Anti-Fascist

The Road to Wigan Pier
In the 1930s Orwell was sent by a socialist book club to investigate the appalling mass unemployment in the industrial north of England. He went beyond his assignment to investigate the employed as well–“to see the most typical section of the English working class.” Foreword by Victor Gollancz.

Obama: The Call of History
Peter Baker’s authoritative history of the Obama presidency is the first complete account that will stand the test of time. Baker takes the measure of Obama’s achievements and disappointments in office and brings into focus the real legacy of the man who, as he described himself, “doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bi…

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
With shocking revelations that made headlines in papers across the country, Pulitzer-Prize-winner Tim Weiner gets at the truth behind the CIA and uncovers here why nearly every CIA Director has left the agency in worse shape than when he found it; and how these profound failures jeopardize our national security. From the Tra…

Voters cast their ballots for what they believe is right, for the things that make moral sense. Yet Democrats have too often failed to use language linking their moral values with their policies. The Little Blue Book demonstrates how to make that connection clearly and forcefully, with hands-on advice for discussing the most pressing issues of our time: the economy, health care, women’s issues, energy and environmental policy, education, food policy, and more. Dissecting the ways that extreme conservative positions have permeated political discourse, Lakoff and Wehling show how to fight back on moral grounds and in concrete terms. Revelatory, passionate, and deeply practical, The Little Blue Book will forever alter the way Democrats and progressives think and talk about politics.

How to Catch a Russian Spy: The True Story of an American Civilian Turned Double Agent –
The fascinating story of a young American amateur who helped the FBI bust a Russian spy in New York—named the Funniest Book of the Year by The Washington Post, sold in ten countries, and to be a major motion picture for 20th Century Fox.For three nerve-wracking years, Naveed Jam…

A shocking and riveting look at one of the most dramatic and disastrous presidencies in US history, from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Tim Weiner

Robert A. Heinlein was the most influential science fiction writer of his era, an influence so large that, as Samuel R. Delany notes, “modern critics attempting to wrestle with that influence find themselves dealing with an object rather like the sky or an ocean.” He won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, a record that still stands. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was the last of these Hugo-winning novels, and it is widely considered his finest work.

It is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of the former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people–a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic–who become the rebel movement’s leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to this inner circle, and who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution’s ultimate success.

First published in 1952 and immediately hailed as a masterpiece, Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison’s nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it gives us an entirely new model of what a novel can be.

Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy
The explosive account of how Republican legislators and political operatives fundamentally rigged our American democracy through redistricting. With Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008, pundits proclaimed the Republicans as dead as the Whigs of yesteryear. Yet even as Democrat…

Donald Trump’s takeover of the White House is a dangerous escalation in a world of cascading crises. His reckless agenda—including a corporate coup in government, aggressive scapegoating and warmongering, and sweeping aside climate science to set off a fossil fuel frenzy—will generate waves of disasters and shocks to the economy, national security, and the environment.

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America: Finalist for the 2017 National Book Award “[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right . . .” – The Atlantic “This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you’re worried about what all this means for America’s future, you should be” – NPR An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, and change the Constitution. Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower…

A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart.

A young Muslim leader’s memoir of his struggles to forge an American Muslim identity

Haroon Moghul was thrust into the spotlight after 9/11, becoming an undergraduate leader at New York University’s Islamic Center forced into appearances everywhere: on TV, before interfaith audiences, in print. Moghul was becoming a prominent voice for American Muslims even as he struggled with his relationship to Islam. In high school he was barely a believer and entirely convinced he was going to hell. He sometimes drank. He didn’t pray regularly. All he wanted was a girlfriend.

Ever wonder if the world’s tyrants are all using the same instruction manual? They are: here it is. From getting to power to dividing your enemies, suppressing revolution, stealing elections, and making your fortune, this 320-page volume shows you how the pros have been doing it for centuries. Fully factual, with a complete bibliography and footnotes, the Dictator’s Handbook gives you a road map to tyranny, step by step. Beautifully illustrated by a professional artist, the text is funny and deadly serious. This is truly a practical manual for the aspiring tyrant.

Mr. Hersh writes: “The book had its beginnings in my experiences as a Washington reporter for the New York Times during Watergate.” But even at the height of the outcry over the methods and the morality of the men at the top, foreign policy remained sacrosanct. I began my research certain that there was more to be known about the conduct of foreign affairs. I came to realize that even sophisticated public servants perceived something crucially different about the conduct of foreign policy in the Nixon White House. That difference and its cost to both the participants and the country is what I have tried to describe. Four years in the writing, based on more than 1,000 interviews and on extensive research in both published and unpublished sources. The Price of Power will forever alter the way we perceive the workings of our government and will become part of the permanent history of our time.

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl’s theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos (“meaning”)-holds, that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

One of “our most insightful social observers”* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans

With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the “thirty-year backlash”—the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party’s success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers.