Politics Audiobooks | LoveReading

The Island: The Making and Unmaking of Modern Puerto Rico

NBC News Senior White House Correspondent Gabe Gutierrez offers a forceful, necessary exposé on the precarious realities and politics of modern Puerto Rico, detailing the decade of financial exploitation, federal negligence, and American ambivalence that pushed the most populous US territory to the brink and examining what must be done to insure the island’s survival. On September 16, 2017, Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm, leaving the island devastated and largely without power for weeks. Slow to respond to the severity of the storm and the logistics of the island’s geographic isolation, the Trump administration faced harsh criticism for its lack of preparedness. While Maria exposed the federal government’s ineptitude and inability to aid Puerto Rico in its time of greatest need, the storm also laid bare a crisis decades in the making, a slow-motion train wreck of American neglect, institutional exploitation, and financial ruin. Now veteran NBC News reporter Gabe Gutierrez, who has covered the island’s storms and its people for years, tells the urgent story of how Puerto Rico came to this precarious moment in its history, uncovering how decades of failed US policies have culminated in the tumultuous last ten years. Whether it’s the US hedge funds who leveraged the island into bankruptcy, or the federal bureaucracy that has robbed the island of the autonomy to shape its own destiny, the mismanagement of Puerto Rico has stretched across presidential administrations and political parties. As The Island reveals, with each passing year, with each storm, this negligence comes at a steeper price to US taxpayers, but more importantly to those who live there. With moving portraits of the people working to preserve Puerto Rico for future generations, Gutierrez demonstrates the human cost that accompanies lack of representation in Washington and the toll it takes on everyday Puerto Ricans as they fight to keep their vibrant island home. What emerges is an eye-opening narrative of American ambivalence about an island so deeply tied to our uncomfortable, imperial past. A seasoned journalist’s ambitious examination of what it takes to change American institutions, The Island shows how our failure to care adequately for Puerto Rico is a failure to reckon with our own history.

Gabe Gutierrez (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Practicing Liberation Workbook: Radical Tools for Grassroots Activists, Community Leaders, Teachers,

The accompanying workbook to Practicing Liberation: essential skills, exercises, and journal prompts for social-change workers to protect boundaries, prevent burnout, and nourish organizational cultures of resilience and care What do you imagine a better world to look, feel, and sound like? Practicing Liberation Workbook shows that nourishing our movements and communities depends on nourishing ourselves-and that centering rest, prioritizing joy, and celebrating creativity and radical imagination is necessary for long-term change. To be sustainable and realize the transformation we're working toward, we need to care for our body, mind, and spirit, even (and especially) when the needs of our communities are urgent. In this accompanying workbook to Practicing Liberation, editors Hala Khouri and Tessa Hicks Peterson respond to the real needs of activists and changemakers-like healing from stress and burnout, processing grief and rage, and addressing overwhelm and disconnection. Examples of practices include: - Guided journal prompts for self-care critical reflections: Reflect on the ideas and practices you've inherited around survival and self-care. What did you learn about survival in your family of origin? What did you learn about self-care? - Embrace and release, an embodied exercise to support you in times of overwhelm - Shared reflections for building community: What experiences or circumstances have shaped you in your life? What gifts has this given you? What can't you see about the world as a result? What support would give you more tools or uplift your gifts in this work? - Meditations for self-forgiveness, equanimity, and connection with nature - Holding space and being present for others through embodied listening Readers are invited to try out the practices alone, with friends, in ceremony, at work, and in nature-to pick those that resonate most and use this toolkit in service of the care and transformation we each need to show up, sustain our work, and thrive for ourselves and our communities.

Tessa Hicks Peterson (Author), Hala Khouri, Tba, Tessa Hicks Peterson (Narrator)

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Shameless: Destroying the Republican Playbook for Dysfunction and the Battle to Preserve Democracy

Brian Tyler Cohen (Author), Brian Tyler Cohen, TBD (Narrator)

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Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich

Brought to you by Penguin. Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? For too long, the Nazis have been presented as little more than psychopaths or criminals. In his major new work, renowned historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us. Evans offers rounded, fresh and often startling new portraits of the men and women who created and served Nazi Germany, beginning with Hitler himself and going on to encompass leading figures like Göring, Goebbels and Himmler, enforcers of Hitler’s orders such as Eichmann and Heydrich, propagandists like Leni Riefenstahl, low-level perpetrators such as the notorious Irma Grese and unknown sympathizers and fellow-travellers who helped the regime in myriad ways. Hitler’s People is a chilling, brilliantly written work which allows the reader to understand the texture and values of the Third Reich and just how far individuals will go when so many normal moral constraints have disappeared. ©2024 Richard J. Evans (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Richard J. Evans (Author), Leighton Pugh, TBD (Narrator)

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My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir

Barrett Brown went to prison for four years for leaking intelligence documents. He was released to Trump’s America. This is his story. After a series of escapades both online and off that brought him in and out of 4chan forums, the halls of power, heroin addiction, and federal prison, Barrett Brown is a free man. He was arrested for his part in an attempt to catalog, interpret, and disseminate top-secret documents exposed in a security lapse by the intelligence contractor Stratfor in 2011. An influential journalist who is also active in the hacktivist collective Anonymous, Brown recounts exploits from a life shaped by an often self-destructive drive to speak truth to power. With inimitable wit and style, palpable anger and conviction, he exposes the incompetence and injustices that plague media and politics, reflects on the successes and failures of the transparency movement, and shows the way forward in harnessing digital communication tools for collective action. But My Glorious Defeats is more than just the tale of the clever and hilarious Brown; it’s also a rigorously researched dissection of our decaying institutions and of human nature itself. As Brown makes clear, institutions are made of people—people with personal ambitions and personal vices—and it is people, just like him, just like us, who hold power. As optimistic as it is heartbreaking, My Glorious Defeats is an entertaining and illuminating manual for insurgency in the information age.

Barrett Brown (Author), Barrett Brown (Narrator)

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A Better Tomorrow: Life Lessons in Hope and Strength

Mina Smallman (Author), Sara Powell, TBD (Narrator)

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All the Rage: “Mississippi Goddam.” and the World that Nina Simone Made

Salamishah Tillet (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Tinderbox: India’s Slide Towards Turmoil

A devastating critique of India’s failure to fulfil its founding promises. Since claiming independence from the British Empire in 1947, India has dramatically changed its nature and its place on the world stage. Today, it is common knowledge that the country glitters with formidable potential. India is the largest democracy in the world and it has the third-most billionaires after the US and China. It is predicted it will have the world’s third-largest economy by 2030, the largest middle class by 2033 and the third biggest navy by 2035. India boasts a raft of savvy English-speaking academics and business-leaders, an army of talented software engineers and a youthful population buzzing with ideas and ambition. But can all that India has promised – to itself and the wider world – come to fruition? In Tinderbox, acclaimed Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume takes a hard look at the country’s progress and potential, bringing together a view of politics, history, economic thinking and social attitudes. Dhume points to why the economic progress of India is stuttering, with a seemingly unbridgeable gap between the desires of its technocrats and its politicians; he shows how democracy is fraying, Hindu nationalism cutting away at the nation’s fabled pluralism; and he accounts for the country’s continuing paradox of astonishing contradictions, what with its record-numbers of billionaires and mass poverty, its technological advances but overall lack of access to electricity and clean water. In short, it’s time to revisit the view that India’s growth and progress will continue at its prophesied pace. And it’s time to overturn the widespread assumption that a familiar India will remain familiar.

Sadanand Dhume (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Lost in Austin

A long-time Austinite and journalist’s exploration of the profound movements that have shaped Austin, Texas—charting the shifts within its vibrant music scene, the impact of rapid urbanization, and the challenges of gentrification—ultimately questioning what this city’s transformation signals for American urban identity. Austin isn’t what it used to be. This is a common sentiment amongst locals, offered with the same confused—and often disappointed—tone familiar to residents of Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco, where rapid growth and expansion have led to an urban identity crisis. Like those cities, Austin is known for its unique qualities: a thriving live music scene and housing affordability that historically made it a compelling home for creatives and self-described weirdos to roost. But now, as Big Tech infiltrates and climate change looms, Austin has become less familiar—and far less affordable. An exploration of the beloved city’s evolution, Lost in Austin also serves as a critical exploration of the transformation that has befallen one of America’s most beloved cities—and serves as a warning for what the homogenization of cities means for American urban identity. With a journalist’s perspective and the heart of an Austinite, Alex Hannaford delves into the consequences of the city’s rapid growth in chapters that chronicle the major movements permanently altering the city: a vanishing music scene, soaring property values, and the encroachment of major industry. Through keen reportage and extensive interviews, Lost in Austin unveils the toll of unchecked growth and the city’s shift from its rebellious spirit to commercialization. Through those stories—vibrant, colorful, and clearly full of love for this city—Hannaford raises a crucial question: How do American cities, once celebrated for their unique values, became casualties of their own rapid growth and success? And can they ever return to what they once were?

Alex Hannaford (Author), James Meunier, TBD (Narrator)

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Beyond Policing

What better way to make the case for a police free world than to show a world where it's possible? For Princeton University's Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Philip V. McHarris, body cameras, de-escalation training, procedural justice, diversity among police, and other popular reforms will never stop police violence. And high emphasis on punishment in the United States has left many communities without the resources needed to keep them safe. Beyond Policing aims to provide a better understanding of the origins and functions of policing and the criminal punishment system in the United States. In this research-driven collection of essays, author and sociologist Philip V. McHarris charts the pitfalls of policing in the United States, from slave patrols, to the expansion of mass policing in the mid-1900s, and the epidemic of police violence today. Written in deftly precise, yet widely accessible language, Beyond Policing presents evidence, both data and anecdotal, that tackles the weight and toll of policing on people and communities and patterns that prove that police reform only leads to more policing. And for what seems like America's most oppressive institution, McHarris points to an exit from the current punitive paradigm, outlining strategies for responding to conflict and harm in ways that transform the conditions that gave rise to violence. This requires, he asserts, decriminalization, decarceration, and defunding punitive institutions that have created the current police and carceral state and a committed investment in community-based alternatives-mechanisms that actually provide safety.

Philip V. Mcharris (Author), Philip V. Mcharris, TBD (Narrator)

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Cities Under Siege: One Night of Violence in America’s Urban Wasteland

A Fox News analyst and well-known commentator on urban violence examines the rise in crime affecting American cities and tells how it has personally affected families, including his own. On June 24, 2022, Gianno Caldwell’s eighteen-year-old brother, Christian, was murdered. He was standing with friends on a street in the Southside of Chicago when a black SUV pulled up and several unidentified men opened fire. Fifty shell casings were later found at the scene. Three in the crowd were rushed to the hospital; only two survived. His family was shattered, and Caldwell was devastated. Tragically, he is not alone. In this gripping exposé, Caldwell dives deep into the heart of America's big cities, telling the stories of several other murders that occurred on the same night his brother died, revealing the shocking human tragedy beneath the rise in crime rates. The Night My Brother Was Murdered takes a bold stance, shining a spotlight on the multiple failings of Democratic policies that have transformed our once-thriving metropolises into crime-ridden centers. Caldwell meticulously dissects the consequences of progressive agendas that prioritize social experiments over public safety. Though some of the worst cities have the strictest gun control laws, they cannot stop the proliferation of weapons from states with few regulations. He reveals the detrimental effects of failed poverty programs, the effect of the disintegration of two-parent households, the decline of religion, and sanctuary city policies that can help to shield criminals. Combining rigorous research and poignant personal anecdotes, Caldwell provides a comprehensive understanding of the dangers facing urban communities, and presents a compelling case for why we must reject the status quo and demand change.

Gianno Caldwell (Author), Gianno Caldwell, TBD (Narrator)

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The Big Guy: The Big Guy:Inside the Biden Family Scandal Machine

The New York Post columnist, Fox News contributor, and national bestselling author of Laptop from Hell returns with the explosive, definitive account of the Biden family scandals. It’s rare that a campaign season has anything like an IRS whistleblower and a California US attorney saying they were blocked from pursuing charges, foreign wire transfers of millions of dollars going to several members of politician’s family, suspicious slap-on-the-wrist plea deals, mounds of incrimination texts, a previously unacknowledged child with a stripper, and multiple congressional investigations. It’s unprecedented to have them all tied to one politician like Joe Biden. The federal government and the mainstream media have been selling the narrative for years that Hunter Biden is a good son with addiction problems who has suffered enough. But what if the Biden family has been involved in sketchy financial dealings and coverups that get bigger every passing year? Miranda Devine goes deep into the dark underbelly of American politics, where it’s okay to break the law as long as you follow the rest of the elite’s rules. With a surgeon’s precision she dissects the shady dealings of the Biden family in China and Eastern Europe, exposing the cover-up within the government and media. With meticulous research and insider sources, Devine uncovers the shocking truth about Joe Biden's involvement in his son Hunter's business dealings and the extent of their corruption. Many have argued that intelligence agents and social media companies tilted the 2020 election in Biden’s favor by hiding the contents of Hunter’s laptop. Devine goes beyond their coverage to “silence the truth” and in The Big Guy finally reveals the corruption within the Biden family and the government.

Miranda Devine (Author), Charles Constant, TBD (Narrator)

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