Other books that might interest you

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  Henry David Thoreau: On The Duty...

  Henry David Thoreau

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  "That government is best which governs least" is the famous opening line of this essay. The slavery crisis inflamed New England in the 1840s and 1850s. The environment became especially tense after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. A lifelong abolitionist, Thoreau delivered an impassioned speech which would later become Civil Disobedience in 1848, just months after leaving Walden Pond. The speech dealt with slavery, but at the same time excoriated American imperialism, particularly the Mexican–American War. Thoreau asserts that because governments are typically more harmful than helpful, they therefore cannot be justified. Democracy is no cure for this, as majorities simply by virtue of being majorities do not also gain the virtues of wisdom and justice. The judgment of an individual's conscience is not necessarily inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so "[i]t is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice." He adds, "I cannot for an instant recognize as my government [that] which is the slave's government also.

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  Fake news

  Mike Graham

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  MIKE GRAHAM TAKES AIM AT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IN FAKE NEWS 
  Veteran journalist and broadcaster Mike Graham turns his attention to the state of modern journalism in Fake News, a provocative examination of the relationship between the media, politics, government and the increasingly powerful forces shaping what the public is allowed to see and hear. 
  Drawing on decades spent inside British newspapers and broadcasting, Graham argues that journalism has undergone a profound transformation. In his account, reporters have increasingly become commentators, political sympathies have displaced impartiality and once-powerful newspapers and television networks are losing audiences and influence. 
  From Brexit and the Covid years to censorship, social-media platforms and political reporting, Fake News combines Graham’s personal experiences with his uncompromising assessment of the industry. He recalls broadcasting throughout lockdown, working with figures including Neil Oliver and Peter Hitchens, and questioning policies and narratives that he believes much of the established media failed adequately to challenge. 
  Graham also recounts TalkRADIO’s sudden removal from YouTube after alleged breaches of the platform’s community guidelines, an episode he presents as evidence of the extraordinary power technology companies can exercise over publishers and broadcasters. 
  At the heart of Fake News is a wider warning about freedom of expression. Graham argues that journalists, particularly those working in independent media, can no longer assume that their freedom to question prevailing orthodoxies will remain unchallenged. 
  Part memoir, part polemic and part insider account of British journalism, Fake News asks a fundamental question: when trust in traditional media collapses, who gets to decide what the truth is? 
  For Graham, the future increasingly belongs to independent journalism — and to audiences prepared to question what they are told.

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  The New Dark Age - Why Liberals...

  Nigel Biggar

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  In an increasingly polarized age, culture wars are everywhere. They are often criticized as superficial or confected disagreements designed to distract us from more important issues. Is this true, or are they rather more fundamental than that?In this thoughtful and passionate intervention, renowned theologian and moral philosopher Nigel Biggar argues that 'culture wars' are in fact political and moral debates that cut to the very quick of some of the most substantial questions of our time, ranging from the welfare of children to the way we conceive and manage ethnic and cultural differences in diverse societies. The fact that these debates are so often characterized by bad faith, dishonesty, and mindless abuse exposes the rot at the heart of the intellectual culture of the west, in universities, the media, and beyond. An authoritarian desire to suppress or smear opponents and exercise the power of intimidation and coercion is a dramatic illustration of a dangerous reality: our fragile and valuable liberal culture of rational truth-seeking and good faith civility is under threat. A new dark age looms.Mixing firsthand experience with broad ethical, political, and cultural reflection, this is a powerful and erudite polemic from one of our most respected thinkers.

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  Waco Rising - David Koresh the...

  Kevin Cook

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  In 1993, David Koresh and a band of heavily armed evangelical Christians took on the might of the US government. A two-month siege of their compound in Waco, Texas, ended in a firefight that killed seventy-six, including twenty-five children. America is still picking up the pieces, and we still haven't heard the full story. 
   
   
   
  Kevin Cook finally provides the full story of what happened at Waco. He gives listeners a taste of Koresh's deadly charisma and takes us behind the scenes at the Branch Davidians' compound, where "the new Christ" turned his followers into servants and sired seventeen children by a dozen "wives." In vivid accounts packed with human drama, Cook harnesses never-reported material to reconstruct the FBI's fifty-one-day siege of the Waco compound in minute-to-minute detail. He sheds new light on the Clinton administration's approval of a lethal governmental assault in a new, definitive account of the firefight that ended so many lives and triggered the rise of today's militia movement. Waco drew the battle lines for American extremists—in Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's words, "Waco started this war." With help from sources as diverse as Branch Davidian survivors and the FBI's lead negotiator during the siege, Cook draws a straight line from Waco's ashes to the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol and insurrections yet to come.

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  Twilight Prisoners - The Rise of...

  Siddhartha Deb

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  An incisive, lyrical, and deeply reported account of India's descent into authoritarianism. 
   
   
   
  Traveling across India, interviewing Hindu zealots, armed insurgents, jailed dissidents, and politicians and thinkers from across the political spectrum, Siddhartha Deb reveals a country in which forces old and new have aligned to endanger democracy. The result is an absorbing—and disturbing—portrait. India has become a religious fundamentalist dystopia, one depicted here with a novelist's precise language and eye for detail. 
   
   
   
  Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party—a formation explicitly drawing on European fascism—has deftly exploited modern technologies, the media, and market forces to launch a relentless campaign on minorities, women, dissenters, and the poor. Deb profiles these people, as well as those fighting back, including writers, scholars, and journalists. Twilight Prisoners sounds the alarm now that the world's largest democracy is under threat in ways that echo the fissures in the United States, United Kingdom, and so-called democracies the world over.

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  Gun Curious - A Liberal...

  David Yamane

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  More than ever, it feels like cultural and political divisions over firearms are tearing the United States apart. Guns are an undeniable and contradictory presence in America, both widely owned and controversial. This book does something remarkable: it promotes insight over animosity in understanding the complex reality of guns in America. It challenges firearms skeptics, entertains enthusiasts, and informs the uncommitted by taking readers on a surprising journey inside gun culture. 
  A lifelong liberal from the San Francisco Bay Area, David Yamane became a new gun owner as a 42-year-old and embarked on an immersive twelve-year study of American gun culture. Weaving together his personal experiences and sociological observations to explain why guns make sense to those who own them, he illuminates defensive gun ownership, the risk of negative outcomes associated with firearms, and what responsible gun ownership looks like in the twenty-first century. This book lowers the heat on America’s inflamed arguments about firearms and models the civil discussions we desperately need.

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