Freedom Liberty

In August of 2014, 29-year-old activist DeRay Mckesson stood with hundreds of others on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to push a message of justice and accountability. These protests, and others like them in cities across the country, resulted in the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, in his first book, Mckesson lays out the intellectual, pragmatic political framework for a new liberation movement. Continuing a conversation about activism and justice that embraces our nation's complex history, he dissects how deliberate oppression persists, and much more....

Best-selling author Mark Lane, the first to question the investigation into the murder of President John F. Kennedy, and activist and author Dick Gregory combine their unique perspectives in a look at the assassination of Martin Luther King. James Earl Ray’s guilty plea allowed the government to sidestep a trial, and yet his hearing, conducted without any challenge by a defense attorney, raised many questions. In Murder in Memphis, Lane and Gregory examine these questions and more.

In Chatter, Patrick Radden Keefe investigates the international eavesdropping alliance known as Echelon, sorting facts from conspiracy theories to determine just how much privacy Americans unknowingly sacrifice in the name of greater security.

W.E.B. Du Bois, who drew from his own experiences as an African-American living in American society, explores the concept of "double-consciousness"—a term he uses to describe living as an African-American and having a "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others." With Du Bois' examination of Black life in post-Civil War America, his explanation of the meaning of emancipation and its effect, and his views on the roles of the black leaders of his time, The Souls of Black Folk is one of the important early works in the field of sociology.

For decades after its founding, America was really two nations—one slave, one free. There were many reasons why this composite nation ultimately broke apart, but the fact that enslaved black people repeatedly risked their lives to flee their masters in the South in search of freedom in the North proved that the "united" states was actually a lie. Fugitive slaves exposed the contradiction between the myth that slavery was a benign institution and the reality that a nation based on the principle of human equality was in fact a prison-house in which millions of Americans had no rights.

He was a husband, a father, a preacher - and the preeminent leader of a movement that continues to transform America and the world. Now, in a special program commissioned and authorized by his family, here is the life and times of Martin Luther King, Jr. Featuring King's I Have a Dream Speech.

Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for inspiring revolt. And few governments tried harder to suppress literacy than did those in the South. Everyone understood that knowledge was power: power to keep a person enslaved in mind and body, power to resist oppression. In the decades before the Civil War, Southern governments drove Black literacy underground, but it was too precious to be entirely stamped out.

When 14-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up the stairs of Little Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957, she and eight other Black students only wanted to make it to class. But the journey of the “Little Rock Nine”, as they came to be known, would lead the nation on an even longer and much more turbulent path, one that would challenge prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, and forever change the landscape of America.

On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life. In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history.

American freedom is being gutted. Whether we are trying to run a business, practice a vocation, raise our families, cooperate with our neighbors, or follow our religious beliefs, we run afoul of the government—not because we are doing anything wrong but because the government has decided it knows better. When we object, that government can and does tell us, “Try to fight this, and we’ll ruin you.”

"The Year of Birmingham", 1963, was a cataclysmic turning point in America's long civil rights struggle. Child demonstrators faced down police dogs and fire hoses in huge nonviolent marches against segregation. Ku Klux Klansmen retaliated by bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young Black girls. Diane McWhorter, daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI records, archival documents, interviews with Black activists and Klansmen, and personal memories into an extraordinary narrative....

Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the Black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries? In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding Black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of Blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer Black college graduates than would otherwise exist.

In The Second, historian and award-winning author Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable. The Second is neither a 'pro-gun' nor an 'anti-gun' book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans.

Congressman John Lewis was a paragon of the civil rights movement and political leadership for decades. A hero we won’t soon forget, Lewis was a beacon of hope and a model of humility whose invocation to “good trouble” continues to inspire millions across our nation. In his last months on earth, even while battling cancer, he dedicated time to share his memories, beliefs, and advice—exclusively immortalized in these chapters—as a message to the generations to come.

When Laura Coates joined the Department of Justice as a prosecutor, she wanted to advocate for the most vulnerable among us. But she quickly realized that even with the best intentions, “the pursuit of justice creates injustice.”

The 20th Century was a time of state-sponsored conflict, genocide, & pilfering. From 1914 to the present, politicians induced a state of constant terror & bloodshed. Over 100 million people and counting have been slaughtered in their disputes. From Germany & Kosovo, to Rwanda & beyond - even more have died in their ethnic, religious & tribal cleansings. In that same time, central banks have orchestrated the largest redistribution of wealth in mankind’s history - taking virtually everything from the middle class and enslaving them in the process - and handing it all to the political elite....

How were human rights invented, and how does their tumultuous history influence their perception and our ability to protect them today? From Professor Lynn Hunt comes this extraordinary cultural and intellectual history, which traces the roots of human rights to the rejection of torture as a means for finding the truth. She demonstrates how ideas of human relationships portrayed in novels and art helped spread these new ideals and how human rights continue to be contested today.

In Revolutionary Power, Shalanda Baker arms those made most vulnerable by our current energy system with the tools they need to remake the system in the service of their humanity. She argues that people of color, poor people, and indigenous people must engage in the creation of the new energy system in order to upend the unequal power dynamics of the current system.

In 1943, three books appeared that changed American politics forever: Isabel Paterson’s The God of the Machine" Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom, and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Together, they laid the groundwork for what became the modern libertarian movement. Even more striking were the women behind these books.

The essential moments of the civil rights movement are introduced and set in historical context by the author of the magisterial America in the King Years trilogy: Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge. Taylor Branch's three-volume history endures as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. With this brief volume, which brings to life the pivotal scenes, he relates the dramatic story of how the movement evolved from a bus strike to a political revolution, and brings this historic achievement to a wider audience.