Political Advocacy Audiobooks | Politics

In Defense of the Second Amendment Audiobook

What part of the Second Amendment don’t you understand? That’s the question posed by award-winning, bestselling author, and professional firearms instructor Larry Correia. Bringing with him the practical experience that comes from having owned a high-end gun store—catering largely to law enforcement—and as a competitive shooter and self-defense trainer, Correia blasts apart the emotion-laden, logic-free rhetoric of the gun-control fanatics who turn every “mass shooting” into a crazed call for violating your rights, abusing the Constitution—and doing absolutely nothing to really fight crime. In his essential new book, In Defense of the Second Amendment, Correia reveals: Why “gun-free” zones are more dangerous for law-abiding citizens, How the Second Amendment does indeed include your right to own an AR-15—and why that’s not an “outdated” concept, Why “red flag” laws don’t work, can be easily abused, and ignore a much more commonsensical approach to keeping guns out of the wrong hands, The insanity of “criminal justice reform” that frees dangerous criminals and “gun reform” that penalizes your right to self-defense, and How we can return to a society that has a safe and healthy relationship with guns—as we had for most of our history. Correia’s promise: “Believe me, I’ve heard every argument relating to gun control possible. I can show you how to defend your rights.” Urgent, informed, with vitally important information for whoever who owns a gun or is thinking about owning a gun or who cares about the preservation of our constitutional rights, In Defense of the Second Amendment is a landmark book of enduring importance.

Larry Correia (Author), John Mclain (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Absolutely Indispensable Man: Ralph Bunche, the United Nations, and the Fight to End Empire

A legendary diplomat, scholar, and civil rights leader, Ralph Bunche was one of the most prominent Black Americans of the twentieth century. The first African American to obtain a political science Ph.D. from Harvard and a celebrated diplomat at the United Nations, he was once so famous he handed out the Best Picture award at the Oscars. Yet today Ralph Bunche is largely forgotten. In The Absolutely Indispensable Man, Kal Raustiala restores Bunche to his rightful place in history. He shows that Bunche was not only a singular figure in midcentury America; he was also one of the key architects of the postwar international order. Raustiala tells the story of Bunche’s dramatic life, from his early years in prewar Los Angeles to UCLA, Harvard, the State Department, and the heights of global diplomacy at the United Nations. After narrowly avoiding assassination, Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize for his ground-breaking mediation of the first Arab-Israeli conflict, catapulting him to popular fame. A central player in some of the most dramatic crises of the Cold War, he pioneered conflict management and peacekeeping at the UN. But as Raustiala argues, his most enduring achievement was his work to dismantle European empire. Bunche perceptively saw colonialism as the central issue of the 20th century and decolonization as a project of global racial justice. From marching with Martin Luther King to advising presidents and prime ministers, Ralph Bunche shaped our world in lasting ways. This definitivebiography gives him his due. It also reminds us that postwar decolonization not only fundamentally transformed world politics, but also powerfully intersected with America’s own civil rights struggle.

Kal Raustiala (Author), Jonathan Todd Ross, Leon Nixon (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

This program includes an author's note read by the author. An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation—and the moral implications that affect us all. Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt. Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial audiobook, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo—because we are all implicated. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

Siddharth Kara (Author), Peter Ganim (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Holocaust: An Unfinished History

Brought to you by Penguin. The defining event of twentieth-century Europe - the extermination of millions of Jews - has been commemorated, institutionalised and embedded in our collective consciousness. But in this nuanced and perceptive new history, Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute, contends that the true dimension of the horror wrought by the Nazis is inadvertently brushed aside in our current culture of commemoration. This is due in part to practical or conceptual challenges, such as the continent-wide scale of the crime and the multiplicity of sources in many languages; and in part to an unwillingness to confront the reality that the Holocaust could not have happened without the assistance of numerous non-Nazi states and agents. Structured around four themes - trauma, collaboration, genocidal fantasy and post-war consequences - The Holocaust demonstrates the genocidal logic of much European thinking in the wake of WWI, explores how the Holocaust's effects unfolded even after the liberation of the camps in 1945, and stresses the ways in which Europeans continue, even now, to draw on a reservoir of fascist vocabulary and imagery in times of crisis. It is a deeply researched and indispensable examination of a trauma that still reverberates today. © Dan Stone 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Dan Stone (Author), John Sackville (Narrator)

Audiobook

Race in the Crucible of War: African American Servicemen and the War in Vietnam

When African American servicemen went to fight in the Vietnam War, discrimination and prejudice followed them. Even in a faraway country, their military experiences were shaped by the racial environment of the home front. War is often viewed as a crucible that can transform society, but American race relations proved remarkably durable. In Race in the Crucible of War, Gerald F. Goodwin examines how Black servicemen experienced and interpreted racial issues during their time in Vietnam. Drawing on more than fifty new oral interviews and significant archival research, as well as newspapers, periodicals, memoirs, and documentaries, Goodwin reveals that for many African Americans the front line and the home front were two sides of the same coin. Serving during the same period as the civil rights movement and the race riots in Chicago, Detroit, and dozens of other American cities, these men increasingly connected the racism that they encountered in the barracks and on the battlefields with the tensions and violence that were simmering back home.

Gerald F. Goodwin (Author), William Andrew Quinn (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America

A classic book now available on audio With narration by Laurel Lefkow, who reveals how the government enforced sex and gender conformity and relegated gays to second-class citizenship The Straight State is the most expansive study of the federal regulation of homosexuality yet written. Unearthing startling new evidence from the National Archives, Margot Canaday shows how the state systematically came to penalize homosexuality, giving rise to a regime of second-class citizenship that sexual minorities still live under today. Canaday looks at three key arenas of government control—immigration, the military, and welfare—and demonstrates how federal enforcement of sexual norms emerged with the rise of the modern bureaucratic state. She begins at the turn of the twentieth century when the state first stumbled upon evidence of sex and gender nonconformity, revealing how homosexuality was policed indirectly through the exclusion of sexually 'degenerate' immigrants and other regulatory measures aimed at combating poverty, violence, and vice. Canaday argues that the state's gradual awareness of homosexuality intensified during the later New Deal and through the postwar period as policies were enacted that explicitly used homosexuality to define who could enter the country, serve in the military, and collect state benefits. Midcentury repression was not a sudden response to newly visible gay subcultures, Canaday demonstrates, but the culmination of a much longer and slower process of state-building during which the state came to know and to care about homosexuality across many decades. Social, political, and legal history at their most compelling, The Straight State explores how regulation transformed the regulated: in drawing boundaries around national citizenship, the state helped to define the very meaning of homosexuality in America.

Margot Canaday (Author), Laurel Lefkow (Narrator)

Audiobook

White Torture: Interviews with Iranian Women Prisoners

Female prisoners of conscience and activists speak out against torture in Iranian prisons With a foreword by Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner Extended solitary confinement has been condemned as a severe violation of human rights. Yet it is still widely used in Iranian prisons. In White Torture, thirteen women, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, share their experiences of imprisonment: harassment and beatings by guards, total blindfolding and denial of medical treatment. Angry interrogators threaten their families and lie about their whereabouts. One prisoner is even told she is dead. None of the women have committed crimes – they are prisoners of conscience or held hostage as bargaining chips. Through psychological torture, the Iranian state hopes to remake their souls. These interviews, carried out while each woman was in prison or facing charges, are astounding documents of resistance and integrity. White Torture unveils the rot at the heart of the Iranian legal system and calls on us to act for change.

Amir Rezanezhad - Translator, Narges Mohammadi (Author), Siiri Scott (Narrator)

Audiobook

Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism

Revolution and Dictatorship explores why dictatorships born of social revolution-such as those in China, Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam-are extraordinarily durable, even in the face of economic crisis, large-scale policy failure, mass discontent, and intense external pressure. Few other modern autocracies have survived in the face of such extreme challenges. Drawing on comparative historical analysis, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argue that radical efforts to transform the social and geopolitical order trigger intense counterrevolutionary conflict, which initially threatens regime survival, but ultimately fosters the unity and state-building that supports authoritarianism. Although most revolutionary governments begin weak, they challenge powerful domestic and foreign actors, often bringing about civil or external wars. These counterrevolutionary wars pose a threat that can destroy new regimes, as in the cases of Afghanistan and Cambodia. Among regimes that survive, however, prolonged conflicts give rise to a cohesive ruling elite and a powerful and loyal coercive apparatus. This leads to the downfall of rival organizations and alternative centers of power, such as armies, churches, and landowners, and helps to inoculate revolutionary regimes against elite defection, military coups, and mass protest-principal sources of authoritarian breakdown.

Lucan Way, Steven Levitsky (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

Audiobook

American Amnesia: How We Lost Our National Memory―and How to Recover It

People are who they are because of what they have been through, where they came from, who they learned from, and all the things that have happened to them. The same is true not just for individuals, but also for families, communities, and nations. America, too, has its own unique character, also formed by its memories, history, things it has been through, and what it has learned. If people, communities, or even nations lose their memory, they lose their character. That is why cultures throughout the world work at maintaining their identity and passing traditions along to future generations. But what if a nation purposely decides it no longer wants to remember its history? What if a country imposes amnesia on itself? Helen Krieble argues persuasively that this is precisely what has happened to America. It has lost the memory of its own founding principles, and the sacrifices made over the past 250 years to preserve them. The nation is losing its character. She writes that America cannot be preserved as “the last best hope of Earth” if its own people no longer understand why that is true and are no longer willing to do what it takes to preserve it. “The duties of citizenship are vitally important,” Krieble writes, “but they are not complicated. It is our duty, as the owners, to defend our freedom against all threats, and to pass it along to future generations undiminished.” Americans are failing in that duty, but Krieble says there is still time to cure our national amnesia. It begins with rebuilding our understanding of, and commitment to, those founding principles, regaining our national memory.

Helen E. Krieble (Author), Marguerite Gavin (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Real Odessa

As Russian forces closed in on Berlin and Hitler’s premiership drew to a close, many Nazi officials fled Germany. In this startling, meticulously researched account, acclaimed journalist Uki Goñi unravels the complex network that led them to Argentina. Relying on international support—in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Italy—and the enthusiasm of the Vatican and President Juan Perón, Goñi shows how this ratline allowed Adolf Eichmann—the architect of the Final Solution—Josef Mengele, Eric Priebke, and many more, into the country. Both riveting and rigorous, this remarkable investigation sheds vital light on both a disquieting episode in Europe’s history and the ties between Argentinian Catholic Nationalism and Fascist movements in Europe.

Uki Goñi (Author), Pat Grimes (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition

For readers of Caste and Radical Dharma, an urgent call to action to end caste apartheid, grounded in Dalit feminist abolition and engaged Buddhism. "Dalit" is the name that we chose for ourselves when Brahminism declared us "untouchable." Dalit means broken. Broken by suffering. Broken by caste: the world's oldest, longest-running dominator system...yet although "Dalit" means broken, it also means resilient. Despite its ban more than 70 years ago, caste is thriving. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just 39. And the wreckages of caste are replicated here in the U.S., too--erupting online with rape and death threats, showing up at work, and forcing countless Dalits to live in fear of being outed. Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan puts forth a call to awaken and act, not just for readers in South Asia, but all around the world. She ties Dalit oppression to fights for liberation among Black, Indigenous, Latinx, femme, and Queer communities, examining caste from a feminist, abolitionist, and Dalit Buddhist perspective--and laying bare the grief, trauma, rage, and stolen futures enacted by Brahminical social structures on the caste-oppressed. Soundararajan's work includes embodiment exercises, reflections, and meditations to help readers explore their own relationship to caste and marginalization--and to step into their power as healing activists and changemakers. She offers skills for cultivating wellness within dynamics of false separation, sharing how both oppressor and oppressed can heal the wounds of caste and transform collective suffering. Incisive and urgent, The Trauma of Caste is an activating beacon of healing and liberation, written by one of the world's most needed voices in the fight to end caste apartheid.

Thenmozhi Soundararajan (Author), Thenmozhi Soundararajan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Interracial Solidarity in 1960s-70s New

Some of the most important and little-known activists of the 1960s were poor and working-class radicals. Inspired by the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers, and progressive populism, they started to organize significant political struggles against racism and inequality during the 1960s and into the 1970s. Historians of the period have traditionally emphasized the work of white college activists who courageously took to the streets to protest the war in Vietnam and continuing racial inequality. Poor and working-class whites have often been painted as spectators, reactionaries, and, even, racists. But authors James Tracy and Amy Sonnie disprove that narrative. Through over ten years of research, interviewing activists along with unprecedented access to their personal archives, Tracy and Sonnie tell a crucial, untold story of the New Left. Their deeply sourced narrative history shows how poor and working-class individuals from diverse ethnic, rural and urban backgrounds cooperated and drew strength from one another. The groups they founded redefined community organizing, and transformed the lives and communities they touched.

Amy Sonnie, James Tracy (Author), Mike Chamberlain (Narrator)

Audiobook

Political Advocacy Audiobooks in Politics