Politics Audiobooks | LoveReading

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)

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Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power

Brought to you by Penguin. In a hyper-competitive world obsessed with rankings, super-wealth and greatness, how can we live up to democratic ideals of equality? Erica Benner has spent a lifetime thinking about these questions from different angles in different countries - from post-war Japan, where democracy was imposed on a defeated country, to post-communist Poland, with sudden gaps of wealth and security, and the US and South Africa with their legacies of slavery and racism. Adventures in Democracy draws on her experiences and the deep history of democracies - in ancient Rome and Athens, the American and French revolutions and Renaissance Florence - to offer an unflinching portrait of modern democracy. To salvage democratic institutions and ideals, Benner argues, we need to pay more attention to inequalities and struggles for power among citizens. Probing myths of heroic triumph over tyranny and inexorable progress towards equality, she reveals the vulnerabilities of people power, inviting us to consider why democracy is worth fighting for and the role each citizen must play. ©2024 Erica Benner (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Erica Benner (Author), Louise Brealey, TBD (Narrator)

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Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth

Brought to you by Penguin. We all notice when the poor get poorer: when there are more rough sleepers and food bank queues start to grow. But if the rich become richer, there is nothing much to see in public and, for most of us, daily life doesn't change. Or at least, not immediately. In this astonishing, eye-opening intervention, world-leading philosopher and economist Ingrid Robeyns exposes the true extent of our wealth problem, which has spent the past fifty years silently spiralling out of control. In moral, political, economic, social, environmental and psychological terms, she shows, extreme wealth is not only unjustifiable but harmful to us all - the rich included. In place of our current system, Robeyns offers a breathtakingly clear alternative: limitarianism. The answer to so many of the problems posed by neoliberal capitalism - and the opportunity for a vastly better world - lies in placing a hard limit on the wealth that any one person can accumulate. Because no-one should have more than ten million, and no one needs more than one million. Not even you. ©2024 Ingrid Robeyns (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Ingrid Robeyns (Author), Rachel Bavidge, TBD (Narrator)

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The Poverty of the World: Rediscovering the Poor at Home and Abroad, 1941-1968

In The Poverty of the World, Sheyda Jahanbani brings together the histories of United States foreign relations and domestic politics to explain why, during a period of unprecedented affluence, Americans rediscovered poverty and supported major policy initiative to combat it. Revisiting a moment of triumph for American liberals in the 1940s, Jahanbani shows how the United States's newfound role as a global superpower prompted novel ideas among liberal thinkers about how to address poverty and generated new urgency for trying to do so. Their sense of responsibility about deploying American knowledge and wealth as a beneficent force in the world, produced such foreign aid programs as the Peace Corps. Drawing on a wide variety of archival material, Jahanbani reinterprets the lives and work of prominent liberal figures in postwar American social politics to show the global origins of their ideas. By tracing how American liberals invented the problem of 'global poverty' and executed a war against it, The Poverty of the World sheds new light on the domestic impacts of the Cold War, the global ambitions of American liberalism, and the way in which key intellectuals and policymakers worked to develop an alternative vision of United States empire in the decades after World War II.

Sheyda F. A. Jahanbani (Author), Teri Schnaubelt (Narrator)

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The Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization

University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox explains how our ruling class publicly disparages marriage – the institution most likely to deliver prosperity and happiness to ordinary Americans – while privately embracing it. America is in crisis. Happiness is falling, loneliness and despair are rising, too many schools are riddled by fights and failure, crime is unacceptably high, and the American Dream is out of reach for millions. The problems are visible to us all, but virtually no one is talking about the solution that matters most: Marriage. New research by University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox shows that Americans who get married and have children today are leading happier and more prosperous lives, on average, than men and women who are single and childless. In fact, nothing predicts happiness in life better than a good marriage—not even a hefty bank account or a great career. And kids and communities—not to mention our civilization as a whole—are much more likely to flourish when the state of our unions is strong, according to Wilcox, who directs the National Marriage Project at U.Va. But our country is in crisis because record numbers of Americans are not succeeding at getting or staying married. In this hard-hitting book, Wilcox reveals the anti-family messages and policies that have weakened marriage coming out of Hollywood, Washington, the media, academia, and corporate America. The good news, however, is that millions of Americans are succeeding at marriage. Dr. Wilcox spotlights four groups—Asian, conservative, religious, and college-educated Americans—who are building strong and stable marriages by defying the me-first messages of our elites in favor of a family-first way of life. This is a book for anyone who wants to understand why, even as fewer men and women tie the knot, America’s most fundamental institution matters more than ever for our civilization. And for men and women looking to forge strong, stable, and happy unions for themselves and their children, Get Married reveals the road forward.

Brad Wilcox (Author), Mark Deakins (Narrator)

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Data Grab: The new Colonialism of Big Tech and how to fight back

Brought to you by Penguin. If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product. In the past, colonialism was a landgrab of natural resources, exploitative labour and private property from developing countries. It made shiny promises to modernise and civilise, but actually sought to control. It made native populations sign contracts they didn't understand, and took resources just because they were there. Colonialism has not disappeared it has taken a new form. In the new world order where data is the new oil, big Tech companies are grabbing our most basic natural resources - our data - exploiting our labour and connections, and repackaging our information to control our views, track our movements, record our conversations and discriminate against us. They tell us this is for our own good, to build innovation and develop new technology. But in fact every time we unthinkingly click 'Accept' on Terms and Conditions, we allow our most personal information to kept indefinitely, repackaged by big Tech companies to control and exploit us for their own profit. This is the era of data colonialism. The new colonial landgrab is a DATAGRAB. In this searing, cutting-edge guide, two leading global researchers and founders of the concept of data colonialism reveal how history can help us understand the emerging future - and how we can fight back. ©2024 Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Nick Couldry, Ulises A. Mejias (Author), Laurence Dobiesz, TBD (Narrator)

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The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump

The inside story of Biden's foreign policy team and their struggle to restore America's global influence in the aftermath of Trump When Joe Biden assumed the United States presidency, he brought with him a team of all-star talent, perhaps the most experienced ensemble of policy experts in modern U.S. history. Their mission: repair America's damaged reputation abroad and decide the course of its global future. The challenges and risks could not have been greater. Around the world, adversaries were consolidating power, allies were drifting away, wars were raging, and climate change was accelerating, all while Russia was disrupting democracies and China was seeking to replace the U.S. as the world's preeminent power. Now for the first time since World War II, the United States risked falling from its unrivaled position. If Biden and his team failed, it would likely mark the end of an American era and the rise of a fractured and autocratic world order. In The Internationalists, acclaimed national security reporter Alexander Ward takes us behind the scenes to reveal the struggle to enact a coherent and effective set of policies in a time of global crisis. Against the failure of Afghanistan and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Biden's all-star team-of-rivals must band together against incredible odds. Their successes, and their failures, will decide not just Biden's presidency. They will decide the very course of America's global future. As The Best and The Brightest chronicled the smoke-filled rooms of the Kennedy Administration, and The Rise of The Vulcans detailed the inner workings of George Bush's war machine, The Internationalists takes readers behind the scenes as Joe Biden and his cabinet embark on some of the most ambitious foreign policy initiatives of any president since Richard M. Nixon. Thanks to rigorous reporting and sources in the rooms where it happened, Ward delivers the first draft of history, the first definitive, unvarnished account of the Biden Doctrine, from the Fall of Kabul to the Rise of Kiev.

Alexander Ward (Author), Eric Jason Martin, TBD (Narrator)

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Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World

Brought to you by Penguin. A story of staggering scope and drama, Revolusi is the masterful and definitive account of the epic revolution that sparked the decolonisation of the modern world. On a sunny Friday morning in August 1945, a handful of tired people raised a homemade cotton flag and on behalf of 68 million compatriots announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first colonised country to declare its independence after the Second World War. Four million civilians had died during the wartime occupation by the Japanese that ousted the Dutch colonial regime. Another 200,000 people would lose their lives in the astonishingly brutal conflict that ensued - as the Dutch used savage violence to reassert their control, and as the Allied troops of Britain and America became embroiled in pacifying Indonesia's guerrilla war of resistance: the 'Revolusi'. It was not until December 1949 that the newly created United Nations convinced the Netherlands to cede all sovereignty to Indonesia, finally ending 350 years of colonial rule and setting a precedent that would reshape the world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eye-witness testimonies, David Van Reybrouck turns this vast and complex story into an utterly gripping narrative that is alive with human detail at every turn. A landmark publication, Revolusi shows Indonesia's struggle for independence to be one of the defining dramas of the twentieth century and establishes its author as one of the most gifted narrative historians at work in any language today. ©2024 David Van Reybrouck (P)2024 Penguin Audio

David Van Reybrouck (Author), Neil Gardner, TBD (Narrator)

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Turning Points: The Role of the State Department in Vietnam (1945–75)

Details how the US State Department attempted, and failed, to save South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression and the powerful domestic political influences that ultimately led to America's defeat. Ten years after the end of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, a career Foreign Service officer, Thomas J. Corcoran, set down in writing his thoughts on the history of US State Department policy during America's involvement with South Vietnam. Like many Americans of his generation, he was perplexed by the failure of America to achieve its goals in South Vietnam. As an ambassador and with over thirty years of diplomatic experience-beginning in 1948 when he was assigned to Hanoi and involving other postings in Southeast Asia-he brought to his analysis a long and rich personal experience with events in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The result is a thoughtful, objective, and well-researched study that chronicles the key policy decisions made by the US State Department throughout the entire period from 1945 to 1975; decisions that ultimately led to the first war lost by the United States. In his extensive study, Corcoran does an excellent job of exposing many of the myths and falsehoods found in orthodox histories of US involvement in Vietnam.

Ambassador Thomas J. Corcoran (Author), Joel Richards (Narrator)

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The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979-2003

Brought to you by Penguin. The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power and geopolitics that led to America's disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America's fundamental miscalculations during its ruinous, decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam's rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons programme, Steve Coll traces Saddam's motives through understanding his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader - a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of many more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple explanation, and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp critical nuances in his paranoia, resentments and inconsistencies - even when the stakes were incredibly high. Using unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam's own transcripts and audio files, The Achilles Trap is a remarkable picture of a dictator who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, it is the definitive account of how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy and vanity - on both sides - led to avoidable errors of statecraft: ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change our political landscape. ©2024 Steve Coll (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Steve Coll (Author), Malcolm Hillgartner, TBD (Narrator)

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White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy

A searing portrait and damning takedown of America's proudest citizens-who are also the least likely to defend its core principles White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they're right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage-stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media-now poses an existential threat to the United States. Schaller and Waldman show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites who, despite legitimate grievances, are increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies. Rural White Americans' attitude might best be described as "I love my country, but not our country," Schaller and Waldman argue. This phenomenon is the patriot paradox of rural America: The citizens who take such pride in their patriotism are also the least likely to defend core American principles. And by stoking rural Whites' anger rather than addressing the hard problems they face, conservative politicians and talking heads create a feedback loop of resentments that are undermining American democracy. Schaller and Waldman provocatively critique both the structures that permit rural Whites' disproportionate influence over American governance and the prospects for creating a pluralist, inclusive democracy that delivers policy solutions that benefit rural communities. They conclude with a political reimagining that offers a better future for both rural people and the rest of America.

Paul Waldman, Tom Schaller (Author), Ray Porter (Narrator)

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A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy

Throughout history, too many Americans have been disenfranchised or faced needless barriers to vote. Part of the blame falls on the Constitution, which does not contain an affirmative right to vote. The Supreme Court has made matters worse by failing to protect voting rights and limiting Congress's ability to do so. The time has come for voters to take action and push for an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee this right for all. Drawing on troubling stories of state attempts to disenfranchise military voters, women, African Americans, students, former felons, Native Americans, and others, Richard Hasen argues that American democracy can and should do better in assuring that all eligible voters can cast a meaningful vote that will be fairly counted. He shows how a constitutional right to vote can deescalate voting wars between political parties that lead to endless rounds of litigation and undermine voter confidence in elections, and can safeguard democracy against dangerous attempts at election subversion. The path to a constitutional amendment is undoubtedly hard, especially in these polarized times. A Real Right to Vote explains what's in it for conservatives who have resisted voting reform, and reveals how the pursuit of an amendment can yield tangible dividends for democracy long before ratification.

Richard L. Hasen (Author), Daniel Henning (Narrator)

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