Freedom Civil

Our surveillance state was born in the brain of Admiral John Poindexter in 1983. Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, realized that the United States might have prevented the terrorist massacre of 241 Marines in Beirut if only intelligence agencies had been able to analyze in real time data they had on the attackers. Poindexter poured government know-how and funds into his dream---a system that would sift reams of data for signs of terrorist activity.

A veteran activist's guide to direct action and strategic civil disobedience as the most radical and rapid means to social change. For decades, Lisa Fithian’s work as an advocate for civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action has put her on the frontlines of change. For anyone who wants to become more active in resistance or is just feeling overwhelmed or hopeless, Shut It Down offers strategies and actions you can take right now to promote justice and incite change in your own community.

On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. In this definitive account, Sasha Issenberg vividly guides us through same-sex marriage’s unexpected path from the unimaginable to the inevitable.

The right of Americans to voice their beliefs without government approval or oversight is protected under what may well be the most honored and least understood addendum to the US Constitution - the First Amendment. Floyd Abrams, a noted lawyer and award-winning legal scholar specializing in First Amendment issues, examines the degree to which American law protects free speech more often, more intensely, and more controversially than is the case anywhere else in the world.

What will we do with our lives, and with whom will we do it? In this story of flying and catching, Nouwen invites us all to let go and fly, even when we are afraid of falling. During the last five years of his life, best-selling spiritual author Henri J. M. Nouwen became close to The Flying Rodleighs, a trapeze troupe in a traveling circus. Like Nouwen’s own life, a trapeze act is full of artistry, exhilarating successes, crushing failures and continual forgiveness. He wrote about his experience in a genre new to him: creative non-fiction.

For six decades John Robert Lewis was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into "good trouble." In this biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."

Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.

African Americans have had every reason to doubt America’s democratic experiment. Yet African American activists, intellectuals, and artists who have sought to transform the United States into a racially just society have put forward some of the most original and powerful ideas about how to make America live up to its democratic ideals. In The Darkened Light of Faith, Melvin Rogers provides a bold new account of African American political thought through the works and lives of individuals who built this vital tradition, which is urgently needed today.

Larry Krasner spent thirty years learning about America’s carceral system as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer in Philadelphia, working to get some kind of justice for his clients in a broken system, before deciding that the way to truly transform the system was to get inside of it. So he launched an unlikely campaign to become the district attorney of Philadelphia, a city known for its long line of notorious “tough on crime” DAs who had turned Philly into a city with one of the highest rates of incarceration in the country.

After graduating high school in Scarborough, Morris spent four years in the U.S. on multiple football scholarships and, having spent that time in the States experiencing “the Mecca of hip hop and Black culture,” returned home with a newfound perspective. Now an elementary school teacher himself in Toronto, Morris explores the tension between his consumption of Black culture as a child, his teenage performances of the ideas and values of the culture that often betrayed his identity, and the ways society and the people guiding him received those performances.

Arrested in 1962 as South Africa's apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, 44-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next 27 years in jail. During his 10,052 days of incarceration, Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to unyielding prison authorities, fellow activists, government officials, and, most memorably, his courageous wife, Winnie, and his five children. Now, 255 of these letters, a majority of which were previously unpublished, provide the most intimate portrait of Mandela since Long Walk to Freedom.

In this powerful and timely book, civil rights historian and political analyst Juan Williams denounces Donald Trump for intentionally twisting history to fuel racial tensions for his political advantage. In Williams's lifetime, crusaders for civil rights have braved hatred, violence, and imprisonment. Remarkably, all this progress suddenly seems to have been forgotten - or worse, undone. The stirring history of hard-fought and heroic battles for voting rights, integrated schools, and more is under direct threat from an administration dedicated to restricting these basic freedoms.

Now is an extraordinary time. Across the country, people are losing their loved ones, their livelihoods, their homes, and even their own lives to COVID-19. Despite the pandemic, countless protests erupted this summer over the recurring loss of Black lives. Reverberations of shock and outrage remain with us all. There's a Revolution Outside, My Love captures and articulates all of these roiling sentiments unleashed by a profound national reckoning.

The author of Lincoln's Boys takes us inside Lyndon Johnson's White House to show how the legendary Great Society programs were actually put into practice: Team of Rivals for LBJ. The personalities behind every burst of 1960s liberal reform - from civil rights and immigration reform, to Medicare and Head Start - and what we'll lose if those programs are dismantled.

Knowing that they hadn't saved all the slaves when they'd rescued Stann, Jack and the Misfits are heading back to the strange new continent to finish the job. Facing a society of power-hungry mages isn't a simple task. The team will have to continue to grow stronger and discover more of the secrets of mana while relying on their teammates to conquer this new challenge. All the while, they'll collect data and power to make Darkthorn Academy the most powerful academy in the world.

Can free speech coexist with an inclusive campus environment? Hardly a week goes by without another controversy over free speech on college campuses. On one side, there are increased demands to censor hateful, disrespectful, and bullying expression and to ensure an inclusive and nondiscriminatory learning environment. On the other side are traditional free speech advocates who charge that recent demands for censorship coddle students and threaten free inquiry.

Marcus Garvey (August 17, 1887-June 10, 1940) was a charismatic Jamaican-born political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) and acted as its president-general. In 1916, he moved to New York City, where his prominence grew. By 1919, he was considered to be the "Black Moses", and he claimed a following of more than two million people.

All Americans, liberal or conservative, religious or not, can agree that religious freedom, anchored in conscience rights, is foundational to the US democratic experiment. But what freedom of conscience means, what its scope and limits are, according to the Constitution - these are matters for heated debate.

In 1765, 11 years before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson bought a Qur'an. This marked only the beginning of his lifelong interest in Islam, and he would go on to acquire numerous books on Middle Eastern languages, history, and travel, taking extensive notes on Islam as it relates to English common law. Jefferson sought to understand Islam notwithstanding his personal disdain for the faith, a sentiment prevalent among his Protestant contemporaries in England and America.

New evidence in Dynamite Nashville uncovers the origin of an organized group of racist terrorists committing nationwide acts of violence against integration efforts in the late 1950's and early 1960s. Award winning historian Betsy Phillips not only paints a detailed picture of the social dynamic of the times, but details how a violent fringe of racists came to national prominence. In Dynamite Nashville, Phillips unmasks the KKK, reveals a racist terrorist network, names its principle leader, and shines a much needed historical spotlight on unsung civil rights hero Z. Alexander Looby.