Civil Government

Inhabiting four lives - a railroad baron's valet who unwittingly ignites an explosion in Chinese labor, Hollywood's first Chinese movie star, a hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes Asian Americans, and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption - this novel captures and capsizes over a century of our history, showing that even as family bonds are denied and broken, a community can survive - as much through love as blood.

A sharecropper, a warrior, and a truth-telling prophet, Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) stands as a powerful symbol not only of the 1960s Black freedom movement, but also of the enduring human struggle against oppression. This is a rhetorical biography that tells the story of Hamer's life by focusing on how she employed symbols - images, words, and even material objects such as the ballot, food, and clothing - to construct persuasive public personae, to influence audiences, and to effect social change.

Civility is desirable and possible, but can this fragile ideal be guaranteed? The Importance of Being Civil offers the most comprehensive look at the nature and advantages of civility, throughout history and in our world today. Esteemed sociologist John Hall expands our understanding of civility as related to larger social forces - including revolution, imperialism, capitalism, nationalism, and war - and the ways that such elements limit the potential for civility. The Importance of Being Civil is a decisive and sophisticated addition to the discussion of civil society in its modern cultural and historical contexts.

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education is widely considered a seminal point in the battle to end segregation, but it was in fact the culmination of a decades-long legal campaign. Root and Branch is the epic story of the two fiercely dedicated lawyers who led the fight from county courthouses to the marble halls of the Supreme Court, and, in the process, laid the legal foundations of the civil rights movement.

In 1951, Carlotta Walls Lanier was one of the nine African-American students to integrate Little Rock High School, and the first to earn a diploma. Here she provides a firsthand account of her experiences - including the bombing that rocked her home, the constant threats she and her classmates faced, and the pressure and bullying her parents endured.

A magisterial, groundbreaking new study of the lives of enslaved Americans on the cusp of the Civil War that places them—and their hard-won political knowledge—rightly at the center of the fight for freedom The enduring image of American slavery has been of workers trapped on plantations...

The school careers of two teenage girls who lived across town from each other - one black, one white - were altered by a court-ordered desegregation plan for Durham, NC in 1970. LaHoma and Cindy both found themselves at the same high school from different sides of a court-ordered racial “balancing act”. This plan thrust each of them involuntarily out of their comfort zones and into new racial landscapes. Their experiences, recounted in alternating first-person narratives, are the embodiment of desegregation policies, situated in a particular time and place.

Building a Resilient Tomorrow does not dwell on overhyped descriptions of apocalyptic climate scenarios, nor does it travel down well-trodden paths surrounding the politics of reducing carbon emissions. Instead, it starts with two central facts: Climate impacts will continue to occur, and we can make changes now to mitigate their effects.

In American Hate: Survivors Speak Out, Arjun Singh Sethi, a community activist and civil rights lawyer, chronicles the stories of individuals affected by hate. In a series of powerful, unfiltered testimonials, survivors tell their stories in their own words and describe how the bigoted rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration have intensified bullying, discrimination, and even violence toward them and their communities.

In her New York Times best seller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice.

As the battle rages, the First Amendment right of freedom of speech that protects people’s right to say unpopular things without government interference and the right to refuse to say things the government wants said is being called into question. The minority group argues that it is their right to “self-identify” as whatever they wish in order to accommodate their thoughts and feelings instead of accepting their bodily realities, thereby defying biological design in the process.

Written by a political researcher and longtime activist, How to Fight Fascism breaks down what authoritarianism actually looks like today, how it slips in unnoticed, who it targets first, and most importantly, what you can do about it while staying safe, without burning out or giving up.

Dramatically narrated case histories from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's stellar career are interwoven with an account of her life - including her childhood, family, beliefs, many-faceted personality, education, marriage, children, legal and judicial career, and other achievements. The cases described, many involving young people, demonstrate her passionate concern for gender equality, fairness, and our constitutional rights.

"I have a dream." When those words were spoken on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, the crowd stood, electrified, as Martin Luther King, Jr. brought the plight of African Americans to the public consciousness and firmly established himself as one of the greatest orators of all time. Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nationis a thrilling, behind-the-scenes account of the weeks leading up to the great event, as told by Clarence Jones, co-writer of the speech and close confidant to King.

Durante más de dos décadas, Wolfang Kaleck ha viajado por el mundo para luchar junto a quienes sufren la injusticia a manos de jugadores poderosos, personas que, antes de la llegada de Kaleck y sus colegas, a menudo disfrutaban de la impunidad.

When a class-action lawsuit against the US government results in a billion-dollar settlement for the aggrieved parties, you’d expect the story to be headline news...to be posted on social media everywhere...to be adapted to film or even to a popular legal procedural series on TV....

This gripping, award-winning book recounts the wrongful assumption of the UK tax authority—His Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC)—that Gabrielle was responsible for a shipment of over a quarter of a million contraband cigarettes and related charges, and her challenging fight to reclaim her identity and dignity and clear her good name.

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.

Cincuenta años tuvieron que pasar para conocer por qué ocurrió la masacre del 2 de octubre. Hoy podemos saber con certeza histórica por qué, cómo y quiénes orquestaron la oscura noche de Tlatelolco.

America's political landscape is experiencing dangerous polarization and fragmentation, with the extremes pulling the country apart. Voices on the left and right clash over different worldviews, narratives, definitions of America, and what it means to be an American citizen. The levels of incivility and hostility lead some to invoke the language of a cold civil war or even a looming civil war, one that could split the country in two. Is there any way to step back from this dangerous precipice?