Freedom Liberty

Written by two psychologists and experts in race, identity, equity, and inclusion, The Antiracism Handbook will empower you to make your own personal contribution to creating an antiracist society. You'll find practical, evidence-based tools grounded in psychology to help you recognize and resist racial stereotypes in day-to-day interactions; and strategies to help you communicate with family, loved ones, and children about race and racism.

How does the First Amendment really work? Is it a principle or a value? What is hate speech and should it always be banned? Are we free to declare our religious beliefs in the public square? What role, if any, should companies like Facebook play in policing the exchange of thoughts, ideas, and opinions? With clarity and power, Stanley Fish explores these complex questions in The First.

The timely story of Dutch Brazil (1631-1654), intriguing in itself, opens a window on a clash of ideas. What is liberty? Is it freedom for a narrow class to run things as it pleases? Or is it an equality of rights for all? By the seventeenth century, the Dutch and Portuguese had diverged on this point. The invasion of Portugal's prize colony of Brazil by the Dutch Republic can serve to highlight the move to contemporary views. Today both nations are comembers of the European Union, NATO, and other bodies, and embrace democratic norms. What changed? This question is addressed throughout the ...

Ottobah Cugoano’s tumultuous life put him in a unique position to testify to the horrors of slavery on many important levels. Though some of the details of his biography remain obscure (he disappeared from public record in 1791), he provides vivid testimony here about his own kidnapping on the Gold Coast at the age of thirteen; his repeated sale and transport across Africa, and eventually across the Atlantic Ocean; his experiences as part of a chain gang in the West Indies; and the way in which he managed to purchase his freedom.

This revelatory memoir by the mother of Michael Brown, the African American teenager killed by the police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, sheds light on one of the landmark events in recent history. Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil is a portrait of our time, an urgent call to action, and a moving testament to the undying bond between mothers and sons.

In Green Hell, Steven Milloy shows how the government and environmental elites will soon have you under their Green thumb, controlling the speed you drive, the temperature of your home, even when you can retire - and that's just the tip of their melting iceberg. Milloy argues that our hasty Green policies are more harmful to society than helpful to the environment and shows how we can counter the Green agenda. We all want a healthy planet, but we don't need to live in a Green nanny state to have one.

In A Nation of Sheep, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano frankly discusses how the federal government has circumvented the Constitution and is systematically dismantling the rights and freedoms that are the foundation of American democracy. He challenges Americans to recognize that they are being led down a very dangerous path and that the cost of following without challenge is the loss of the basic freedoms that facilitate our pursuit of happiness and that define us as a nation.

What does it mean to be an engaged American in today's divided political landscape, and how do we restore hope in our country? In a collection of "civic sermons" delivered at gatherings around the nation, popular advocate for active citizenship Eric Liu takes on these thorny questions and provides inspiration and solace in a time of anger, fear, and dismay over the state of the Union. Here are 19 stirring explorations of current and timeless topics about democracy, liberty, equal justice, and powerful citizenship.

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.

From 2008-2016, the leader of the free world was a black man. Obama's presidency reshaped America and transformed the international conversation around politics, race and equality. But it attracted criticism and bred discontent as much as it inspired hope - so much so that the world now faces an uncertain future under a very different kind of US President. In this essential new book, peerless journalist and thinker Ta-Nehisi Coates takes stock of the Obama era.

Prior to World War II, Finley explains, southern senators recognized the fall of segregation as inevitable, and consciously changed their tactics to delay, rather than prevent defeat, enabling them to frustrate civil rights advances for decades. As public support for civil rights grew, southern senators transformed their arguments to limit the use of overt racism and appeal to northerners. They granted minor concessions on bills only tangentially related to civil rights.

Dorothy Butler Gilliam, whose 50-year-career as a journalist put her in the forefront of the fight for social justice, offers a comprehensive view of racial relations and the media in the US.

Spanning from the nation’s earliest years through the New Deal to the Covid pandemic, a groundbreaking work that interrogates how pivotal decisions have established and continued discriminatory practices in the United States, even as the rise of disinformation and other modern advertising techniques have plunged democracy into an ever-deepening crisis.

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.

Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions of success. Many watched their parents and grandparents play by the rules, only to sink deeper and deeper into debt. They witnessed their elders fight to escape cycles of oppression for more promising prospects, largely to no avail. Today, in this post-Obama era, they face a critical turning point. Interweaving her own experience, Allen shares surprising stories of hope and ingenuity.

If there's one thing most of the world knows about the USA, it's that we love guns. Depending on who you are, this might be a source of pride; knowing that your country provides you with the ultimate freedom to preserve life and liberty. For others, it's a source of shame that despite being the richest nation in the world, the USA doesn't even have the same level of gun regulations as many third world nations. No matter how you feel about guns, knowing what to do about them is a difficult question for anybody. There are no easy answers to the debate about gun control.

The Twentieth Century was widely known the “American Century.” The United States of America led the world economically, militarily, and even morally. Her families and communities were strong, her currency was sound, and her military was second to none. But as the new century opens, America staggers from one crisis to another and her leaders squabble rather than lead. Her enemies openly mock her around the world and brazenly attack her vital interests. At home, her citizens are divided against one another more than they have been in generations. The culture war rages and every passing ...

Speech is the lifeblood of democracy, but only if we understand its true meaning and its role in sustaining our government. Key texts from the US Supreme Court, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Meiklejohn, Ida B. Wells, and Charles Lawrence illuminate the immediate questions and pressing issues of free speech.

Born into abject poverty in Haiti, young Jim St. Germain moved to Brooklyn's Crown Heights, into an overcrowded apartment with his family. He quickly adapted to street life and began stealing, dealing drugs, and growing increasingly indifferent to despair and violence. By the time he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, he had been handcuffed more than a dozen times. At the age of 15, the walls of the system were closing around him.

In Roy Wilkins: The Quiet Revolutionary and the NAACP, Yvonne Ryan offers the first biography of this influential activist, as well as an analysis of his significant contributions to civil rights in America. While activists in Alabama were treading the highways between Selma and Montgomery, Wilkins was walking the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., working tirelessly in the background to ensure that the rights they fought for were protected through legislation and court rulings.