Current Affairs Audiobooks | Politics

The Radical Imagination of Black Women: Ambition, Politics, and Power

Including interviews with Black women holding political office at the national, state, and local levels, as well as focus group data, The Radical Imagination of Black Women challenges political science's current approach to political ambition by exploring how Black women decide to seek political office. Pearl K. Ford Dowe argues that ambition for Black women cannot be measured only by political candidacies and ascents of the political chain of power. Black women are uniquely positioned within their communities to influence politics and public policy, which stems from unique variables of socialization, gender and racial identity, and marginalization that shape the political attitudes of Black women. Thus, Dowe asserts that Black women's political ambition often manifests outside formal politics, in activism and community building, a process that is linked to a wider radical vision for a full democracy. This is ambition that occurs in a specific context of marginalization, and both motivation and the conditions surrounding such motivation are critical to understanding the full range of Black women's political work. By focusing on Black women's experiences in elite politics, The Radical Imagination of Black Women is a much-needed intervention in the literature on electoral ambition, women in politics, and candidates and elections.

Pearl K. Ford Dowe (Author), L. Malaika Cooper (Narrator)

Audiobook

The End of the Alphabet: How Gen Z Can Save America

Today in America, we live in "the upside down." Lies have become truth while truth and those seeking it are silenced and vilified. Our nation desperately needs a generation to rise up and fight for the future and those who will come after us-and that generation is Gen Z. Gen Z has the power to change the world. As the largest emerging demographic in American history, Gen Z is at the center of a cultural shift, one that will define the direction of our country for generations to come. Intellectually curious, culturally courageous, and unafraid to push societal boundaries, Gen Z is ready to embrace leadership as the most educated generation in history. These young and often underestimated Americans are here to fight for a better future-and we won't wait for permission to lead. Rising content creator Isabel Brown is smart, driven, and passionate-a strong champion for truth in America. She fervently believes that Gen Z has the power, the potential, and the opportunity to define the cultural direction of America. The End of the Alphabet is a rallying cry for Gen Z to embrace traditional values in a new-age way and step up to make our voices heard. Although taking an active role in culture and politics is nothing new for young people, today's youth face overwhelming push back from older demographics. Looked down on by those who came before us as too young, too naive, and too unique to impact our society, Gen Z'ers are instead told to sit down and shut up until they have earned enough "life experience" to lead. This view of Gen Z is crippling and deeply ignorant of the cultural shifts we have and will experience in the coming decades as Gen Z begins to step into positions of power and leadership. So, who is Gen Z? What does the future of our nation-and conservatism-look like with Gen Z at the helm? Read this book to find out.

Isabel Brown (Author), Isabel Brown, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Out

The unmissable final instalment of Tim Shipman’s #1 bestselling Brexit trilogy. How did Boris Johnson supersede Theresa May to become Britain’s Prime Minister? How did he pursue his promise to Get Brexit Done amidst multiple Brexit secretaries, repeated coup attempts and reshuffles, and an extraordinarily terse relationship with Brussels? What really happened in Downing Street – from the political choices to the party place settings – as the pandemic took the world in its grip? To follow his bestselling books All Out War and Fall Out, this book launches off from 2017 to offer an unflinching, unfiltered account of unprecedented times. In the company of all the key players and with countless never-before-revealed insights, this book traces our political moment from May’s resignation through to the tussles over the final Brexit deal, the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and our shortest serving PM ever. This is the ultimate insider narrative to the last five years of government, revealing the strategies, gambles, mistakes, mindsets and scandals that have shaped and shaken Britain. As always, political insider and Chief Political Commentator for the Sunday Times Tim Shipman unleashes a slew of insight – and gossip – to reveal the democratic drama as it really happened.

Tim Shipman (Author), Rupert Farley (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Lie Detectives: In Search of a Playbook for Winning Elections in the Disinformation Age

How can political campaigns fight back against disinformation? A decade after The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, which Politico called 'Moneyball for politics,' journalist Sasha Issenberg returns to the cutting edge of political innovation to reveal how campaigns are navigating the era's most pressing challenge: how to win in a world awash in lies. The Lie Detectives is a lively and deep secret history of Democratic politics in the Trump years. Our main character, Jiore Craig, is a young but battle-hardened veteran of the misinformation wars, and she leads a memorable cast including LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, whose emergence as one of the American left's biggest donors has forced his adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn into the role of moral compass for a movement still wrestling with whether it should counter fake news by producing its own, and David Goldstein and Jehmu Greene, who are confronting 'the Big Lie,' in the vernacular of online conspiracy theories, with gifs, memes, and ugly graphics of their own. The Lie Detectives presents a vivid snapshot of a political class trying to come to terms with an exploding social media landscape and using every weapon in its arsenal to counter the biggest threat it has ever faced to its way of doing business and winning power.

Sasha Issenberg (Author), Sean Patrick Hopkins (Narrator)

Audiobook

Get It Together: Troubling Tales from the Liberal Fringe

Can the political be way too personal? What if most radical activists are trying to change their lives by changing the whole country? When Jesse Watters set out to interview a few dozen radical activists to find out where their wild ideas came from, he discovered two things that shocked him: First, he liked these people. Second, their political positions were not primarily from books, teachers, or other activists. They originated in personal drama. Most of these people didn’t need legislation. They needed a therapist. In Get It Together, the number one New York Times bestselling author and Fox News primetime host takes on Wokeism in a way no one else has. Through a series of (sometimes very) personal interviews with some of the most radical activists in the country, Watters discovers that these activists may be overlooking the most important change they need to make—within themselves. From activists working for climate change salvation, Black supremacy, and social justice to a professional cuddler and a transwoman who identifies as a wolf, Watters shows how many well-intentioned Americans have bought into causes invented and run by people who are illogical, emotional, and ill-informed. Through their stories, Watters uncovers common threads—childhood traumas, broken relationships, and a lack of introspection. What if the people obsessed with the end of the world are just hurting from how this one has treated them? What if that, rather than ideological disagreements, is the deeper root of our country’s political divide? Funny, fresh, and fascinating, Get It Together is sure to spark important conversations, and to inspire us to see one another not as political opponents, but as real and broken human beings.

Jesse Watters (Author), Larry Wayne (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Individualization of War: Rights, Liability, and Accountability in Contemporary Armed Conflict

The rights and responsibilities of the individual are at the center of today's armed conflicts in a way that they have never been before. This process of 'individualization,' which challenges the primacy of the sovereign state, is driven by normative developments related to human rights that have elevated human-centric conceptions of security and created a new class of international crimes, as well as by technological and strategic developments that can both empower individuals as military actors and enable either the targeting or protection of particular individuals. The Individualization of War examines the status of individuals in contemporary armed conflict in three main capacities: as subject to violence but deserving of protection; as liable to harm because of their responsibility for attacks on others; and as agents who can be held accountable for the perpetration of crimes. This book presents a novel conceptualization of the phenomenon of individualization, including how it is both practiced and contested. It then convenes a set of leading thinkers from the fields of moral philosophy, international law, and international relations to further our understanding of not only how individualization is manifest in armed conflict-in theory and in practice-but also how it generates tensions and challenges for today's scholars and practitioners.

Dapo Akande, David Rodin, Jennifer Welsh (Author), Rick Adamson (Narrator)

Audiobook

On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy

The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn't come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism. In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society. Drawing on his twenty years of experience as a scholar of science denial, McIntyre explains how autocrats wield disinformation to manipulate a populace and deny obvious realities, why the best way to combat disinformation is to disrupt its spread, and most importantly, how we can win the war on truth. McIntyre goes through the history of strategic denialism to show how we arrived at this precarious political moment and identifies the creators, amplifiers, and believers of disinformation. On Disinformation lays out ten everyday practical steps that we can take as ordinary citizens-from resisting polarization to pressuring our Congresspeople to regulate social media-as well as the important steps our government (if we elect the right leaders) must take. On Disinformation empowers us to save our republic from autocracy before it is too late.

Lee Mcintyre (Author), Brian P. Craig (Narrator)

Audiobook

[Spanish] - La llamada: La mentira del 11M: Aznar quería que fuera ETA

La crónica imprescindible de Jesús Ceberio sobre un momento decisivo en la historia reciente de España: los atentados del 11-M. Un testimonio estremecedor en torno a la famosa llamada de Aznar a los periódicos. «El 11 de marzo de 2004 fue un jueves aciago en Madrid. Acababa de amanecer cuando retumbaron varias explosiones en un tren de cercanías que entraba en el andén de la estación de Atocha. Eran las 7.37 de una mañana casi primaveral. En menos de cinco minutos diez bombas reventaron cuatro trenes procedentes de Alcalá de Henares, con un efecto devastador que se traduciría en 191 muertos y más de 2.000 heridos. 'Tengo la certeza de que ha sido ETA', fue el veredicto inapelable que el presidente Aznar me transmitió por teléfono a las 13.06». Se cumplen veinte años del 11-M. Lo que sucedió aquel día, tanto la serie de ataques en los trenes de la red madrileña de Cercanías como la actuación del gobierno en vísperas de las elecciones generales, afectó a la sociedad española de manera brutal. En el eje de esa gestión estaba el intento por parte del Gobierno del Partido Popular de responsabilizar a ETA de los atentados, aun cuando desde muy pronto empezaron a aparecer indicios que apuntaban al terrorismo islamista como autor del ataque. El momento paradigmático de esa voluntad fue la llamada del presidente Aznar a los medios de comunicación para asegurarles que había sido ETA. El periodista de máximo prestigio Jesús Ceberio, entonces director de El País, habló con él por teléfono. En esta crónica rigurosa y trepidante Ceberio, como testigo directo, narra cómo fueron desarrollándose las investigaciones, discrepando cada vez más de la versión oficial y generando un nivel de tensión social y política que marcó la pauta para los años posteriores y la actualidad. En definitiva, un relato estremecedor que gira en torno a la famosa mentira del presidente Aznar a los medios de comunicación.

Jesús Ceberio (Author), Eugenio Gómez, Jesús Ceberio (Narrator)

Audiobook

The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America

An exciting new voice makes the case for a colorblind approach to politics and culture, warning that the so-called 'anti-racist' movement is driving us-ironically-toward a new kind of racism. As one of the few black students in his philosophy program at Columbia University years ago, Coleman Hughes wondered why his peers seemed more pessimistic about the state of American race relations than his own grandparents-who lived through segregation. The End of Race Politics is the culmination of his years-long search for an answer. Contemplative yet audacious, The End of Race Politics is necessary reading for anyone who questions the race orthodoxies of our time. Hughes argues for a return to the ideals that inspired the American Civil Rights movement, showing how our departure from the colorblind ideal has ushered in a new era of fear, paranoia, and resentment marked by draconian interpersonal etiquette, failed corporate diversity and inclusion efforts, and poisonous race-based policies that hurt the very people they intend to help. Hughes exposes the harmful side effects of Kendi-DiAngelo style antiracism, from programs that distribute emergency aid on the basis of race to revisionist versions of American history that hide the truth from the public. Through careful argument, Hughes dismantles harmful beliefs about race, proving that reverse racism will not atone for past wrongs and showing why race-based policies will lead only to the illusion of racial equity. By fixating on race, we lose sight of what it really means to be anti-racist. A racially just, colorblind society is possible. Hughes gives us the intellectual tools to make it happen.

Coleman Hughes (Author), Coleman Hughes (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Mark Steel Solution: The BBC Radio Comedy Series

Mark Steel uses his unique logic to propose subversive solutions to society's problems What if the Royal Family was chosen by weekly lottery? Why should giving to charity be illegal? Could government economic policy be decided by sport? Award-winning writer and comedian Mark Steel aims to put the world to rights in these 15 episodes, as he comes up with radical proposals to improve our lives and sort out our social ills. From the economy to transport, housing, crime and our current age of pessimism, Mark’s got a brilliant idea that’s sure to fix the problem. Each show sees him using witty, persuasive arguments and short, sharp sketches to present his case, as he contends that having a job should be illegal, everyone should have to be gay for two years, and nobody should have to go to school until they’re 36. Whatever the issue, Mark’s got the answer – whether it’s dealing with immigration by deporting everyone born in England, or healing religious divisions by making everyone change their faith every Monday. Lend him your ears and he’ll convince you of anything, as he sets about proving that the ridiculous is really very sensible indeed – and that changing the world is easy, if you’re willing to listen to his advice... Written and performed by Mark Steel and Spitting Image writer Pete Sinclair, this funny, thought-provoking series also features Maria McErlane and Kim Wall. Written by Mark Steel and Pete Sinclair Starring Mark Steel, Pete Sinclair, Maria McErlane and Kim Wall Produced by Turan Ali (Series 1) and Phil Clarke (Series 2-4) Contents: Series 1 The Family: ‘No-one should live in the same family for more than one year’ Judges: ‘Ex-convicts should be recruited as High Court judges’ The Economy: ‘Government economic policy should be decided by sport’ Series 2 Unemployment: ‘Having a job should be illegal’ Transport: ‘Transport should only be paid for by people who don’t use it’ Housing: ‘Everyone in Britain should be re-housed at random’ The Royal Family: ‘The Royal Family should be chosen by weekly lottery’ Series 3 Sexual Politics: ‘Everyone should have to be gay for two years’ Charity : ‘Anybody who gives to charity should be jailed’ Crime: ‘Criminals should decide their own punishment’ Immigration: ‘Anyone born in England should be deported’ Series 4 Religion: ‘People should have to change their religion every Monday’ The Media: ‘Anyone in charge of the media should be sacked after thirty minutes’ Education: ‘Nobody should go to school until they are 36’ Pessimism: ‘Pessimists should be persecuted by law’ First broadcast BBC Radio 5 from 16 Oct-13 Nov 1992 (Series 1), 15 July-5 Aug 1994 (Series 2), 4 Aug-25 Aug 1995 (Series 3), 16 Aug-6 Sept 1996 (Series 4) © 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Mark Steel (Author), Mark Steel (Narrator)

Audiobook

Dogwhistles and Figleaves: How Manipulative Language Spreads Racism and Falsehood

It is widely accepted that political discourse in recent years has become more openly racist and more accepting of wildly implausible conspiracy theories. Dogwhistles and Figleaves explores ways in which such changes-both of which defied previously settled norms of political speech-have been brought about. Jennifer Saul shows that two linguistic devices, dogwhistles and figleaves, have played a crucial role. Some dogwhistles (such as '88', used by Nazis online to mean 'Heil Hitler') serve to disguise messages that would otherwise be rejected as unacceptable, allowing them to be transmitted surreptitiously. Other dogwhistles (like the 1988 'Willie Horton' ad) work by influencing people in ways that they are not aware of, and which they would likely reject were they aware. Figleaves (such as 'just asking questions') take messages that could easily be recognized as unacceptable, and provide just enough cover that people become more willing to accept them. Saul argues that these devices are important for the spread of racist discourse. She also shows how they contribute to the transmission of norm-violating discourse more generally, focusing on the case of wildly implausible conspiracist speech. This book is the first full-length exploration of dogwhistles and figleaves. It offers an illuminating and disturbing view of the workings of contemporary political discourse.

Jennifer Mather Saul (Author), Clare Staniforth (Narrator)

Audiobook

Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America

MSNBC's legal expert breaks down the ways disinformation has become a tool to drive voters to extremes, disempower our legal structures, and consolidate power in the hands of the few. American society is more polarized than ever before. We are strategically being pushed apart by disinformation-the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth-and it comes at us from all sides: opportunists on the far right, Russian misinformed social media influencers, among others. It's endangering our democracy and causing havoc in our electoral system, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and in our Capitol. Advances in technology including rapid developments in artificial intelligence threaten to make the problems even worse by amplifying false claims and manufacturing credibility. In Attack from Within, legal scholar and analyst Barbara McQuade, shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society and how we can fight against it. Disinformation is designed to evoke a strong emotional response to push us toward more extreme views, unable to find common ground with others. The false claims that led to the breathtaking attack on our Capitol in 2020 may have been only a dress rehearsal. Attack from Within shows us how to prevent it from happening again, thus preserving our country's hard-won democracy.

Barbara Mcquade (Author), Barbara Mcquade (Narrator)

Audiobook

Current Affairs Audiobooks in Politics