Civics & Citizenship
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Still Hopeful
$8.24 Add to cart“Canada’s best-known voice of dissent.” — CBC “It’s time we listened to the Maude Barlows of the world.” — CNN In this timely book, Barlow counters the prevailing atmosphere of pessimism that surrounds us and offers lessons of hope that she has learned from a lifetime of activism. She has been a linchpin in three major movements in her life: second-wave feminism, the battle against free trade and globalization, and the global fight for water justice. From each of these she draws her lessons of hope, emphasizing that effective activism is not really about the goal, rather it is about building a movement and finding like-minded people to carry the load with you. Barlow knows firsthand how hard fighting for change can be. But she also knows that change does happen and that hope is the essential ingredient.
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Without Compromise
$9.74 Add to cartA collection of groundbreaking investigations by Wayne Barrett, the intrepid, muckraking Village Voice journalist who exposed corruption in New York City and beyond.
With piercing moral clarity and exacting rigor, Wayne Barrett tracked political corruption in the pages of the Village Voice fact by fact, document by document for 40 years. The first to report on the scams and crooked deals that fueled the rise of Donald Trump in 1979, Barrett went on to expose the shady dealings of small-time slum lords and powerful New York City politicians alike, from Ed Koch to Rudy Giuliani to Michael Bloomberg.
Without Compromise is the first anthology of Barrett’s investigative work, accompanied by essays from colleagues and those he trained. In an age of lies, fog, and propaganda, when the profession of journalism is degraded by the White House and the industry is under financial threat, Barrett reminds us that facts, when clearly accumulated, are our best defense of democracy.
Featuring essays by:
Joe Conason
Kim Phillips-Fein
Errol Louis
Gerson Borrero
Tom Robbins
Tracie McMillan
Peter Noel
Adam Fifield
Jarrett Murphy
Andrea Bernstein
Jennifer Gonnerman
Mac Barrett -
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Polarized
$8.24 Add to cartAn atheist philosopher and a Protestant minister interact in a constructive and respectful dialogue about their differing views on life, stressing the importance of honesty, civility, and community engagement at a time of polarized politics.
Unity in diversity (e pluribus unum) — the quintessential American value– is under assault today, and along with it, our sense of shared community. In this book, an atheist philosopher and a United Church of Christ pastor demonstrate that common ground can still be found even by people with very different perspectives on life. In short, difference need not mean division.
The authors focus on the importance of truthfulness, civility, and community. In a respectful dialogue, they exchange ideas on the nature of truth, the importance of honesty, the value of civility, the definition of community in a pluralistic society, respecting differences while avoiding divisiveness, and the consequences to our nation when ideological rancor and the demonizing of opponents dominate the public square.
The authors have a personal stake as well as an intellectual interest in these issues, as they met in childhood and have maintained their friendship over the decades despite their very different life choices and career paths. They both view with alarm the widening fissures developing among Americans and conclude by pointing out a similar preference for diatribe over rational debate in the decades preceding the Civil War.
At a time of shrill rhetoric, this measured, reasoned discussion between two friends shows that communication and respect are possible between people of good will.
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The Immigrant Rights Movement
$14.99 Add to cartIn the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, liberal outcry over ethnonationalist views promoted a vision of America as a nation of immigrants. Given the pervasiveness of this rhetoric, it can be easy to overlook the fact that the immigrant rights movement began in the US relatively recently. This book tells the story of its grassroots origins, through its meteoric rise to the national stage. Starting in the 1990s, the immigrant rights movement slowly cohered over the demand for comprehensive federal reform of immigration policy. Activists called for a new framework of citizenship, arguing that immigrants deserved legal status based on their strong affiliation with American values. During the Obama administration, leaders were granted unprecedented political access and millions of dollars in support. The national spotlight, however, came with unforeseen pressures—growing inequalities between factions and restrictions on challenging mainstream views. Such tradeoffs eventually shattered the united front. The Immigrant Rights Movement tells the story of a vibrant movement to change the meaning of national citizenship, that ultimately became enmeshed in the system that it sought to transform.
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The Gospel of Self
$6.74 Add to cartThe inside story of how, using deliberate and strategic social engineering, The 700 Club moved Christians steadily into the Republican Party―and moved the party itself to the right.
How did Evangelical Christians become the American right wing’s attack troops?
Televangelist Pat Robertson was one of the first to realize the political potential of millions of Evangelicals, and decided to determine how battlelines were drawn. Robertson, now a leading and unflinching Trump supporter, rose to national prominence in the 1960s with his Christian Broadcasting Network and his hit show The 700 Club.
Terry Heaton was instrumental in Robertson’s rise to power and now deeply regrets his role at The 700 Club, where he was executive producer. He now provides the inside story of how evangelical Christianity forced itself on a needy Republican Party in order to gain political influence on a global level. Using deliberate and strategic social engineering, The 700 Club moved Christians steadily into the Republican Party–and moved the party itself to the right.
With a gospel message that appealed to self-interest, The 700 Club violated numerous laws in an attempt to create a Shadow Government of Evangelicals, all in the name of doing God’s work on earth. The results of this long-term campaign were fully on display in the 2016 electoral season.
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Democracy in One Book or Less
$11.24 Add to cartBill Bryson meets Thomas Frank in this deeply insightful, unexpectedly hilarious story of how politicians hijacked American democracy and how we can take it back
The democracy you live in today is different—completely different—from the democracy you were born into. You probably don’t realize just how radically your republic has been altered during your lifetime. Yet more than any policy issue, political trend, or even Donald Trump himself, our redesigned system of government is responsible for the peril America faces today.
What explains the gap between what We, the People want and what our elected leaders do? How can we fix our politics before it’s too late? And how can we truly understand the state of our democracy without wanting to crawl under a rock? That’s what former Obama speechwriter David Litt set out to answer.
Poking into forgotten corners of history, translating political science into plain English, and traveling the country to meet experts and activists, Litt explains how the world’s greatest experiment in democracy went awry.
(He also tries to crash a party at Mitch McConnell’s former frat house. It goes poorly.)
The result of Litt’s journey is something you might not have thought possible: a page-turner about the political process. You’ll meet the Supreme Court justice charged with murder, learn how James Madison’s college roommate broke the Senate, encounter a citrus thief who embodies what’s wrong with our elections, and join Belle the bill as she tries to become a law (a quest far more harrowing than the one in Schoolhouse Rock!).
Yet despite his clear-eyed assessment of the dangers we face, Litt remains audaciously optimistic. He offers a to-do list of bold yet achievable changes—a blueprint for restoring the balance of power in America before it’s too late.
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The Case Against Impeaching Trump
$9.74 Add to cart“A brilliant lawyer…A new and very important book. I would encourage all people…to read!”—President Donald J. Trump
“Absolutely amazing…. If you care about justice…read this book.”—Sean Hannity
“Maybe the question isn’t what happened to Alan Dershowitz. Maybe it’s what happened to everyone else.”—Politico
Alan Dershowitz has been called “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America” by Politico and “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights” by Newsweek. Yet he has come under partisan fire for applying those same principles to Donald Trump during the course of his many appearances in national media outlets as an expert resource on civil liberties and constitutional law.
The Case Against Removing Trump seeks to reorient the debate over impeachment to the same standard that Dershowitz has continued to uphold for decades: the law of the United States of America, as established by the Constitution. In the author’s own words:
“In the fervor to impeach President Trump, his political enemies have ignored the text of the Constitution. As a civil libertarian who voted against Trump, I remind those who would impeach him not to run roughshod over a document that has protected us all for two and a quarter centuries. In this case against impeachment, I make arguments similar to those I made against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton (and that I would be making had Hillary Clinton been elected and Republicans were seeking to impeach her). Impeachment and removal of a president are not entirely political decisions by Congress. Every member takes an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution sets out specific substantive criteria that MUST be met.
I am thrilled to contribute to this important debate and especially that my book will be so quickly available to readers so they can make up their own minds.”