Social Democracy

We are living in a time of mounting political segregation that threatens to tear us apart as a unified society. The result is that we are becoming increasingly tribal, and the narratives of life that we get exposed to on a daily basis have become echo chambers in which we hear our beliefs reinforced and others' beliefs demonized. Global diversity and inclusion expert Howard J. Ross, with coauthor JonRobert Tartaglione, explores how our human need to belong is the driving force for why we are living in a world so extremely divided.

P.J. O’Rourke began writing funny things in 1960s underground newspapers, became editor-in-chief of National Lampoon, then spent 20 years reporting for Rolling Stone and The Atlantic Monthly as the world’s only trouble spot humorist, going to wars, riots, rebellions, and other "Holidays in Hell” in more than 40 countries.

Meinungsfreiheit und freier Journalismus sind die schärfsten Waffen zur Verteidigung von Demokratien. Maria Ressa steht wie keine andere für den Kampf um die Wahrheit und gegen Hass und Gewalt. In ihrem Buch beschreibt sie, wie Demokratien durch Autokraten und Diktatoren ausgehöhlt werden - mittels sozialer Medien. Denn Facebook und Google dulden aus Profitgier Propaganda und Fake News. Ressa legt ein Netzwerk der Desinformation offen, das den ganzen Globus umspannt.

Despite representing the beliefs of a minority of the American public on many issues, conservatives are in power not just in Washington, DC, but also in state capitals and courtrooms across the country. They got there because, while progressives fought to death over the nuances of policy and to bring attention to specific issues, conservatives focused on simply gaining power by gaming our democracy. They understood that policy follows power, not the other way around.

Enlightened Democracy traces the history of the Electoral College from the Constitutional Convention to the present. The Electoral College protects our republic and promotes our liberty. Americans should defend their unique presidential election system at all costs.

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of 20 to 30 enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

In his most important book to date, award-winning author Timothy Ferris — “the best popular science writer in the English language today” (Christian Science Monitor) — makes a passionate case for science as the inspiration behind the rise of liberalism and democracy.

The rise of the administrative state is the most significant political development in American politics over the past century. While our Constitution separates powers into three branches, and requires that the laws are made by elected representatives in the Congress, today most policies are made by unelected officials in agencies where legislative, executive, and judicial powers are combined. This threatens constitutionalism and the rule of law.

"Ideas are dangerous things. They are like drops of acid burning away our comforting certainties, making holes in the fabric of our cherished beliefs." This often surprising collection of incendiary essays takes the reader on an intellectual journey through the myths of mass culture. It takes a piercing look at such diverse subjects as money, suicide, self-pity, art, beauty, ugliness, religion and the nature of evil and power in its various forms. It explores such questions as: is an afterlife possible? How much freedom is enough? What are celebrities for? Are the old really human? All of ...

In democracies, citizens must accept loss; we can’t always be on the winning side. But in the United States, the fundamental civic capacity of being able to lose is not distributed equally. Propped up by white supremacy, whites (as a group) are accustomed to winning. Black citizens, on the other hand, are expected to be political heroes whose civic suffering enables progress toward racial justice. In this book, Juliet Hooker, a leading thinker on democracy and race, argues that the two most important forces driving racial politics in the United States today are Black grief and white grievance.

Progressive activism today is increasingly spearheaded by the nation's youngest voters. Gen Z—those born between 1997 and 2012—has come of age in a decade of upheavals. They have witnessed the election of Donald Trump, the murder of George Floyd, and the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, and they have lived under the constant threats of mass shootings and climate change. In response, left-leaning Zoomers, particularly women and LGBTQ people, have banded together to take action.

In The Republican Noise Machine, David Brock skillfully documents perhaps the most important but least understood political development of the last 30 years: how the Republican Right has won political power and hijacked public discourse in the United States. Brock, a former right-wing insider and the author of the New York Times best seller Blinded by the Right, uses his keen understanding of the strategies, tactics, financing, and personalities of the American right wing to demonstrate how right-wing media has all but subsumed the regular media conversation.

A provocative manifesto for an interpretation of Islam that synthesizes liberal ideas and respect for the Islamic tradition. Persuasive and inspiring, Islam Without Extremes offers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and religious, political, economic, and social freedoms.

Editor and investigative reporter Jefferson Morley has been widely published in national periodicals and is the author of the critically acclaimed nonfiction work Our Man in Mexico. An eye-opening look at Washington’s first race riot, Snow-Storm in August also offers revealing profiles of Arthur Bowen, the slave blamed for the riot, and “Star Spangled Banner” lyricist Francis Scott Key, a defender of slavery who sought capital punishment for Bowen.

For the last 60 years, fear has seeped into every area of American life: Americans own more guns than citizens of any other country, sequester themselves in gated communities, and retreat from public spaces. And yet, crime rates have plummeted, making life in America safer than ever. Why, then, are Americans so afraid - and where does this fear lead to? In this remarkable work of social history, May demonstrates how our obsession with security has made citizens fear each other and distrust the government, making America less safe and less democratic.

The suburbs have become too liberal and diverse for many white American conservatives, so "exurbia"—areas outside the cities and their suburbs—are becoming the staging ground for the radical right extremist insurgency . . .

Following Ratf--ked, his “extraordinary timely and undeniably important” (New York Times Book Review) expose of how a small cadre of Republican operatives rigged American elections, David Daley emerged as one of the nation's leading authorities on gerrymandering. In Unrigged, he charts a vibrant political movement that is rising in the wake of his and other reporters' revelations.

Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa Caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night. Along the way, Fountain probes deeply into history, illuminating the forces and watershed moments of the past that mirror and precipitated the present, from the hollowed-out notion of the American Dream, to Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy, to the cult of celebrity that gave rise to Donald Trump.

In 1776, the United States of America was born from a document that declared all men created equal and free to choose who they serve in this world. What followed was a difficult fight against a monarchy, a fight that ended with the creation of a powerful country built on the tenets of freedom and equality. These documents are some of the foundational writings from the earliest days of the country that have shaped the United States government for centuries.

Everyone knows that democracy is in trouble, but do we know what democracy actually is? Political philosopher Jan-Werner Müller, author of the widely acclaimed What Is Populism?, takes us back to basics. In this short, elegant volume, he explains how democracy is founded on three vital principles: liberty, equality and also uncertainty. The latter, he argues, is crucial for ensuring democracy's dynamic and creative character.