Politics Audiobooks | LoveReading

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

Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978

A new history of the American Jewish relationship with Isreal focused on its most urgent and sensitive issue: the question of Palestinian rights American Jews began debating Palestinian rights issues even before Israel's founding in 1948. Geoffrey Levin recovers the voices of American Jews who, in the early decades of Israel's existence, called for an honest reckoning with the moral and political plight of Palestinian Sephardic roots, a former Yiddish journalist, anti-Zionist Reform rabbis, and young left-wing Zionist activists, felt drawn to support Palestinian rights by their understanding of Jewish history, identity, and ethics. They sometimes worked with mainstream American Jewish leaders who feared that ignoring Palestinian rights could foster antisemitism, leading them to press Israeli officials for reform. But Israeli diplomats viewed any American Jewish interest in Palestinian affairs with deep suspicion, provoking a series of quiet confrontations that ultimately kept Palestinian rights off the American Jewish agenda up to the present era. In reconstructing this hidden history, Levin lays the groundwork for more forthright debates over Palestinian rights issues, American Jewish identity, and the U.S.-Israel relationship more broadly.

Geoffrey Levin (Author), Jonathan Todd Ross (Narrator)

Audiobook

A War Made in Russia

In this timely and incisive book, Sergei Medvedev argues that Russia's war in Ukraine was not merely a whim of Putin's obsession: rather, it was the result of two decades of authoritarian degradation and post-imperial ressentiment, a culmination of Putin's regime and of Russia's entire imperial history. Building on his prize-winning book The Return of the Russian Leviathan, Medvedev argues that it was not only Putin that started this war, but Russia itself, which, by and large, has imagined and embraced it with enthusiasm, seeking to relive its own military glory and colonial past.

Sergei Medvedev (Author), Daniel Henning (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of Women Who Shaped the Presidency in the Twentiet

In Bringing Home the White House, Melissa Estes Blair introduces us to five fascinating yet unheralded women who were at the heart of campaigns to elect and reelect some of our most beloved presidents. By examining the roles of these political strategists in affecting the outcome of presidential elections, Blair sheds light on their historical importance and the relevance of their individual influence. In the middle decades of the twentieth century both major political parties had Women's Divisions. The leaders of these divisions-five women who held the job from 1932 until 1958-organized tens of thousands of women all over the country, turning them into the 'saleswomen for the party' by providing them with talking points, fliers, and other material they needed to strike up political conversations with their friends and neighbors. The leaders of the Women's Divisions also produced a huge portion of the media used by the campaigns-over 90 percent of all print material in the 1930s-and were close advisors of the presidents of both parties. In spite of their importance, these women and their work have been left out of the narratives of midcentury America. In telling the story of these women, Blair reveals the ways that women were central to American politics from the depths of the Great Depression to the height of the Cold War.

Melissa Estes Blair (Author), Teri Schnaubelt (Narrator)

Audiobook

Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire

Gaza, home to two million people, continues to face suffocating conditions imposed by Israel. This distinctive anthology imagines what the future of Gaza could be, while reaffirming the critical role of Gaza in Palestinian identity, history, and struggle for liberation. Light in Gaza is a seminal, moving, and wide-ranging anthology of Palestinian writers and artists. It constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle. As political discourse shifts toward futurism as a means of reimagining a better way of living, beyond the violence and limitations of colonialism, Light in Gaza is an urgent and powerful intervention into an important political moment.

Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, Mike Merryman-Lotze (Author), Amin El Gamal, Hanne Rickert, TBD (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

Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers

Leadership from Bad to Worse is about how leadership that is bad, invariably, inexorably, gets worse-unless it is somehow, by someone or something, stopped or slowed. This work draws on four cases of bad leadership-two in political leadership, two in business leadership-to show how it goes from bad to worse. Kellerman finds that bad leadership and bad followership go through four phases of development: 1) Onward and Upward; 2) Followers Join In; 3) Leaders Start In; and 4) Bad to Worse. These findings correctly suggest that the book, in addition to being of theoretical interest, is of practical import. It is intended, deliberately, to serve as an early warning system. By breaking bad leadership and followership into phases-each more ominous and ultimately dangerous than the one preceding-their progression will be easier to predict and detect. And easier, therefore, to slow or, preferably, to stop before they turn toxic. Bad leadership is a social disease. But unlike diseases that are physical or psychological, it remains at the margins of our collective concerns. Leadership from Bad to Worse is, then, a corrective. Knowing that bad leadership can be checked before it corrupts is knowing that bad and then worse can be, if not completely precluded, then sometimes short-circuited.

Barbara Kellerman (Author), Linda Jones (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Politics of Mass Violence in the Middle East: (Zones of Violence)

The Middle East today is characterized by an astonishingly bloody civil war in Syria, a highly racialized and militarized approach to the concept of a Jewish state in Israel and the Palestinian territories, an Iraqi state paralyzed by the emergence of class- and region-inflected sectarian identifications, a Lebanon teetering on the edge of collapse from the pressures of its huge numbers of refugees and its sect-bound political system, and the rise of a wide variety of Islamist paramilitary organizations seeking to operate outside all these states. The region's emergence as a 'zone of violence,' characterized by a viciously dystopian politics of identity, is a relatively recent phenomenon, developing only over the past century; but despite these shallow historical roots, the mass violence and dispossession now characterizing Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq have emerged as some of the twenty-first century's most intractable problems. In this study, Laura Robson uses a framework of mass violence-encompassing the concepts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced migration, appropriation of resources, mass deportation, and forcible denationalization-to explain the emergence of a dystopian politics of identity across the Eastern Mediterranean in the modern era and to illuminate the contemporary breakdown of the state from Syria to Iraq to Israel.

Laura Robson (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

Audiobook

Putin's Wars and NATO's Flaws: Why Russia Invaded Ukraine

This book explores why there is a major war again in Europe. Putin's actions need to be understood if not forgiven. With the Ukraine conflict seen as a proxy war of NATO versus Russia, how likely is the fighting to spread? The author, a highly respected journalist and political commentator, explains why Russia invaded a sovereign neighbor. To what extent did NATO's expansion to Russia's borders in the aftermath of the Cold War provoke Putin? Did the West's recent humiliating defeats in the Middle East and South Asia encourage Putin to exploit what he saw as its decadent strategic weakness and lack of resolve? What were the reasons for Russia's savage behavior in Ukraine? How might the Ukraine war end and what will the post-bellum world look like? The war in Ukraine has had worldwide impact with cost of living, food and energy crises, and raised the risk of nuclear Armageddon by accident or intent. It examines the complex military and political issues in layman's language while the story is told as a compelling historical narrative. Professor Moorcraft, who has worked in Ukraine and has witnessed Russian troops in action in Afghanistan, is superbly qualified to write this work.

Paul Moorcraft (Author), Mike Cooper (Narrator)

Audiobook

Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1

Angela Y. Davis (Author), Angela Y. Davis, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution

Candidates are the literal 'face' of political parties, yet they are not wedded to them permanently: candidates can enter or leave politics, switch parties, move along or stay behind when parties split or merge. Even in parties that look stable, candidate change happens below the surface, ultimately altering what the parties stand for. Inspired by evolutionary theories, Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution conceptualizes candidates as 'party genes' and develops a candidate-based approach to party evolution. Tracking candidates between elections and parties opens up new perspectives on party development in complex and dynamic settings in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and beyond. Based on a new database of 200,000 electoral candidates from over sixty elections across nine CEE democracies, this book presents a groundbreaking study of party evolution using candidate change as an indicator of party change. Allan Sikk and Philipp Köker offer a series of methodological and conceptual advances for the measurement of candidate turnover, party fission and fusion, programmatic change, and party leadership change; the resulting analyses make a significant contribution to the study of CEE party politics as well as to the general scholarship on elections, parties, and political change.

Allan Sikk, Phillip Koker (Author), David Marantz (Narrator)

Audiobook