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  The Highest Poverty - Monastic...

  Giorgio Agamben

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  The acclaimed philosopher and author of Homo Sacer contemplates the possibility of true human freedom through a deep analysis of monastic stricture. 
   
  What is a rule, if it appears to become confused with life? And what is a human life, if, in every one of its gestures, of its words, and of its silences, it cannot be distinguished from the rule? It is to these questions that Giorgio Agamben’s new book turns by means of an impassioned reading of the phenomenon of Western monasticism from Pachomius to St. Francis.  
   
  The Highest Poverty meticulously reconstructs the lives of monks, with their obsessive attention to temporal articulation and to the Rule, to ascetic techniques and to liturgy. But Agamben’s thesis is that the true novelty of monasticism lies not in the confusion between life and norm, but in the discovery of a new dimension, in which “life” is affirmed in its autonomy, and in which the claim of the “highest poverty” and “use” challenges the law in ways that we must still grapple with today.  
   
  How can we think a form-of-life, that is, a human life released from the grip of law, and a use of bodies and of the world that never becomes an appropriation? How can we think life as something not subject to ownership but only for common use?

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  Robert Sobukwe - How Can Man Die...

  Benjamin Pogrund

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  On 21 March 1960, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, leader of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), led a mass defiance of South Africa's pass laws. He urged blacks to go the nearest police station and demand arrest. When police opened fire on a peaceful crowd in the township of Sharpeville, 68 people were killed. The protest changed the course of South Africa's history. Afrikaner rule stiffened and black resistance to apartheid went underground. Sobukwe was jailed for three years on charges of incitement, but the government, fearful of his power, rushed through the 'Sobukwe Clause' to keep him in prison without trial. For the next six years, Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement on Robben Island, the infamous apartheid prison near Cape Town. How Can Man Die Better is the story of this South African hero, but it also the story of the friendship between Robert Sobukwe and Benjamin Pogrund, former Deputy Editor of the Rand Daily Mail. Their joint experiences and debates chart the course of a tyrannical regime and the growth of black resistance.

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  Summary of Victor Davis Hanson's...

  Falcon Press

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  Buy now to get the main key ideas from Victor Davis Hanson's The Dying Citizen 
    
  The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America (2021) aims to reveal destructive forces and harmful beliefs that are eroding American citizenship. Conservative author Victor Davis Hanson argues that American citizenship — a 233-year-old ideal capable of transcending its birth and fully integrating women and people of color into the political commonwealth — is being undermined by both those ignorant of the Constitution and those who think they completely understand it. 
  Those ignorant of the Constitution are unaware of the negative effects of radical demographic, cultural, or political influences on citizenship. They don't care about history and tradition, or the civic responsibility of being an American. On the other hand, those too intimate with the Constitution believe it needs adjustments to keep up with the times. They want a constantly evolving Constitution that can act as a global model for a worldwide brotherhood.

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  Counting - How We Use Numbers to...

  Deborah Stone

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  What do people do when they count? What do numbers really mean? We all know that people can lie with statistics, but in this groundbreaking work, eminent political scientist Deborah Stone uncovers a much deeper problem. With help from Dr. Seuss and Cookie Monster, she explains why numbers can't be objective: in order to count, one must first decide what counts. Every number is the ending to a story built on cultural assumptions, social conventions, and personal judgments.And yet, in this age of big data and metric mania, numbers shape almost every facet of our lives: whether we get hired, fired, or promoted; whether we get into college or out of prison; how our opinions are gathered and portrayed to politicians; or how government designs health and safety regulations. In warm and playful prose, Counting explores what happens when we measure nebulous notions like merit, race, poverty, pain, or productivity. Suffused with moral reflection and ending with a powerful epilogue on COVID-19's dizzying statistics, Counting will forever change our relationship with numbers.

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  Reckoning - Black Lives Matter...

  Deva R. Woodly

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  Examining the significance of the Movement for Black Lives, Reckoning uncovers a broadly applicable argument for the democratic necessity of social movements.Barack Obama famously said that the purpose of social movements is to get a seat at the table. However, as Deva Woodly argues in Reckoning—a sweeping account of the meaning and purpose of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)—the value of such movements is something much more profound: they are necessary for the health and survival of democracy.Drawing from on-the-ground interviews with activists in the movement, Woodly analyzes the emergence of the M4BL, its organizational structure and culture, and its strategies and tactics. She also shows how a unique political philosophy—Radical Black Feminist Pragmatism—served as an intellectual foundation of the movement and documents the role it played in transforming public meanings, public opinion, and policy. Interweaving theoretical and empirical observations throughout, Woodly provides both a unique portrait of the movement and a powerful explanation of the labor social movements do in democracy. A major work that speaks to both scholars and activists, Woodly's account of the rise and spread of M4BL will reshape our understanding of why the movement is so important—and so necessary—for democracy.

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  Small Town Big Oil - The Untold...

  David W. Moore

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  How three New Hampshire women triumphed over an oil billionaire: “A very timely reminder that when we fight we often win.”—Bill McKibben Never underestimate the underdog. In 1973, Greek oil shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis—husband of President John F. Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, and arguably the richest man in the world—proposed to build an oil refinery on the narrow New Hampshire coast, in the town of Durham. At the time, it would have cost $600 million to build and was expected to generate 400,000 barrels of oil per day, making it the largest oil refinery in the world. The project was vigorously supported by the governor, Meldrim Thomson, and by William Loeb, the notorious publisher of the only statewide newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader. But three women vehemently opposed the project—Nancy Sandberg, the town leader who founded and headed Save Our Shores; Dudley Dudley, the freshman state rep who took the fight to the state legislature; and Phyllis Bennett, the publisher of the local newspaper that alerted the public to Onassis’ secret acquisition of the land. Small Town, Big Oil is the story of how the residents of Durham, led by these three women, out-organized, out-witted, and out-maneuvered the governor, the media, and the Onassis cartel to hand the powerful Greek billionaire the most humiliating defeat of his business career, and spare the New Hampshire seacoast from becoming an industrial wasteland.   “Activists and organizers will find lots of ideas and inspirations in this book's detailed account of an epic battle.”—Bill McKibben   “[An] apt handbook on the power of the people.”—Providence Journal

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