Political Advocacy Audiobooks | Politics

Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women

‘A wake-up call … These women’s stories will make you weep, and then rage at the world's indifference.’ Amal Clooney From award-winning war reporter and co-author of I Am Malala, this is the first major account to address the scale of rape and sexual violence in modern conflict. Christina Lamb has worked in war and combat zones for over thirty years. In Our Bodies, Their Battlefield she gives voice to the women of conflicts, exposing how in today’s warfare, rape is used by armies, terrorists and militias as a weapon to humiliate, oppress and carry out ethnic cleansing. Speaking to survivors first-hand, Lamb encounters the suffering and bravery of women in war and meets those fighting for justice. From Southeast Asia where ‘comfort women’ were enslaved by the Japanese during World War Two to the Rwandan genocide, when an estimated quarter of a million women were raped, to the Yazidi women and children of today who witnessed the mass murder of their families before being enslaved by ISIS. Along the way Lamb uncovers incredible stories of heroism and resistance, including the Bosnian women who have hunted down more than a hundred war criminals, the Aleppo beekeeper rescuing Yazidis and the Congolese doctor who has risked his life to treat more rape victims than anyone else on earth. Rape may be as old as war but it is a preventable crime. Bearing witness does not guarantee it won’t happen again, but it can take away any excuse that the world simply didn’t know.

Christina Lamb (Author), Antonia Beamish, Christina Lamb - Introduction (Narrator)

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Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin

From the KGB to the Kremlin: a multidimensional portrait of the man at war with the West. Where do Vladimir Putin's ideas come from? How does he look at the outside world? What does he want, and how far is he willing to go? The great lesson of the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was the danger of misreading the statements, actions, and intentions of the adversary. Today, Vladimir Putin has become the greatest challenge to European security and the global world order in decades. Russia's 8,000 nuclear weapons underscore the huge risks of not understanding who Putin is. Featuring five new chapters, this new edition dispels potentially dangerous misconceptions about Putin and offers a clear-eyed look at his objectives. It presents Putin as a reflection of deeply ingrained Russian ways of thinking as well as his unique personal background and experience.

Clifford G. Gaddy, Fiona Hill (Author), Ellen Archer (Narrator)

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Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents

"This book is an effort to shed light on the truth. . . . To the extent that our leaders embody aspects of who we are as a people, studying how each president has participated in our nation's complicated and often shameful treatment of black people is as good a place as any to start." - Margaret Kimberley from the Preface 'Margaret Kimberley gives us an intellectual gem of prophetic fire about all the U.S. presidents and their deep roots in the vicious legacy of white supremacy and predatory capitalism. Such truths seem more than most Americans can bear, though we ignore her words at our own peril!' - Cornel West, author of Race Matters PREJUDENTIAL is a concise, authoritative exploration of America's relationship with race and black Americans through the lens of the presidents who have been elected to represent all of its people. Throughout the history of the United States, numerous presidents have left their legacies as slaveholders, bigots, and inciters of racial violence, but were the ones generally regarded as more sympathetic to the plight and interests of black Americans-such as Lincoln, FDR, and Clinton-really much better? And what of all the presidents whose relationship with black America is not even considered in the pages of most history books? Over the course of 45 chapters-one for each president-Margaret Kimberley enlightens and informs readers about the attitudes and actions of the highest elected official in the country. By casting sunlight on an aspect of American history that is largely overlooked, Prejudential aims to increase awareness in a manner that will facilitate discussion and understanding.

Margaret Kimberley (Author), Margaret Kimberley (Narrator)

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We Keep Us Safe: Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities

A groundbreaking new vision for public safety that overturns more than 200 years of fear-based discrimination, othering, and punishment As the effects of aggressive policing and mass incarceration harm historically marginalized communities and tear families apart, how do we define safety? In a time when the most powerful institutions in the United States are embracing the repressive and racist systems that keep many communities struggling and in fear, we need to reimagine what safety means. Community leader and lawyer Zach Norris lays out a radical way to shift the conversation about public safety away from fear and punishment and toward growth and support systems for our families and communities. In order to truly be safe, we are going to have to dismantle our mentality of Us vs. Them. By bridging the divides and building relationships with one another, we can dedicate ourselves to strategic, smart investments-meaning resources directed toward our stability and well-being, like healthcare and housing, education and living-wage jobs. This is where real safety begins. We Keep Us Safe is a blueprint of how to hold people accountable while still holding them in community. The result reinstates full humanity and agency for everyone who has been dehumanized and traumatized, so they can participate fully in life, in society, and in the fabric of our democracy.

Zach Norris (Author), Adam Lazarre-White (Narrator)

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The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind

Judith Butler's new book shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. Further, it argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power. But, in fact, nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. An aggressive form of nonviolence accepts that hostility is part of our psychic constitution, but values ambivalence as a way of checking the conversion of aggression into violence. One contemporary challenge to a politics of nonviolence points out that there is a difference of opinion on what counts as violence and nonviolence. The distinction between them can be mobilized in the service of ratifying the state's monopoly on violence. Considering nonviolence as an ethical problem within a political philosophy requires a critique of individualism as well as an understanding of the psychosocial dimensions of violence. Butler draws upon Foucault, Fanon, Freud, and Benjamin to consider how the interdiction against violence fails to include lives regarded as ungrievable. By considering how 'racial phantasms' inform justifications of state and administrative violence, Butler tracks how violence is often attributed to those who are most severely exposed to its lethal effects.

Judith Butler (Author), Coleen Marlo (Narrator)

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Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now

Brought to you by Penguin. - Introduction by Ai Weiwei - An urgent manifesto for global democracy from the leading 23-year-old Hong Kong activist - Nobel Peace Prize nominee and TIME, Forbes and Fortune world leader. At what point do you stand up to power? Age 14, Joshua Wong made history. While the adults stayed silent, Joshua staged the first ever student protest in Hong Kong to oppose National Education – and won. Since then Joshua founded Demosisto, led the Umbrella Revolution and spearheaded the Extradition Bill protests, which have seen an estimated 2 million people – more than a quarter of the population – take to Hong Kong’s streets. His actions have sparked worldwide attention, a Nobel Peace Prize nomination and over 100 days in jail. In Unfree Speech, Joshua tells his story for the first time. Composed in three parts, Joshua chronicles his path to politics, collects the letters he wrote as a political prisoner under the Chinese state, and closes with a powerful and urgent call for all of us around the world to defend our democratic rights. Hong Kong is the canary in the coal mine. When we stay silent, no-one is safe: when we free our speech, they can’t stop all of us. © Jason Y. Ng and Joshua Wong 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Jason Y. Ng, Joshua Wong (Author), Dexter Galang (Narrator)

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Aiding and Abetting: U.S. Foreign Assistance and State Violence

The United States is the world's leading foreign aid donor. Yet there has been little inquiry into how such assistance affects the politics and societies of recipient nations. Drawing on four decades of data on US economic and military aid, Aiding and Abetting explores whether foreign aid does more harm than good. Jessica Trisko Darden challenges long-standing ideas about aid and its consequences, and highlights key patterns in the relationship between assistance and violence. She persuasively demonstrates that many of the foreign aid policy challenges the US faced in the Cold War era, such as the propping up of dictators friendly to US interests, remain salient today. Historical case studies of Indonesia, El Salvador, and South Korea illustrate how aid can uphold human freedoms or propagate human rights abuses. Aiding and Abetting encourages both advocates and critics of foreign assistance to reconsider its political and social consequences by focusing international aid efforts on the expansion of human freedom.

Jessica Trisko Darden (Author), Rebecca Gibel (Narrator)

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Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases

To mark its 100-year anniversary, the American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman to bring together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case and read by an all-star cast. The all-star cast of readers includes: Annaleigh Ashford, Matt Bomer, Dennis Boutsikaris, Geraldine Brooks, Norbert Leo Butz, Michael Chabon, John Cho, David Cole, Sergio de la Pava, Santino Fontana, Elizabeth Frances, Neil Gaiman, Amber Gray, Michael C. Hall, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Brian D'Arcy James, Luke Kirby, Goran Kostić, Judith Light, Lucy Liu, Rebecca Luker, Javier Muñoz, Masi Oka, Morgan Parker, Ann Patchett, Alison Pill, Tonya Pinkins, Billy Porter, Missi Pyle, Zachary Quinto, Jen Richards, Moriel Rothman-Zecher, Tony Shalhoub, Heather Alicia Simms, Patrick Stewart, Corey Stoll, Moses Sumney, Ayelet Waldman, Bradley Whitford, and Constance Zimmer. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation's premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization's one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU's spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU's stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

Ayelet Waldman, Michael Chabon (Author), An All Star Cast (Narrator)

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Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field

A bold and impassioned meditation on injustice in our country that punctures the illusion of a postracial America and reveals it as a place where authoritarianism looms large. Whether the issues are protest, labor, patriotism, or class division, it is clear that professional sports are no longer simply fun and games. Rather, the industry is a hotbed of fractures and inequities that reflect and even drive some of the most divisive issues in our country. The nine provocative and deeply personal essays in Full Dissidence confront the dangerous narratives that are shaping the current dialogue in sports and mainstream culture. The book is a reflection on a culture where African Americans continue to navigate the sharp edges of whiteness--as citizens who are always at risk of being told, often directly from the White House, to go back to where they came from. The topics Howard Bryant takes on include the player-owner relationship, the militarization of sports, the myth of integration, the erasure of black identity as a condition of success, and the kleptocracy that has forced America to ask itself if its beliefs of freedom and democracy are more than just words. In a time when authoritarianism is creeping into our lives and is being embraced in our politics, Full Dissidence will make us question the strength of the bonds we think we have with our fellow citizens, and it shows us why we must break from the malignant behaviors that have become normalized in everyday life.

Howard Bryant (Author), Ron Butler (Narrator)

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Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of the acclaimed, best-selling Half the Sky now issue a plea--deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans--to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. With stark poignancy and political dispassion, Tightrope draws us deep into an 'other America.' The authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some of the children with whom Kristof grew up, in rural Yamhill, Oregon, an area that prospered for much of the twentieth century but has been devastated in the last few decades as blue-collar jobs disappeared. About one-quarter of the children on Kristof's old school bus died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents. And while these particular stories unfolded in one corner of the country, they are representative of many places the authors write about, ranging from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to New York and Virginia. But here too are stories about resurgence, among them: Annette Dove, who has devoted her life to helping the teenagers of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as they navigate the chaotic reality of growing up poor; Daniel McDowell, of Baltimore, whose tale of opioid addiction and recovery suggests that there are viable ways to solve our nation's drug epidemic. These accounts provide a picture of working-class families needlessly but profoundly damaged as a result of decades of policy mistakes. With their superb, nuanced reportage, Kristof and WuDunn have given us a book that is both riveting and impossible to ignore.

Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn, Sheryl Wudunn (Author), Jennifer Garner, Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl Wudunn (Narrator)

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Savage Messiah: How Dr. Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization

This program includes an introduction read by the author. A fascinating biography and in-depth look at the work of bestselling writer and psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson, by award-winning author Jim Proser. Who is psychologist, professor, bestselling author, and YouTube personality Dr. Peterson? What does he believe in? Who are his followers? And why is he so controversial? These are among the many questions raised in this compelling, exhaustively researched account of his life-from Peterson's early days as a religious-school student in small-town Canada to his tenure at Harvard to his headline-making persona of the present day. In Savage Messiah, we meet an adolescent Peterson who, scoffing at the "fairy tales" being taught in his confirmation class, asks his minister how it's possible to believe the Bible in light of modern scientific theory. Unsatisfied with the answer he's been given, Peterson goes on to challenge other authority figures who stood in his way as he dared to define the world in his own terms. This won Peterson many enemies and more admirers than he could have dreamed of, particularly during the digital era, when his nontraditional views could be widely shared and critically discussed. Still, a fall from grace was never far behind. Peterson had always preached the importance of free speech, which he believed was essential to finding life-saving personal meaning in our frequently nihilistic world. But when he dismissed Canadian parliament Bill C-16, one that compelled the use of newly-invented pronouns to address new gender identities, Peterson found himself facing a whole new world. Students targeted him as a gender bigot. Conservatives called him their hero. Soon Peterson was fixed firmly at the center of the culture wars-and there was no turning back. With exclusive interviews of Dr. Peterson, as well as conversations with his family, friends, and associates, this audiobook reveals the heart and mind, teachings and practices, of one of the most provocative voices of our time. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

Jim Proser (Author), Danny Campbell, Jim Proser (Narrator)

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Repeal the Second Amendment: The Case for a Safer America

This program includes an introduction read by the author. A radical case for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment as the only way to control gun violence in America. There's an average of one mass shooting per day in the United States. Given the ineffectiveness of the gun control lobby, it's time for a strategy with spine. In Repeal the Second Amendment, Allan J. Lichtman has written the first book that uses history, legal theory and up-to-the-minute data to make a compelling case for the amendment’s repeal in order to create a clear road to sensible gun control in the US. Repeal the Second Amendment explores both the true history and current interpretation of the Second Amendment to expose the NRA’s blatant historical manipulations and irresponsible fake news releases. Lichtman looks at the history of firearms and gun regulations from colonial times to the present to explain how a historically forgotten sentence in the Constitution has become a flash point of recent politics that benefits only the gun industry, their lobbyists, and the politicians on their payroll. He probes court decisions and the effective lobbying and public relations strategies of the gun lobby as well as the ineffectiveness of the gun control movement for lessons in doing better. What emerges is a clear and cogent plan - repeal and replace the Second Amendment without taking guns away from anyone who has them now - to make the US a safer place. It's time to Repeal the Second Amendment, and Allan Lichtman is the man to bring this radical plan to America.

Allan J. Lichtman (Author), Allan J. Lichtman, Jens Rasmussen (Narrator)

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Political Advocacy Audiobooks in Politics