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We Can't Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival
by Jabari AsimInsightful and searing essays that celebrate the vibrancy and strength of black history and culture in America by critically acclaimed writer Jabari AsimIn We Can’t Breathe, Jabari Asim disrupts what Toni Morrison has exposed as the “Master Narrative” and replaces it with a story of black survival and persistence through art and community in the face of centuries of racism. In eight wide-ranging and penetrating essays, he explores such topics as the twisted legacy of jokes and falsehoods in black life; the importance of black fathers and community; the significance of black writers and stories; and the beauty and pain of the black body. What emerges is a rich portrait of a community and culture that has resisted, survived, and flourished despite centuries of racism, violence, and trauma. These thought-provoking essays present a different side of American history, one that doesn’t depend on a narrative steeped in oppression but rather reveals black voices telling their own stories.
We Charge Genocide!: American Fascism and the Rule of Law
by Bill V. MullenA revealing exploration of domestic fascism in the United States from the 1930s to the January 6th insurrection in Washington, D.C.In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress presented to the United Nations We Charge Genocide, a more than two-hundred-page petition that held the United States accountable for genocide against African Americans. This landmark text represented the dawn of Black Lives Matter and is as relevant today as it was then, as evidenced by the rise of white supremacist groups across the nation and the January 6th Capitol riot which disclosed the specter of a fascist revival in the US Tracing this specter to its roots, We Charge Genocide! provides an original interpretation of American fascism as a permanent and longstanding current in US politics dating to the origins of US settler-colonialism.Picking up where Angela Davis’s 1971 essay, “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation,” left off, We Charge Genocide! reveals how the United States legal system has contributed to the growth of fascist states and fascist movements domestically and internationally. American Studies scholar Bill V. Mullen contends that the preservation of a white supremacist world order—and the prevention of revolutionary threats to that order—structure the discourse and practice of US fascism. He names this fascist modality the “counterrevolution of law” in tribute to the radicals on the American Left, such as George Jackson, Angela Davis, Herbert Marcuse, and the Black Panther Party, who perceived the American state’s destruction of revolutionary groups and ideas as a distinctive form of American fascism. Mullen argues that US law, particularly US “race law,” has been an enabling mechanism for modalities of fascist rule that have locked historic blocs of non-white populations into an iron cage of legal and extralegal violence.To this end We Charge Genocide! offers a legal historiography of US fascism rooted in law’s capacity to legitimate and sustain racial domination. By recovering the legacy of important organizations, such as the Civil Rights Congress and Black Panther Party, which have both theorized and resisted American legal fascism, Mullen demonstrates how their work and critical theorists like Davis, Marcuse, Jackson, Walter Benjamin, and Ernst Fraenkel illuminate the threat of American legal fascism to its most vulnerable racialized victims of state violence in our time, including gender and transgender violence.
We Count, We Matter: Voice, Choice and the Death of Distance (Classical and Contemporary Social Theory)
by Christopher SteedThis book examines the meaning of Brexit, the election of Trump and the rising tide of populist revolt on the right amidst the collapse of the left. Exploring the reaction against the establishment or ‘the system’, the author contends that we are witnessing a new divide between those who wish to see an interconnected world and those who seek distance: as transport and technology shrink the world, we witness a backlash that favours protectionism and opposes immigration. Distance is the new frontier: for some, remote players are rejected in favour of identities closer to home. This divide plays out in relation to the notion of ‘face’, as individuals react to ‘faceless’ organisations and processes such as globalisation and automation, responding to a sense of alienation on social media and developing a conception of themselves as networked individuals. Thus, we move towards a type of society characterised not by honour and dishonour, or right and wrong, but by voice and choice. A fascinating and very accessible analysis of the divisions and transformations that have come to dominate the contemporary landscape, this book will appeal to political leaders and social scientists with interests in globalisation, social movements and social theory.
We Created Chávez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution
by Ciccariello-Maher GeorgeSince being elected president in 1998, Hugo Chávez has become the face of contemporary Venezuela and, more broadly, anticapitalist revolution. George Ciccariello-Maher contends that this focus on Chávez has obscured the inner dynamics and historical development of the country's Bolivarian Revolution. In We Created Chávez, by examining social movements and revolutionary groups active before and during the Chávez era, Ciccariello-Maher provides a broader, more nuanced account of Chávez's rise to power and the years of activism that preceded it. Based on interviews with grassroots organizers, former guerrillas, members of neighborhood militias, and government officials, Ciccariello-Maher presents a new history of Venezuelan political activism, one told from below. Led by leftist guerrillas, women, Afro-Venezuelans, indigenous people, and students, the social movements he discusses have been struggling against corruption and repression since 1958. Ciccariello-Maher pays particular attention to the dynamic interplay between the Chávez government, revolutionary social movements, and the Venezuelan people, recasting the Bolivarian Revolution as a long-term and multifaceted process of political transformation.
We Didn't Ask for This
by Adi AlsaidFrom Adi Alsaid, the acclaimed author of Let’s Get Lost, Never Sometimes Always, and North of Happy <P><P>Every year, lock-in night changes lives. This year, it might just change the world. <P><P>Central International School’s annual lock-in is legendary — and for six students, this year’s lock-in is the answer to their dreams. The chance to finally win the contest. Kiss the guy. Make a friend. Become the star of a story that will be passed down from student to student for years to come. <P><P>But then a group of students, led by Marisa Cuevas, stage an eco-protest and chain themselves to the doors, vowing to keep everyone trapped inside until their list of demands is met. While some students rally to the cause, others are devastated as they watch their plans fall apart. And Marisa, once so certain of her goals, must now decide just how far she’ll go to attain them. <P><P>“Engrossing.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
We Dissent: Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan on Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court's Decision Banning Abortion
by Stephen Breyer Sonia Sotomayor Elena KaganThe full text of one of the most radical and controversial Supreme Court decisions in American history, highlighting the galvanizing dissent by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan ...Dobbs v Jackson, the landmark decision to overthrow the rights first granted to women in the Roe v Wade decision fifty years ago, is the first U.S. Supreme Court decision in American history to actually take away from citizens a Constitutionally-protected right. As such it may be the most consequential Court ruling ever.Compounding matters, the decision opened the door to the overthrow of still further rights — such as same-sex marriage, for example, or equal rights for trans people.Nowhere is the danger of this decision made more clear than in the sobering yet electrifying dissent filed by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. That dissent is highlighted in this edition, which includes the entire decision, to let readers decide for themselves, but forefronts the stirring and eloquently reasoned dissent.That eloquence will surely inspire, inform, and fuel the increasingly impassioned debate during the tumultuous campaign season of the upcoming mid-term elections — and beyond.
We Do!: American Leaders Who Believe in Marriage Equality
by Jennifer Baumgardner Madeleine M. KuninRemember when gay marriage was the easiest way to inflame an otherwise mild electorate? This volume demonstrates, through speeches, interviews, and commentary, the encouraging story of American acceptance of gay marriage and the roles that politicians—gay and straight—have played in that history.<P> This movement began with individuals telling the truth about who they are to a world that doesn't accept them. From Supervisor Harvey Milk articulating in 1978 why gay people in all fields must be out and visible; to Governor Andrew Cuomo blinking back tears as he discussed his pride in making gay marriage a reality in New York in 2011; to President Obama's unprecedented support and the courage of many other American politicians—We Do! triumphantly chronicles this recent chapter of our history.
We Do Know How: A Buyer-Led Approach to Creating Jobs for the Poor
by James T. RiordanAn insider with practical experience in development work reveals how understanding market realities can more effectively reduce poverty.This book by a practitioner—not an academic, government official, or pundit—has been written for practitioners and offers fresh thinking on how to do international development work. It combines that thinking with practical guidance, in plain English, on what to do—and perhaps just as importantly, what not to do—on the ground. We Do Know How takes buzzwords commonly used in development circles—demand-driven, results-oriented, accountability, and others—and makes them real, spelling out a proven approach for expanding business sales and generating jobs for poor people.Although government has a role to play in development, in the end the actions of businesses drive economic growth and expand people’s incomes. We Do Know How shows how to build on the incentives that drive businesses and, in the process, create jobs for the poor. Specifically, it urges development practitioners to support only those business opportunities for which there is market demand, abiding by the maxim “produce what you can sell,” not “sell what you produce.” More than that, it cautions practitioners not to become solutions looking for problems but to search creatively for ways to solve the specific problems that stand most in the way of clients meeting buyers’ requirements.We Do Know How challenges much conventional wisdom on how to do development work. At the same time, and in contrast to other books on development, it shows how, by maintaining focus and discipline, development practitioners can deliver demonstrable increases in jobs for those who need them.
We Do Not Fear Anarchy--We Invoke It
by Robert GrahamFrom 1864 to 1876, socialists, communists, trade unionists, and anarchists synthesized a growing body of anticapitalist thought through participation in the First International--a body devoted to uniting left-wing radical tendencies of the time. Often remembered for the historic fights between Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin, the debates and experimentation during the International helped to refine and focus anarchist ideas into a doctrine of international working class self-liberation. "This book is a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room. At long last, anarchists enter the history of socialism by the main door!" --Davide Turcato, author of Making Sense of Anarchism: The Experiments with Revolution of Errico Malatesta, Italian Exile in London, 1889-1900 "Brimming with thought and feeling, richly textured, and not shy of judgment, Graham's book marshals a compelling argument and issues a provocative invitation to revisit--or perhaps to explore anew--the story, the struggles, and the persisting ramifications of this pioneering International. " --Wayne Thorpe, author of The Workers Themselves: Revolutionary Syndicalism and International Labour, 1913-1923 "With impressive and careful scholarship, Robert Graham guides us on a complex journey that reflects his command of the material and his ability to express it in a clear and straightforward way. If you were to think this is some dry history book, you couldn't be more wrong. " --Barry Pateman, historian and archivist with the Kate Sharpley Library Robert Graham has been writing about anarchism for thirty years. He recently edited the three-volume collection Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas.
We Do Our Part: Toward a Fairer and More Equal America
by Jon Meacham Charles PetersThe legendary editor who founded the Washington Monthly and pioneered explanatory journalism trains his keen, principled eye on the changes that have reshaped American politics and civic life beginning with the New Deal. “We Do Our Part” was the slogan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration—and it captured the can-do spirit that allowed America to survive the Great Depression and win World War II. Although the intervening decades have seen their share of progress as well, in some ways we have regressed as a nation. Over the course of a sixty-year career as a Washington, D.C., journalist, historian, and challenger of conventional wisdom, Charles Peters has witnessed these drastic changes firsthand. This stirring book explains how we can consolidate the gains we have made while recapturing the generous spirit we have lost. In a volume spanning the decades, Peters compares the flood of talented, original thinkers who flowed into the nation’s capital to join FDR’s administration with the tide of self-serving government staffers who left to exploit their opportunities on Wall Street and as lobbyists from the 1970s to today. During the same period, the economic divide between rich and poor grew, as we shifted from a culture of generosity to one of personal aggrandizement. With the wisdom of a prophet, Peters connects these two trends by showing how this money-fueled elitism has diminished our trust in one another and our nation—and changed Washington for the worse. While Peters condemns the crass buckraking that afflicts our capital, and the rampant consumerism that fuels our greed, he refuses to see America’s downward drift as permanent. By reminding us of our vanished civic ideal, We Do Our Part also points the way forward. Peter argues that if we want to revive the ethos of the New Deal era—a time when government attracted the brightest and the most dedicated, and when our laws reflected a spirit of humility and community—we need only demand it of ourselves and our elected officials. With a new administration in Washington, the time is ripe for a reassessment of our national priorities. We Do Our Part offers a vital road map of where we have been and where we are going, drawn from the invaluable perspective of a man who has seen America’s better days and still believes in the promise that lies ahead.
We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland
by Fintan O'TooleNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES • 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR NATIONAL BESTSELLER The Atlantic: 10 Best Books of 2022 Best Books of the Year: Washington Post, New Yorker, Salon, Foreign Affairs, New Statesman, Chicago Public Library, Vroman's “[L]ike reading a great tragicomic Irish novel.” —James Wood, The New Yorker “Masterful . . . astonishing.” —Cullen Murphy, The Atlantic "A landmark history . . . Leavened by the brilliance of O'Toole's insights and wit.” —Claire Messud, Harper’s Winner • 2021 An Post Irish Book Award — Nonfiction Book of the Year • from the judges: “The most remarkable Irish nonfiction book I’ve read in the last 10 years”; “[A] book for the ages.” A celebrated Irish writer’s magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world. Fintan O’Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government—in despair, because all the young people were leaving—opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In We Don’t Know Ourselves, O’Toole, one of the Anglophone world’s most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary “backwater” to an almost totally open society—perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O’Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school, much as his forebears did. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland’s main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin’s streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. O’Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O’Toole’s telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit, when the soon-to-be martyred American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis. A remarkably compassionate yet exacting observer, O’Toole in coruscating prose captures the peculiar Irish habit of “deliberate unknowing,” which allowed myths of national greatness to persist even as the foundations were crumbling. Forty years in the making, We Don’t Know Ourselves is a landmark work, a memoir and a national history that ultimately reveals how the two modes are entwined for all of us.
We Don't Need Another Hero: Struggle, Hope, and Possibility in the Age of High-Stakes Schooling
by Greg Michie Gregory MichieIn his latest book, bestselling author Gregory Michie critiques high-stakes schooling and provides a powerful alternative vision of teaching as a humanistic enterprise, students as multidimensional beings, and schools as spaces where young people can imagine and become, not just "achieve". Drawing on his experiences over the past two decades as a classroom teacher, community volunteer, researcher, and teacher educator in Chicago's public schools, Michie offers compelling accounts of teaching and learning in urban America. Mindful of the complex realities educators face, he portrays urban schools as they really are: sites of struggle, hope, and possibility. At a time when others relentlessly trumpet a competitive, data-driven, corporatized notion of education, the essays in We Don't Need Another Hero challenge the dominant images of failing urban schools and bad teachers. Like Michie's now classic Holler If You Hear Me, this book give much-needed hope to new and seasoned teachers alike. It is also an important resource for school administrators, policymakers, parents, and anyone who wants to better understand what is really happening in American Schools.
We End in Joy: Memoirs of a First Daughter
by Angela Fordice JordanWe End in Joy: Memoirs of a First Daughter offers an extraordinary perspective on public life in an intimate account from the daughter of a highly controversial southern governor and a widely beloved first lady.Angela Jordan enjoyed a comfortable and quiet life in Vicksburg, the small southern town in which she was reared. She was a thirty-five-year-old mother of three daughters, and a woman with a politically liberal bent, when, against all history's odds, Mississippians elected her conservative Republican father, Kirk Fordice, governor in 1991.Suddenly fate threw the whole Fordice family into the glaring lights of public life. They made headlines, enlivened the 6 o'clock television news, and provided fodder for every dinner table conversation and robust political speculation around the Southeast. As the Governor and First Lady Fordices' longstanding marriage dissolved slowly and publicly over two terms in office, everyone with a newspaper subscription or a cable connection watched the train wreck and high-profile betrayals.In honest, direct, sometimes poignant, and often funny prose, the author offers a rare glimpse into a profoundly complex family and its painfully public fall from grace. Though the book is the story behind the headlines of one of Mississippi's prominent families, Jordan's narrative will also resonate with anyone who has experienced humiliation, divorce, or loss, whether public or private. Through it all, Jordan finds a story of joy ascendant, and the wonder of discovering that in the deepest sorrow, light and love always shine through.
We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time
by José Andrés Richard WolffeFOREWORD BY LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA AND LUIS A. MIRANDA, JR.The true story of how a group of chefs fed hundreds of thousands of hungry Americans after Hurricane Maria and touched the hearts of many more Chef José Andrés arrived in Puerto Rico four days after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island. The economy was destroyed and for most people there was no clean water, no food, no power, no gas, and no way to communicate with the outside world. Andrés addressed the humanitarian crisis the only way he knew how: by feeding people, one hot meal at a time. From serving sancocho with his friend José Enrique at Enrique’s ravaged restaurant in San Juan to eventually cooking 100,000 meals a day at more than a dozen kitchens across the island, Andrés and his team fed hundreds of thousands of people, including with massive paellas made to serve thousands of people alone.. At the same time, they also confronted a crisis with deep roots, as well as the broken and wasteful system that helps keep some of the biggest charities and NGOs in business. Based on Andrés’s insider’s take as well as on meetings, messages, and conversations he had while in Puerto Rico, We Fed an Island movingly describes how a network of community kitchens activated real change and tells an extraordinary story of hope in the face of disasters both natural and man-made, offering suggestions for how to address a crisis like this in the future. Beyond that, a portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the Chef Relief Network of World Central Kitchen for efforts in Puerto Rico and beyond.
We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and Their Forgotten Battle for Post-war Britain
by Daniel SonabendThe extraordinary story of the Jewish ex-servicemen fighting fascism in post-war BritainReturning to civilian life, at the close of the Second World War, a group of Jewish veterans discovered that, for all their effort and sacrifice, their fight was not yet done. Creeping back onto the streets were Britain&’s homegrown fascists, directed from the shadows by Sir Oswald Mosley. Horrified that the authorities refused to act, forty-three Jewish exservicemen and women resolved to take matters into their own hands. In 1946, they founded the 43 Group and let it be known that they were willing to stop the far-right resurgence by any means necessary. Their numbers quickly swelled. Joining the battlehardened ex-servicemen in smashing up fascist meetings were younger Jews, including hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, and gentiles as well, some of whom volunteered to infiltrate fascist organisations. The Group published its own newspaper, conducted covert operations, and was able to muster a powerful force of hundreds of fighters who quickly turned fascist street meetings into mass brawls. The struggle peaked in the summer of 1947 with the Battle of Ridley Road, where thousands descended on the Hackney market to participate in weekly riots. The history of the 43 Group is not just a gripping story of a forgotten moment in Britain&’s post-war history; it is also a timely lesson in how to confront fascism—and how to win.
We Fought at Arnhem
by Mike RossiterOperation Market Garden: a plan to capture the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem and outflank the German front. In all twelve thousand airborne troops were to land, either by parachute or glider, at three drop zones and move towards their objective. As the world now knows the mission was to be 'a bridge too far' for the British forces. Mike Rossiter has interviewed three of the survivors of those fateful days, each involved in a different flank of the British attack, and in vivid detail reconstructs the events that lead up to this most famous of glorious defeats. It is at once a story of hubris and bad planning, but also of valiant sacrifice and inspirational courage.
We Gather Together: A Nation Divided, a President in Turmoil, and a Historic Campaign to Embrace Gratitude and Grace
by Denise KiernanFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City comes a new way to look at American history through the story of giving thanks.From Ancient Rome through 21st-century America, bestselling author Denise Kiernan brings us a biography of an idea: gratitude, as a compelling human instinct and a global concept, more than just a mere holiday. Spanning centuries, We Gather Together is anchored amid the strife of the Civil War, and driven by the fascinating story of Sarah Josepha Hale, a widowed mother with no formal schooling who became one of the 19th century&’s most influential tastemakers and who campaigned for decades to make real an annual day of thanks. Populated by an enthralling supporting cast of characters including Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, Walt Whitman, Norman Rockwell, and others, We Gather Together is ultimately a story of tenacity and dedication, an inspiring tale of how imperfect people in challenging times can create powerful legacies. Working at the helm of one of the most widely read magazines in the nation, Hale published Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others, while introducing American readers to such newfangled concepts as &“domestic science,&” white wedding gowns, and the Christmas tree. A prolific writer, Hale penned novels, recipe books, essays and more, including the ubiquitous children&’s poem, &“Mary Had a Little Lamb.&” And Hale herself never stopped pushing the leaders of her time, in pursuit of her goal. The man who finally granted her wish about a national &“thanksgiving&” was Lincoln, the president of the war-torn nation in which Hale would never have the right to vote. Illuminating, wildly discussable, part myth-busting, part call to action, We Gather Together is full of unexpected delights and uneasy truths. The stories of indigenous peoples, immigrant communities, women&’s rights activists, abolitionists, and more, will inspire readers to rethink and reclaim what it means to give thanks in this day and age. The book&’s message of gratitude—especially when embraced during the hardest of times—makes it one to read and share, over and over, at any time of year.
We God's People: Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in the World of Nations
by Jocelyne CesariCesari argues that both religious and national communities are defined by the three Bs: belief, behaviour and belonging. By focusing on the ways in which these three Bs intersect, overlap or clash, she identifies the patterns of the politicization of religion, and vice versa, in any given context. Her approach has four advantages: firstly, it combines an exploration of institutional and ideational changes across time, which are usually separated by disciplinary boundaries. Secondly, it illustrates the heuristic value of combining qualitative and quantitative methods by statistically testing the validity of the patterns identified in the qualitative historical phase of the research. Thirdly, it avoids reducing religion to beliefs by investigating the significance of the institution-ideas connections, and fourthly, it broadens the political approach beyond state-religion relations to take into account actions and ideas conveyed in other arenas such as education, welfare, and culture.
We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation
by Jeff ChangIn these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang (Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Who We Be) takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, this book links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism. Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of “diversity,” the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing. He argues that resegregation is the unexamined condition of our time, the undoing of which is key to moving the nation forward to racial justice and cultural equity.
We Got Him!: A Memoir of the Hunt and Capture of Saddam Hussein
by Steve RussellFrom retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Russell comes a compelling firsthand account of the blow-by-blow plays of the actual raids that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003.When U.S. forces exterminated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 1, 2011, the world witnessed a brilliantly fruitful example of history repeating itself; less than a decade earlier, the capture of Saddam Hussein, a triumph of military strategy in and of itself, opened the door for the more recent and essential victory in the War on Terror. At the center of the six-month manhunt were Lt. Col. Steve Russell and his men of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. With his extensive journal notes, combat reports, and painstaking research, Russell has preserved the story as only someone who lived the experience can do. His narrative chronicles the daily successes and dead ends, and describes, blow-by-blow, the actual raids that netted Saddam, culminating in the electrifying quote heard around the globe, &“We Got Him!&”
We had the Watches. They had the Time: A Witness Account of the War in Afghanistan (Renewing the American Narrative)
by Carol BurkeThis book focuses on the war in Afghanistan. In 2010 and 2011, the author took a leave from her faculty position at the University of California, Irvine to train and then deploy as a cultural advisor with two U.S. Army combat units in Afghanistan. Her account begins with the U.S. Army’s four-month training program for cultural advisors, follows her deployment, much of it on missions to remote and volatile areas far from brigade headquarters, and concludes with her uneasy return home.She examines the everyday lives of Americans sent to conduct a war of counterinsurgency, including their sexual exploits on base, their superstitions, even the heroic accounts that military contractors recount in their personal stories of past wars, stories that are sometimes a little too good to be true. In turn, she explores the views of ordinary Afghans to this American occupation.
We Had to Remove This Post
by Hanna BervoetsWHAT IS “NORMAL”?WHAT IS “RIGHT”?AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE?To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst—but Kayleigh needs money. So she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her task: review offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and decide which need to be removed. It’s grueling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform’s ever-changing moderating guidelines. Yet Kayleigh is good at her job, and she finds in her colleagues a group of friends—even a new girlfriend—and for the first time in her life, her future seems bright.But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators’ own senses of right and wrong begin to bend and flex?From one of the most acclaimed Dutch writers of her generation, We Had to Remove This Post is a chilling, powerful, and urgent literary masterpiece about who or what determines our worldview, who sets the boundaries, and just how much a person can be asked to accept.
We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State
by Kai Strittmatter“A remarkable book. … The more one reads, the more pressing one conclusion becomes: almost everything we thought we knew about contemporary China is wrong.” —The Observer, “Book of the Week”Hailed as a masterwork of reporting and analysis, and based on decades of research within China, We Have Been Harmonized, by award-winning correspondent Kai Strittmatter, offers a groundbreaking look at how the internet and high tech have allowed China to create the largest and most effective surveillance state in history. China’s new drive for repression is being underpinned by unprecedented advances in technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer databases, intercepted cell phone conversations, the monitoring of app use, and millions of high-resolution security cameras make it nearly impossible for a Chinese citizen to hide anything from authorities. Commercial transactions, including food deliveries and online purchases, are fed into vast databases, along with everything from biometric information to social media activities to methods of birth control. Cameras (so advanced that they can locate a single person within a stadium crowd of 60,000) scan for faces and walking patterns to track each individual’s movement. In some schools, children’s facial expressions are monitored to make sure they are paying attention at the right times. In a new Social Credit System, each citizen is given a score for good behavior; for those who rate poorly, punishments include being banned from flying or taking high-speed trains, exclusion from certain jobs, and preventing their children from attending better schools. And it gets worse: advanced surveillance has led to the imprisonment of more than a million Chinese citizens in western China alone, many held in draconian “reeducation” camps.This digital totalitarianism has been made possible not only with the help of Chinese private tech companies, but the complicity of Western governments and corporations eager to gain access to China’s huge market. And while governments debate trade wars and tariffs, the Chinese Communist Party and its local partners are aggressively stepping up their efforts to export their surveillance technology abroad—including to the United States. We Have Been Harmonized is a terrifying portrait of life under unprecedented government surveillance—and a dire warning about what could happen anywhere under the pretense of national security.“Terrifying. … A warning call." —The Sunday Times (UK), a “Best Book of the Year so Far”
We Have Never Been Middle Class: How Social Mobility Misleads Us
by Hadas WeissTaking apart the ideology of the "middle class"Tidings of a shrinking middle class in one part of the world and its expansion in another absorb our attention, but seldom do we question the category itself. We Have Never Been Middle Class proposes that the middle class is an ideology. Tracing this ideology up to the age of financialization, it exposes the fallacy in the belief that we can all ascend or descend as a result of our aspirational and precautionary investments in property and education. Ethnographic accounts from Germany, Israel, the USA and elsewhere illustrate how this belief orients us, in our private lives as much as in our politics, toward accumulation-enhancing yet self-undermining goals. This original meshing of anthropology and critical theory elucidates capitalism by way of its archetypal actors.
We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution
by George William Van CleveIn 1783, as the Revolutionary War came to a close, Alexander Hamilton resigned in disgust from the Continental Congress after it refused to consider a fundamental reform of the Articles of Confederation. Just four years later, that same government collapsed, and Congress grudgingly agreed to support the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, which altered the Articles beyond recognition. What occurred during this remarkably brief interval to cause the Confederation to lose public confidence and inspire Americans to replace it with a dramatically more flexible and powerful government? We Have Not a Government is the story of this contentious moment in American history. In George William Van Cleve’s book, we encounter a sharply divided America. The Confederation faced massive war debts with virtually no authority to compel its members to pay them. It experienced punishing trade restrictions and strong resistance to American territorial expansion from powerful European governments. Bitter sectional divisions that deadlocked the Continental Congress arose from exploding western settlement. And a deep, long-lasting recession led to sharp controversies and social unrest across the country amid roiling debates over greatly increased taxes, debt relief, and paper money. Van Cleve shows how these remarkable stresses transformed the Confederation into a stalemate government and eventually led previously conflicting states, sections, and interest groups to advocate for a union powerful enough to govern a continental empire. Touching on the stories of a wide-ranging cast of characters—including John Adams, Patrick Henry, Daniel Shays, George Washington, and Thayendanegea—Van Cleve makes clear that it was the Confederation’s failures that created a political crisis and led to the 1787 Constitution. Clearly argued and superbly written, We Have Not a Government is a must-read history of this crucial period in our nation’s early life.