with the same small handful of right-wing billionaires and corporations enticing the Senate to break rules, norms, and precedents to confirm wildly inappropriate nominees who would advance their anti-government agenda.Now available in an affordable paperback edition with a new preface addressing the Reverend Schenck disclosures about politicking the justices and Justice Thomas’s recently disclosed conflicts of interest, The Scheme offers what Kirkus Reviews calls “a maddening indictment of a corrupt and corrupted judiciary.”

Read more less

Finalist, Colorado Book AwardA gripping work of narrative nonfiction, told across time, that exposes what’s at stake when prosecutors conceal evidence—and what we can do about it The Brady rule was meant to transform the U.S. justice system. In soaring language, the Supreme Court decreed in 1963 that prosecutors must share favorable evidence with the defense—part of a suite of decisions of that reform-minded era designed to promote fairness for those accused of crimes. But reality intervened. The opinion faced many challenges, ranging from poor legal reasoning and shaky precedent to its clashes with the very foundations of the American criminal legal system and some of its most powerful enforcers: prosecutors. In this beautifully wrought work of narrative nonfiction, Thomas L. Dybdahl illustrates the promise and shortcomings of the Brady rule through deft storytelling and attention to crucial cases, includi

Read more less

An urgent, provocative collection of essays from Latinx thought leaders heralding a more inclusive vision of America’s future Latinx people make up the second-largest ethnic and racial group in America, with a population of over sixty million. They have been integral to shaping the country’s economy, culture, and politics, and their influence and power continue to grow at all levels of civic life. Yet their diversity remains misunderstood, their contributions ignored, their concerns overlooked. If We Want to Win brings together twenty leading figures involved in issues that affect the Latinx community, to lay out a vision for the future of American democracy, drawing on their experience and expertise in areas ranging from the arts, juvenile justice, women’s rights, and education, to environmental justice, racism, human rights, immigration, technology, and philanthropy. Each contributor tells his or her own story alongside stories of the resilience and hope they have encountered over the course of their careers, debunking the stereotyping and scapegoating that continue to plague the Latinx community and seeking a more accurate portrayal of themselves and their communities. While questioning what it means to be Latinx and what it means to be American in the twenty-first century, this inspiring, visionary collection offers a blueprint for moving the United States toward a more inclusive and just democracy.

Read more less

A National Bestseller “If we first recognize that we are in a war, and then learn the lessons and follow the lead of those who have shown they know how to prevail, we can definitely win the Civil War, secure a multiracial democracy, and end white supremacy for good.” —from the introduction The bestselling author and national political commentator pulls no punches on what America needs to do to strengthen its multiracial democracySteve Phillips’s first book, Brown Is the New White, helped shift the national conversation around race and electoral politics, earning a spot on the New York Times and Washington Post bestseller lists and launching Phillips into the upper ranks of trusted observers of the nation’s changing demographics and their implications for our political future. Now, in How We Win the Civil War, Phillips charts the way forward for progressives and people of color after four years of Trump, arguing that Democrats must recognize the nature of the fight we’re in, which is a contest between democracy and white supremacy left unresolved after the Civil War. We will not overcome, Phillips writes, until we govern as though we are under attack—until we finally recognize that the time has come to finish the conquest of the Confederacy and all that it represents. With his trademark blend of political analysis and historical argument, Phillips lays out razor-sharp prescriptions for 2022 and beyond, from increasing voter participation and demolishing racist immigration policies to reviving the Great Society programs of the 1960s—all of them geared toward strengthening a new multiracial democracy and ridding our politics of white supremacy, once and for all.

Read more less

Named one of The Progressive magazine's Favorite Books of the YearAn inside look at the organizers and artists on the front lines of political mobilization and social change“Ken [Grossinger] is one of the smartest strategists I know.” —John Sweeney, AFL-CIO president, 1995–2009 An artist’s mural of George Floyd becomes an emblem of a renewed movement for racial equality. A documentary film injects fuel into a popular mobilization to oust a Central American dictator. Freedom songs course through the American civil rights movement.When artists and organizers combine forces, new forms of political mobilization follow—which shape lasting social change. And yet few people appreciate how much deliberate strategy often propels this vital social change work. Behind the scenes, artists, organizers, political activists, and philanthropists have worked together to hone powerful strategies for achieving the world we want and the world we need.In Art Works, noted movement leader Ken Grossinger chronicles these efforts for the first time, distilling lessons and insights from grassroots leaders and luminaries such as Ai Weiwei, Courtland Cox, Jackson Browne, Shepard Fairey, Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Alexander, Bill McKibben, JR, Jose Antonio Vargas, and more. Drawing from historical and present-day examples—including Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, the Hip Hop Caucus, the Legacy Museum, and the Art for Justice Fund—Grossinger offers a rich tapestry of tactics and successes that speak directly to the challenges and needs of today’s activists and of these political times.

Read more less

The first comprehensive account of the Trump administration’s efforts to destroy our government institutions, by the man Ralph Nader says “writes authoritatively and with revealing detail about important topics that few others cover” “Tom McGarity writes authoritatively and with revealing detail about important topics that few others cover.” —Ralph Nader Koch Industries spent $3.1 million in the first three months of the Trump administration, largely to ensure confirmation of Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA. By July 2018, more than sixteen federal inquiries were pending into Pruitt’s mismanagement and corruption. But Pruitt was just the first in a long line of industry-friendly, incompetent, and destructive agency heads put in place by the Trump administration in its effort to dismantle the federal government’s protective edifice. Remember Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who, before he faced eighteen separate federal inquiries and was fired, made a deal with Halliburton to build a brewery on land that Zinke owned in Montana? Or how about Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who rescinded requirements that high-hazard trains install special braking systems, weakened standards for storing natural gas, and lengthened the hours that truck drivers could be on the road without a break, even as she failed for two years to divest her interest in a road materials manufacturer? And then there were Rick Perry, Betsy DeVos, Sonny Perdue, Andrew Puzder . . . the list goes on. In an original and compelling argument, Thomas McGarity shows how adding populists to the Republican’s traditional base of free market ideologues and establishment Republicans allowed Trump to come dangerously close to achieving his goal of demolishing the programs that Congress put in place over the course of many decades to protect consumers, workers, communities, children, and the environment. Finally, McGarity offers a blueprint for rebuilding the protective edifice and restoring the power of the American government to offer all Americans better lives.

Read more less

The harrowing account of the black Southern educators who bravely pressed on for justice in schools (The New York Review of Books) even as the bright lodestar of desegregation fadedThis well-told and inspiring story (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is the monumental product of Lillian Smith Book Awardwinning author Vanessa Siddle Walker''s two-decade investigation into the clandestine travels and meetingswith other educators, Dr. King, Georgia politicians, and even U.S. presidentsof one Dr. Horace Tate, a former Georgia school teacher, principal, and state senator. In a sweeping work that reads like a companion piece to ''Hidden Figures,'' (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), post-Brown generations will encounter invaluable lessons for today from the educators behind countless historical battlesin courtrooms, schools, and communitiesfor the quality education of black children.For two years, an aging Tate told Siddle Walker fascinating

Read more less

Winner, Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ AnthologyWinner, Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, Publishing Triangle AwardsA Ms. magazine, Refinery29, and Lambda Literary Most Anticipated Read of 2021A groundbreaking collection tracing the history of intellectual thought by Black Lesbian writers, in the tradition of The New Press's perennial seller Words of FireAfrican American lesbian writers and theorists have made extraordinary contributions to feminist theory, activism, and writing. Mouths of Rain, the companion anthology to Beverly Guy-Sheftall's classic Words of Fire, traces the long history of intellectual thought produced by Black Lesbian writers, spanning the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century. Using “Black Lesbian” as a capacious signifier, Mouths of Rain includes writing by Black women who have shared intimate and loving relationships with other women, as well as Black women who see bonding as mutual, Black women who have self-identified as lesbian, Black women who have written about Black Lesbians, and Black women who theorize about and see the word lesbian as a political descriptor that disrupts and critiques capitalism, heterosexism, and heteropatriarchy. Taking its title from a poem by Audre Lorde, Mouths of Rain addresses pervasive issues such as misogynoir and anti-blackness while also attending to love, romance, “coming out,” and the erotic. Contributors include:Barbara SmithBeverly SmithBettina LoveDionne BrandCheryl ClarkeCathy J. CohenAngelina Weld GrimkeAlexis Pauline GumbsAudre LordeDawn Lundy MartinPauli MurrayMichelle ParkersonMecca Jamilah SullivanAlice WalkerJewelle Gomez

Read more less

The 233-year story of how the American people have taken an imperfect constitution—the product of compromises and an artifact of its time—and made it more democratic Who wrote the Constitution? That’s obvious, we think: fifty-five men in Philadelphia in 1787. But much of the Constitution was actually written later, in a series of twenty-seven amendments enacted over the course of two centuries. The real history of the Constitution is the astonishing story of how subsequent generations have reshaped our founding document amid some of the most colorful, contested, and controversial battles in American political life. It’s a story of how We the People have improved our government’s structure and expanded the scope of our democracy during eras of transformational social change. The People’s Constitution is an elegant, sobering, and masterly account of the evolution of American democracy. From the addition of the Bill of Rights, a promise made to save the Constitution from near certain defeat, to the post–Civil War battle over the Fourteenth Amendment, from the rise and fall of the “noble experiment” of Prohibition to the defeat and resurgence of an Equal Rights Amendment a century in the making, The People’s Constitution is the first book of its kind: a vital guide to America’s national charter, and an alternative history of the continuing struggle to realize the Framers’ promise of a more perfect union.

Read more less

From the author of the acclaimed Behind the Kitchen Door, a powerful examination of how the subminimum wage and the tipping system exploit society’s most vulnerable “No one has done more to move forward the rights of food and restaurant workers than Saru Jayaraman.” —Mark Bittman, author of The Kitchen Matrix and A Bone to PickBefore the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the country, more than six million people earned their living as tipped workers in the service industry. They served us in cafes and restaurants, they delivered food to our homes, they drove us wherever we wanted to go, and they worked in nail salons for as little as $2.13 an hour—the federal tipped minimum wage since 1991—leaving them with next to nothing to get by.These workers, unsurprisingly, were among the most vulnerable workers during the pandemic. As businesses across the country closed down or dr

Read more less

A stunningly original and timely collection that makes the case for socialism, American styleIt''s a strange day when a New York Times conservative columnist is forced to admit that the left is winning, but as David Brooks wrote recently, the American left is on the cusp of a great victory. Among Americans under thirty, 43 percent had a favorable view of socialism, while only 32 percent had a favorable view of capitalism. Not since the Great Depression have so many Americans questioned the fundamental tenets of capitalism and expressed openness to a socialist alternative.We Own the Future: Democratic SocialismAmerican Style offers a road map to making this alternative a reality, giving readers a practical vision of a future that is more democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable. The book includes a crash course in the history and practice of democratic socialism, a vivid picture of what democratic s

Read more less

From one of America's leading legal minds, a riveting look at the U.S.-Cuban relationship seen through the lens of a nearly impossible case.

Read more less

From the award-winning author of Pushout, an inspiring graphic novel about what can happen when Black girls are given the opportunity to find their genuine power Monique Couvson’s trailblazing book Pushout laid the groundwork for understanding how our schools are failing Black girls; her follow-up, Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues, provided a blueprint for their healing and liberation. Now Couvson invites readers to be inspired by her liberatory imagination with an original narrative told from the perspective of the very girls she has been fighting for years to lift up. Charisma’s Turn is a graphic novel that follows the dynamic story of Charisma, a Black high school student who is grappling with mounting pressures from home and school. When frustrations with her family intersect with a conflict at school, she reaches a crossroads, facing a choice that could change her future. Featuring vibrantly illustrated art from Amanda Jones and a foreword by poet, artist, and arts educator Susan Arauz Barnes, this book will appeal to teens, parents, educators, librarians, and more. Charisma’s Turn exemplifies how Black girls can be truly empowered to reach their full potential when they have supportive educators and community members in their corner.

Read more less

A collaboration between the National Book Awardwinning journalist and the prize-winning photographer on the queer-resistance theater troupeIn the fall of 2017, the internationally acclaimed underground theater troupe Belarus Free Theatre took New York by storm for a production of their harrowing anti-torture, anti-Putin play, Burning Doors. They were joined by Maria Alyokhina, a member of Russian punk group Pussy Riot, who made international headlines when they were imprisoned for staging an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral. The play met with enthusiastic acclaim from critics, with New York magazine praising it as a smart, smoldering, physically brutal piece of theater.In Two Women in Their Time, award-winning documentary photographer Misha Friedman and New Yorker reporter Masha Gessen take us backstage, giving us an intimate look at this fiercely creative drama troupe that cannot officially perform in its homeland, which

Read more less

A groundbreaking and visionary call to action on educating and supporting girls of color, from the highly acclaimed author of Pushout "Monique Morris is a personal shero of mine and a respected expert in this space."—Ayanna Pressley, U.S. congresswoman and the first woman of color elected to Boston''s city council Wise Black women have known for centuries that the blues have been a platform for truth-telling, an underground musical railroad to survival, and an essential form of resistance, healing, and learning. In this “powerful call to action” (Rethinking Schools), leading advocate Monique W. Morris invokes the spirit of the blues to articulate a radically healing and empowering pedagogy for Black and Brown girls. Morris describes with candor and love what it looks like to meet the complex needs of girls on the margins. Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blu

Read more less

From an award-winning documentary photographer, the first book of its kind to portray the LGBTQ community in contemporary Poland

Read more less

The best single-volume history of the Revolution I have read. Howard Zinn Upon its initial publication, Ray Raphael's magisterialA People's History of the American Revolutionwas hailed byNPR's Fresh Airas relentlessly aggressive and unsentimental. With impeccable skill, Raphael presented a wide array of fascinating scholarship within a single volume, employing a bottom-up approach that has served as a revelation. A People's History of the American Revolutiondraws upon diaries, personal letters, and other Revolutionary-era treasures, weaving a thrilling you are there narrativea tapestry that uses individual experiences to illustrate the larger stories. Raphael shifts the focus away from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to the slaves they owned, the Indians they displaced, and the men and boys who did the fighting (Los Angeles Times Book Review). This remarkable perspective on a familiar part of American history helps us

Read more less

A meditation in the spirit of John Berges and bell hooks on art as protest, contemplation, and beauty in politically perilous times.

Read more less