Political control and freedoms Books

Once a neglected area, African American history is now the subject of extensive scholarly research. The Debate on Black Civil Rights in America is the first full-length study to examine the changing academic debate on developments in African American...

This book, newly available in paperback, argues for greater openness in the ways we approach human rights and international rights promotion, and in so doing brings some new understanding to old debates. Starting with the realities of abuse rather than...

This work is about how the allied coalition and the governement of Iraq attempted to influence, utilize and manipulate the ways in which the Gulf War was presented by the media to the outside world between mid January and early March 1991. It is only in...

How a nineteenth-century lawsuit over the estate of a wealthy Tunisian Jew shines new light on the history of belongingIn the winter of 1873, Nissim Shamama, a wealthy Jew from Tunisia, died suddenly in his palazzo in Livorno, Italy. His passing...

'A book as urgent as the moment that produced it.' - Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism SchoolLong before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes...

What an intensely divisive election portends for American politics.The year 2020 was a tumultuous time in American politics. It brought a global pandemic, protests for racial justice, and a razor-thin presidential election outcome. It culminated in an...

How a new breed of dictators holds power by manipulating information and faking democracyHitler, Stalin, and Mao ruled through violence, fear, and ideology. But in recent decades a new breed of media-savvy strongmen has been redesigning authoritarian...

Mashable's 20 Books from 2020 That Make Great GiftsIn the course of making Human Flow, his epic feature documentary about the global refugee crisis, the artist Ai Weiwei and his collaborators interviewed more than 600 refugees, aid workers,...

A look at the duty of nations to protect human rights beyond borders, why it has failed in practice, and what can be done about it. The idea that states share a responsibility to shield people everywhere from atrocities is presently under threat. Despite...

The lasting effects of slavery on contemporary political attitudes in the American SouthDespite dramatic social transformations in the United States during the last 150 years, the South has remained staunchly conservative. Southerners are more likely to...

How American political participation is increasingly being shaped by citizens who wield more resourcesThe Declaration of Independence proclaims equality as a foundational American value. However, Unequal and Unrepresented finds that political voice in...

Providing vital new insights into the ways repression shapes polarisation, After Repression helps to explain what happened in the turbulent days following the Arab Spring and illuminates the obstacles to democratic transitions around...

An illuminating look at the transformative role that rituals play in our political livesThe Politics of Ritual is a major new account of the political power of rituals. In this incisive and wide-ranging book, Molly Farneth argues that rituals are social...

For Victorian lawmakers and judges, the question of whether a book should be allowed to circulate freely depended on whether it was sold to readers whose mental and moral capacities were in doubt, by which they meant the increasingly literate and...

Why violence in the Congo has continued despite decades of international intervention Well into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a "forever war"-a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and...

A compact, incisive history of one of the defining conflicts of our time Leaving almost half a million dead and displacing an estimated twelve million people, the Syrian Civil War is a humanitarian catastrophe of unimaginable scale. Syrian Requiem...

How middle class economic dependence on the state impedes democratization and contributes to authoritarian resilienceConventional wisdom holds that the rising middle classes are a force for democracy. Yet in post-Soviet countries like Russia, where the...

A compelling account of the threat immigration control poses to the citizens of free societies. Immigration is often seen as a danger to western liberal democracies because it threatens to undermine their fundamental values, most notably freedom and...

The gripping story of an explosive turning point in the history of modern IndiaOn the night of June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India, suspending constitutional rights and rounding up her political opponents in midnight raids...

Since 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has maintained unrivalled control over the country, persisting even in the face of economic calamity, widespread social upheaval, and violence against its own people. Yet the party does not sustain dominance...

For the first time, the full story of the conflict between two of the twentieth century's most important thinkers - and how their profound disagreements continue to offer important lessons for political theory and philosophy.Two of the most iconic...

Writings on human life and the refugee crisis by the most important political artist of our time Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) is widely known as an artist across media: sculpture, installation, photography, performance, and architecture. He is also one...

The Constitution may guarantee it. But religious freedom in America is, in fact, impossible. So argues this timely and iconoclastic work by law and religion scholar Winnifred Sullivan. Sullivan uses as the backdrop for the book the trial of Warner vs...

It is clear that in our society today, issues of diversity and social connectedness remain deeply unresolved and can lead to crisis and instability. The major demographic changes taking place in America make discussions about such issues all the more...

Democracy for Realists assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view grounded in the actual human nature of democratic citizens. Christopher...

How racism and discrimination have been central to democracies from the classical period to todayAs right-wing nationalism and authoritarian populism gain momentum across the world, liberals, and even some conservatives, worry that democratic principles...

This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants, or is full citizenship somehow...

The Europeanization of the World puts forward a defense of Western civilization and the unique gifts it has bequeathed to the world-in particular, human rights and constitutional democracy-at a time when many around the globe equate the West with hubris...

One of the greatest political advisers of all time, Niccolo Machiavelli thought long and hard about how citizens could identify great leaders--ones capable of defending and enhancing the liberty, honor, and prosperity of their countries. Drawing on the...

The Global Commonwealth of Citizens critically examines the prospects for cosmopolitan democracy as a viable and humane response to the challenges of globalization. Arising after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decisive affirmation of...

The Killing Season explores one of the largest and swiftest, yet least examined, instances of mass killing and incarceration in the twentieth century--the shocking antileftist purge that gripped Indonesia in 1965-66, leaving some five hundred thousand...

Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of...

Can libertarians care about social justice? In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi argues that they can and should. Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John...

A sweeping history of libertarian thought, from radical anarchists to conservative defenders of the status quo.Libertarianism emerged in the mid-nineteenth century with an unwavering commitment to progressive causes, from women's rights and the fight...

This is a book about a terrible spate of mass violence. It is also about a rare success in bringing such violence to an end. "If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die" tells the story of East Timor, a half-island that suffered genocide after Indonesia invaded...

The American military base on the island of Diego Garcia is one of the most strategically important and secretive U.S. military installations outside the United States. Located near the remote center of the Indian Ocean and accessible only by military...

This groundbreaking book by the acclaimed Dorothy Roberts examines how the myth of biological concept of race-revived by purportedly cutting-edge science, race-specific drugs, genetic testing, and DNA databases-continues to undermine a just society and...

From 'Operation Cast Lead' to the recent assault on the Gaza flotilla, both the severity and the notoriety of Israel's many human rights abuses have begun to seep into the public consciousness and convince a growing international audience of the...

BAYARD RUSTIN POSTHUMOUSLY AWARDED THE 2013 PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOMA master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the...

National Book Award for Poetry, 1973 Beginning with "long poem of these States," The Fall of America continues Planet News chronicle tape-recorded scribed by hand or sung condensed, the flux of car bus airplane dream consciousness Person during Automated...

Crusade 2.0 discusses the resurgence of anti-Islamic sentiment in the US and three "unfinished wars" that have deeply influenced the West: the Crusades, the Cold War, and the current "war on terror" that continues to dominate U.S thinking. A timely and...

The Obama presidency represents a major milestone in black history and the struggle for political, economic and cultural equality in the United States. But how if at all has the first black presidency helped move things forward for people of color? Has...

Chosen as an "Outstanding Book on the Subject of Human Rights in the United States" by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights.In this volume of incisive essays, Ward Churchill looks at representations of American Indians in literature...

John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction, now available in paperback, focuses on mechanisms of traditional education that cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization...

Winner of the 2009 Australian Human Rights Commission Literature Non-Fiction Award On the 'long list' for the inaugural John Button Prize for Australian politics and social policy This profoundly moving book reveals the untold story of the people who...

In April this year, Michael Gordon was the first journalist to gain unrestricted access to the refugee detention centre on Nauru. There he interviewed more than half of the 54 asylum seekers then on the island. His articles, based on these interviews,...

A raft of recent political scandals in Australia has generated widespread media and public interest in the role and accountability of ministerial staffers, and their impact on relations between ministers and their public service advisers. Such scandals...

Citizen activism has achieved many positive results. But the road to success for social movements is often complex, usually lasting many years, with few guides for evaluating the precise stage of a movement's evolution to determine the best way forward...