Politics Audiobooks | LoveReading

Be a Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can,

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre, an eye-opening and galvanizing look at the current state of anti-racist activism across America. In the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race and racism in society. In Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, she discussed the ways in which white male supremacy has had an impact on our systems, our culture, and our lives throughout American history. But now that we better understand these systems of oppression, the question is this: What can we do about them? With Be A Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can, Too, Oluo aims to show how people across America are working to create real positive change in our structures. Looking at many of our most powerful systems—like education, media, labor, health, housing, policing, and more—she highlights what people are doing to create change for intersectional racial equity. She also illustrates various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live. This book aims to not only be educational, but to inspire action and change. Oluo wishes to take our conversations on race and racism out of a place of pure pain and trauma, and into a place of loving action. Be A Revolution is both an urgent chronicle of this important moment in history, as well as an inspiring and restorative call for action.

Ijeoma Oluo (Author), Ijeoma Oluo (Narrator)

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Black Boys Like Me: On Race, Identity, and Belonging

"Black Boys Like Me ignited parts of me I honestly didn't believe any book could ever know. . . . Seldom do incredibly titled books earn their titles. Matthew R. Morris earns this classic title with a classic book about our insides." -Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy Startlingly honest, bracing personal essays from a perceptive educator that bring us into the world of Black masculinity, hip-hop culture, and learning. This is an examination of the parts that construct my Black character; from how public schooling shapes our ideas about ourselves to how hip-hop and sports are simultaneously the conduit for both Black abundance and Black boundaries. This book is a meditation on the influences that have shaped Black boys like me. What does it mean to be a young Black man with an immigrant father and a white mother, teaching in a school system that historically has held an exclusionary definition of success? In eight illuminating essays, Matthew R. Morris grapples with this question, and others related to identity and perception. After graduating high school in Scarborough, Morris spent four years in the U.S. on multiple football scholarships and, having spent that time in the States experiencing "the Mecca of hip hop and Black culture," returned home with a newfound perspective. Now an elementary school teacher himself in Toronto, Morris explores the tension between his consumption of Black culture as a child, his teenage performances of the ideas and values of the culture that often betrayed his identity, and the ways society and the people guiding him-his parents, coaches, and teachers-received those performances. What emerges is a painful journey toward transcending performance altogether, toward true knowledge of the self. With the wide-reaching scope of Desmond Cole's The Skin We're In and the introspective snapshot of life in Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Black Boys Like Me is an unflinching debut that invites readers to create braver spaces and engage in crucial conversations around race and belonging.

Matthew R. Morris (Author), Matthew R. Morris (Narrator)

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School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education

An on-the-ground look at the rise of parent activism in response to the far-right attacks on public school education For well over a century, public schools have been a non-partisan gathering place and vital center of civic life in America--but something has changed. In School Moms, journalist Laura Pappano explores the on-the-ground story of how public schools across the country have become ground zero in a cultural and political war as the far-right have made efforts to seek power over school boards. Pappano argues that the rise of parent activism is actually the culmination of efforts that began in the 1990s after campaigns to stop sex education largely fizzled. Recent efforts to make public schools more responsive and inclusive, as well as the pandemic, have offered openings the far-right have been waiting for to organize and sway parents, who are frustrated and exhausted by remote learning, objections by teacher's unions, and shifting directives from school leaders. Groups like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education are organizing against revised history curricula they have dubbed as 'CRT,' banning books, pressing for 'Don't Say Gay' laws, and asserting 'parental rights' to gain control over the review of classroom materials. On the other side, progressive groups like Support Our Schools and Red, Wine & Blue are mobilizing parents to counter such moves. Combining on-the-ground reporting with research and expert interviews, School Moms will take a hard look at where these battles are happening, what is at stake, and why it matters for the future of our schools.

Laura Pappano (Author), Tracy Parsons (Narrator)

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The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump

Part history and part cultural analysis, The Grift chronicles the nuanced history of Black Republicans. Clay Cane lays out how Black Republicanism has been mangled by opportunists who are apologists for racism. After the Civil War, the pillars of Black Republicanism were a balanced critique of both political parties, civil rights for all Americans, reinventing an economy based on exploitation, and, most importantly, building thriving Black communities. How did Black Republicanism devolve from revolutionaries like Frederick Douglass to the puppets in the Trump era? Whether it's radical conservatives like South Carolina Senator Tim Scott or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, they are consistently viral news and continuously upholding egregious laws at the expense of their Black brethren. Black faces in high places who provide cover for explicit bigotry are one of the greatest threats to the liberation of Black and brown people. By studying these figures and their tactics, Cane exposes the grift and lays out a plan to emancipate our future.

Clay Cane (Author), Clay Cane, TBD (Narrator)

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A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness

The New York Times bestseller "A glistening psychological history, faceted largely by the biographies of eight famous leaders . . ." -The Boston Globe "A provocative thesis . . . Ghaemi's book deserves high marks for original thinking." -The Washington Post "Provocative, fascinating." -Salon.com Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, offers a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: The very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. From the importance of Lincoln's 'depressive realism' to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.

Nassir Ghaemi (Author), Adam Barr (Narrator)

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Beloved Economies: Transforming How We Work

Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book of the Year ***** Let’s create an economy for everyone. Based on extensive research with organizations and companies that are boldly breaking out of business as usual, Beloved Economies offer readers an imagination-expanding vision of what work could be. Authors Rimington and Cea explore possibilities for how we work, learning with more than sixty people from a wide array of enterprises. What these groups have in common is that they are generating forms of success that audaciously prioritize well-being, meaning, connection and resilience―alongside conventional metrics like quality and financial success. Beloved Economies offers readers seven specific practices as a springboard for changing how we work. As the book reveals, it’s not only what we do, but how we do it that can be a powerful lever to move us into economies that all of us can love.

Jess Rimington, Joanna Levitt Cea (Author), Jess Rimington, Joanna Levitt Cea (Narrator)

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Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading

Brought to you by Penguin. Perhaps the simplest, most powerful moral question you can ask of your life is: 'Am I a net giver, or a net taker?' As head of TED for the past 20 years, Chris Anderson has had a ringside view of the world's most significant thinkers sharing their boldest ideas across every imaginable discipline. Yet there's a single theme that stands out in his mind as the essential connecting thread: generosity. It may seem simple, but generosity has played a key role in building the tools, knowledge, and institutions that have allowed civilisation to flourish. Now, in our unsettled modern world, beset by disruption and division, Anderson believes our collective future depends on reconnecting to this vital human trait. In this profound and inspiring book, Anderson shows how the same technologies that have been a catalyst for negativity can be turned into an exponential force for good - to create chain reactions of generous behaviour. The potential lies in every one of us, right now - for generosity, it turns out, is wired deeply inside you. Gifts of time, talent, connection and kindness have always been part of what it is to be a good human. What's different today, Anderson reveals, is the power each of us has - if we'd only stop to think about it - to catalyse world-changing, self-replicating impact. The people, companies, investors and organisations who understand this, who prioritise generosity - who give more to the world than they take from it - are the ones that will own the future. And they'll be happier as a result. This book shows you how. ©2024 Chris Anderson (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Chris Anderson (Author), Chris Anderson, TBD (Narrator)

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The Grounds of Political Legitimacy

Political decisions have the potential to greatly impact our lives. Think of decisions in relation to abortion or climate change, for example. This makes political legitimacy an important normative concern. But what makes political decisions legitimate? Are they legitimate in virtue of having support from the citizens? Democratic conceptions of political legitimacy answer in the affirmative. Such conceptions rightly highlight that legitimate political decision-making must be sensitive to disagreements among the citizens. Peter argues that the legitimacy of political decisions doesn't just depend on respect for the citizens' will; and defends a novel hybrid conception of political legitimacy, called the Epistemic Accountability conception. According to this conception, political legitimacy also depends on how political decision-making responds to evidence for what there is most reason to do. The Grounds of Political Legitimacy starts with an overview of the main ways in which philosophers have thought about political legitimacy, and identifies the epistemic accountability conception as an overlooked alternative. Considering the norms that should govern political debate, it examines the role of experts in politics, and probes the responsibilities of democratically elected political leaders and as well as of citizens.

Fabienne Peter (Author), Eva Wilhelm (Narrator)

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The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work - Biography / Auto Biography 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013 The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement Presenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks's politics and years of activism. She shows readers how this civil rights movement radical sought-for more than a half a century-to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.

Jeanne Theoharis (Author), Judith West, TBD (Narrator)

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Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America

Just as World War II transformed the United States into a global military and economic superpower, so too did it forge the gun country America is today. After 1945, war-ravaged European nations possessed large surpluses of mass-produced weapons, and American entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to buy used munitions for pennies on the dollar and resell them stateside. A booming consumer market made cheap guns accessible to millions of Americans, and rates of gun ownership and violence began to climb. Andrew C. McKevitt tells the history of this gun boom through the dynamics of consumer capitalism and Cold War ideology, the combination of which resulted in a vast number of Americans arming themselves to the teeth and centering their political identity on their guns. When gun control legislation emerged in the 1960s, many Americans, accustomed to the unregulated postwar bounty of cheap guns and fearful of Soviet invasion, domestic subversion, and urban uprisings, fiercely challenged it. Meanwhile, gun control groups were diverted from their abolitionist roots toward a conciliatory, fundraising-focused strategy that struggled to limit the stockpiling of firearms. Gun Country recasts the story of guns in postwar America as one of Cold War and racial anxieties, unfettered capitalism, and exceptional violence that continues to haunt us.

Andrew C. Mckevitt (Author), Bob Johnson (Narrator)

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Putin's Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia

The future of Russia lies outside the country. Since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, some one million Russians have fled the country and gone into exile. Motivated by opposition to the war, by guilt for their country's deeds, by personal hatred for the Czar-like Putin, and by a vision of a better Russia, shorn of autocracy, the exiles have mounted an organized resistance to Putin's rule. The resistance includes followers of the imprisoned Putin opponent Alexi Navalny, dissident Russian Orthodox priests, and journalists feeding Russians back home the kind of coverage that Kremlin-controlled media censors. Most aggressively, some exiles are actively aiding the Ukrainian fight against Russia's armed forces in hopes of hastening Russia's defeat and Putin's demise. Paul Starobin, a veteran analyst of Russia, travels to places like Armenia and Georgia to meet with exiles and has conversations with prominent figures throughout Europe and America, as he takes measure of this rebellion-and its potential to fix a nation plagued by revanchist imperial dreams. Putin's Exiles is an indispensable work for anyone trying to understand Russia today-to go beyond Putin's propaganda and the tightly controlled narrative inside the country, and look outside its borders to the diaspora of Russian exiles, who are imagining and fighting for the future of their country.

Paul Starobin (Author), David Aranovich (Narrator)

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Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti

Haiti’s state is near-collapse: armed groups have overrun the country, many government officials have fled after the 2021 assassination of President Moise, refugees desperately set out on boats to reach the US and Latin America, and the economy reels from the after-effects of disasters, both man-made and natural, that destroyed much of Haiti’s infrastructure. How did a nation founded on liberation—a people that successfully revolted against their colonizers and enslavers—come to such a precipice? In Aid State, Jake Johnston, researcher and writer at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, reveals how US and European capitalist goals re-enslaved Haiti under the guise of helping it. To the global West, Haiti has always been a place where labor is cheap, politicians are compliant, and profits are to be made. Over the course of nearly 100 years, the US has sought to control Haiti with occupying police, military, and euphemistically-called peacekeeping forces, as well as hand-picked leaders meant to quell uprisings and protect corporate interests. Earthquakes and hurricanes only further hurt a state already decimated by the aid industrial complex. Based on years of on-the-ground reporting in Haiti and interviews with politicians in the US and Haiti, UN officials, and Haitians who struggle for their lives, homes, and families, Aid State is a conscience-searing book of witness.

Jake Johnston (Author), James Lurie (Narrator)

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