Other books that might interest you

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  Daring Democracy - Igniting...

  Frances Moore Lappé, Adam Eichen

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  In this time of uncertainty about the future of democracy in America, legendary Diet for a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lappe and organizer-scholar Adam Eichen expose the well-orchestrated effort that has robbed Americans of their rightful power. But at the heart of this unique book are solutions. Even in this divisive time, Americans are uniting across causes and ideologies to create a canopy of hope the authors call the Democracy Movement. In this invigorating movement of movements, millions of Americans are leaving despair behind as they push for and achieve historic change. The movement and democracy itself are vital to us as citizens and fulfill human needs-for power, meaning, and connection-essential to our thriving. In this timely and necessary book, Lappe and Eichen offer proof that courage is contagious in the daring fight for democracy.

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  The New Cold War - Russia and...

  Jeffrey Engel

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  One Day University presents a series of audio lectures recorded in real-time from some of the top minds in the United States. Given by award-winning professors and experts in their field, these recorded lectures dive deep into the worlds of religion, government, literature, and social justice. 
   
  The Cold War's end was supposed to bring about a new era of East-West cooperation, integrating Russia for perhaps the first time as an equal player in European and Atlantic affairs. Democracy was emerging, along with free markets. The end of old history appeared in sight, replaced by the new. We were poised to share one common European home, the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev pledged. And we shall all have peace. Eastern Europe is free, George H.W. Bush proclaimed as 1991 came to an end. This is a victory for democracy and freedom. Every American can take pride in this victory.  
   
  Well, the promised post-Cold War peace did not endure. The West's triumph brought the average citizen in the former Soviet Union a shorter life-span, a lower standard of living, and a long list of new grudges. As Boris Yeltsin gave way to Vladimir Putin by the 20th century's end, the stage was set for what some are now terming a new Cold War, replete with hacking, election influence, annexations, and new East-West tensions. Moscow once more appears Washington's adversary, though that is a view seldom voiced in the White House. How did we get from the Cold War's end to its apparent renewal? 
   
  This audio lecture includes a supplemental PDF.

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  Bloody Tuesday - The Untold...

  John M. Giggie

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  The dramatic story of one of the most violent episodes of the civil rights movement and its role in the ongoing reckoning with racial injustice in the United States.On Tuesday, June 9, 1964, police attacked more than 600 Black men, women, and children inside First African Baptist Church (Tuscaloosa, Alabama), where Reverend Martin Luther King had launched the Tuscaloosa campaign for integration three months earlier. As the group gathered to march, they faced over seventy law enforcement officers and hundreds more deputized white citizens and Klansmen eager to end their protests for good. Police smashed the historic church's stained-glass windows with water hoses and fired rounds of tear gas inside. As demonstrators streamed from the church, many choking and soaked, they beat them with nightsticks, cattle prods, and axe handles, arrested nearly a hundred, and sent over thirty to the hospital. Here this event is recounted through the eyes of locals—a charismatic Black preacher trained by Rev. King, an aging police chief, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and Black women who were the backbone of the protests.In Bloody Tuesday, John Giggie powerfully recovers one of the last great untold stories of the civil rights movement and its role in the reckoning with America's ongoing struggle for racial justice.

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  That's What They Want You to...

  Paul Simpson

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  An analysis of twenty-nine of the most famous theories, featuring assassinations, military operations, aliens, secret societies, and government conspiracies. 
   
  Conspiracies. They happen every day. All it takes is a couple of people and a secret, nefarious plan. But then there are big conspiracy theories—the assassinations, cover-ups, and shadow governments that are endlessly debated on talk radio and the Internet. Are they real? Are they even possible? Or are they just plain paranoid? 
   
  Paul Simpson has researched a wide variety of conspiracies, from those historically accepted to those that spark accusations of “being a part of it” if you disagree with their supporters. In reviewing these famous (and, in some cases, infamous) theories, That’s What They Want You to Think does not start from the position of a believer or a debunker. In each case, Simpson makes up his own mind based on the evidence of primary documents—and some of his conclusions may surprise even the most dedicated conspiracy researcher. 
   
  Straightforward and engaging, That’s What They Want You to Think provides food for thought for both conspiracy buffs and skeptics. Novices and veteran researchers alike will debate the latest evidence and fresh takes on long-standing theories. Covering topics as diverse as the JFK assassination and faked moon landings, from the bombing of Pearl Harbor to Area 51 and the New World Order, Simpson makes you wonder if what you believe is real, possible, or paranoid. 
   
  Praise for That’s What They Want You to Think 
   
  “This lively book looks at a variety of conspiracy theories—many well-known, others not so much—from a historical, investigative point of view. . . . Well worthwhile.” —Booklist

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  Guns across America -...

  Robert J. Spitzer

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  In vast swathes of America, the sacredness of the Second Amendment has become a political third rail, never to be questioned. Gun rights supporters wear tri-cornered hats, wave the stars and stripes, and ask what would have happened if the revolutionaries had been unarmed when the British were coming. They have had great success in conflating unfettered gun ownership with the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and all things American, even in an era of repeated mass shootings. Yet the all-too-familiar narrative of America's gun past, echoed in the Supreme Court's Heller gun rights decision, is not only mythologized, but historically wrong. 
  As Robert J. Spitzer demonstrates in Guns across America, gun ownership is as old as the nation, but so is gun regulation. Drawing on a vast new dataset of early gun laws reflecting every imaginable type of regulation, Spitzer reveals that firearms were actually more strictly regulated in the country's first three centuries than in recent years. The first "gun grabbers" were not 1960's Chablis-drinking liberals, but seventeenth century rum-guzzling pioneers, and their legacy continued through strict gun regulations in the 1920s and beyond. Spitzer examines interpretations of the Second Amendment, the assault weapons controversy, modern "stand your ground" laws, and the so-called "right of rebellion" to show that they play out in America's contemporary political landscape in ways that bear little resemblance to our imagined past. And as gun rights proponents seek to roll back gun laws and press as many guns into as many hands as possible, warning that gun rights are endangered, they sidestep the central question: are stricter gun laws incompatible with robust gun rights? Spitzer answers this question by examining New York State's tough gun laws, where his political analysis is complemented by his own quest for a concealed carry handgun permit and construction of a legal AR-15 assault weapon. 
  Not only can gun rights and rules coexist, but they have throughout American history. Guns across America reveals the long-hidden truth: that gun regulations are in fact as American as apple pie.

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  The Lost Revolution - Germany...

  Chris Harman

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  “Compelling . . . [a] classic study of the revolutionary process” (Neil Davidson, author of How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions?).   As the First World War was about to end in defeat, German sailors began to mutiny—giving voice to the widespread anger against the elites who had led the nation into war and the calamitous impact of that decision on everyday people. The events that followed would eventually result in the parliamentary democracy known as the Weimar Republic—and the socialists who had initially risen up would be attacked by German counterrevolutionary troops, their uniforms marking the debut of a new symbol: the swastika.   Because of the socialists’ defeat in Germany, Russia fell into the isolation that gave Stalin his road to power. Here, Chris Harman unearths the history of the lost revolution in Germany and reveals its lessons for the future struggles for a better world.   “Chris Harman’s compelling analysis of the failed German Revolution covers the entire period from 1918 to the debacle of 1923, paying close attention to episodes such as the Bavarian Soviet Republic which are often neglected or minimized. Harman clearly demonstrates that this example of ‘lost revolution’ was the real turning point in German history when history failed to turn, with dire consequences.” —Neil Davidson, author of Discovering the Scottish Revolution

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