Collection: Politics

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a "groundbreaking" (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves--now updated, with a new preface.

"The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind."--The New York Times

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR--The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Shelf Awareness, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism--and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas--from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities--that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

**LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 PEN/JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH AWARD FOR NONFICTION**
**LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDALS FOR EXCELLENCE**
**WINNER OF THE 2022 POZ AWARD FOR BEST IN LITERATURE**

"An irresistibly readable and humane exploration of the barbarities of class...readers are gifted that most precious of things in these muddled times: a clear lens through which to see the world."
--Naomi Klein, New York Times bestselling author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

From preeminent LGBTQ scholar, social critic, and journalist Steven W. Thrasher comes a powerful and crucial exploration of one of the most pressing issues of our times: how viruses expose the fault lines of society.

Having spent a ground-breaking career studying the racialization, policing, and criminalization of HIV, Dr. Thrasher has come to understand a deeper truth at the heart of our society: that there are vast inequalities in who is able to survive viruses and that the ways in which viruses spread, kill, and take their toll are much more dependent on social structures than they are on biology alone.

Told through the heart-rending stories of friends, activists, and teachers navigating the novel coronavirus, HIV, and other viruses, Dr. Thrasher brings the reader with him as he delves into the viral underclass and lays bare its inner workings. In the tradition of Isabel Wilkerson's Caste and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, The Viral Underclass helps us understand the world more deeply by showing the fraught relationship between privilege and survival.

From your friends at Pod Save America and Crooked Media comes a useful and illustrated guide to saving American democracy just in time for the 2024 election and 2025 insurrectionIf you're looking to navigate the chaotic, dunce-infested waters of American politics, Democracy or Else is here to help you tackle what might be the greatest question of our time: How do you get involved in the political process and make a real difference without giving in to the sense of impending dread that hangs over our society like a nameless stench? Each chapter will take readers step-by-step through the perilous journey of

• Getting informed when you don't know which influencer to trust (all of them!)
• Donating and volunteering where you can have the biggest impact
• Organizing, protesting, and even running for office yourself
• Staying engaged in politics without losing hope or your mind or all of your friends

Democracy or Else is a resource for everyone--from political junkies following every turn of the news cycle to young people getting ready to vote for the first time. And it's filled with practical advice from some of the smartest experts and least annoying politicians around. The stakes and average global temperatures have never been higher--but there have also never been so many opportunities to join the fight. It's an age of contradictions!

Social justice work, we often assume, is raised voices and raised fists. It requires leading, advocating, fighting, and organizing wherever it takes place--in the streets, slums, villages, inner cities, halls of political power, and more. But what does social justice work look like for those of us who don't feel comfortable battling in the trenches?

Sensitive souls--including those who consider themselves highly emotional, empathic, or introverted--have much to contribute to bringing about a more just and equitable world. Such individuals are wise, thoughtful, and conscientious; they feel more deeply and see things that others don't. We need their contributions. Yet, sustaining justice work can be particularly challenging for the sensitive, and it requires a deep level of self-awareness, intentionality, and care.

In Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul, writer Dorcas Cheng-Tozun (Enneagram 4, INFJ, nonprofit/social enterprise professional, and multiple-burnout survivor) offers six possible pathways for sensitive types:

- Connectors: relational activists whose interactions and conversations build the social capital necessary for change

- Creatives: artists and creators whose work inspires, sheds light, makes connections, and brings issues into the public consciousness

- Record Keepers: archivists who preserve essential information and hold our collective memory and history

- Builders: inventors, programmers, and engineers who center empathy as they develop society-changing products and technologies

- Equippers: educators, mentors, and elders who build skills and knowledge within movements and shepherd the next generation of changemakers

- Researchers: data-driven individuals who utilize information as a persuasive tool to effect change and propose options for improvement

Alongside inspiring, real-life examples of highly sensitive world-changers, Cheng-Tozun expands the possibilities of how to have a positive social impact, affirming the particular gifts and talents that sensitive souls offer to a hurting world.

The American Library Association presents a must-read banned book for every week of the year in this beautiful book lover's reading log.

Expand your reading list and stand against literary censorship with this one-year reading challenge and book journal! Featuring 52 modern and classic books that have been challenged or banned, from The Hunger Games to Maus, this book log includes ALA's insights into each title as well as writing prompts for further reflection. A perfect holiday stocking stuffer, birthday present, or gift for bibliophiles, librarians, teachers and educators, activists, and rebel readers of all genres!

Includes:

• 52 banned, censored, or challenged book recommendations and the reasons they were banned
• Room to reflect on each book and how you can relate to it as you complete the challenge
• Pages for your personal reading log, perfect for sharing on social media or with friends
• An appendix highlighting the 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books from 2010-2019 and information about how YOU can help fight book banning.

PORCHLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 2022 NONFICTION BESTSELLER

"I can see this book helping estranged parties who are equally invested in bridging a gap--it could be assigned reading for fractured families aspiring to a harmonious Thanksgiving dinner." --New York Times

"Like all skills, these techniques take practice. But anyone who sincerely wants to bridge the gaps in understanding will appreciate this book. Guzmán is emphatic about making an effort to work on difficult conversations." --Manhattan Book Review

We think we have the answers, but we need to be asking a lot more questions.

Journalist Mónica Guzmán is the loving liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who voted--twice--for Donald Trump. When the country could no longer see straight across the political divide, Mónica set out to find what was blinding us and discovered the most eye-opening tool we're not using: our own built-in curiosity.

Partisanship is up, trust is down, and our social media feeds make us sure we're right and everyone else is ignorant (or worse). But avoiding one another is hurting our relationships and our society.

In this timely, personal guide, Mónica, the chief storyteller for the national cross-partisan depolarization organization Braver Angels, takes you to the real front lines of a crisis that threatens to grind America to a halt--broken conversations among confounded people. She shows you how to overcome the fear and certainty that surround us to finally do what only seems impossible: understand and even learn from people in your life whose whole worldview is different from or even opposed to yours.

Drawing from cross-partisan conversations she's had, organized, or witnessed everywhere from the echo chambers on social media to the wheat fields in Oregon to raw, unfiltered fights with her own family on election night, Mónica shows how you can put your natural sense of wonder to work for you immediately, finding the answers you need by talking with people--rather than about them--and asking the questions you want, curiously.

In these pages, you'll learn:

• How to ask what you really want to know (even if you're afraid to)
• How to grow smarter from even the most tense interactions, online or off
• How to cross boundaries and find common ground--with anyone

Whether you're left, right, center, or not a fan of labels: If you're ready to fight back against the confusion, heartbreak, and madness of our dangerously divided times--in your own life, at least--Mónica's got the tools and fresh, surprising insights to prove that seeing where people are coming from isn't just possible. It's easier than you think.

Widely heralded as a "masterful" (Washington Post) and "essential" (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law offers "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation" (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, "virtually indispensable" study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.

A moving, beautifully illustrated true story for children ages 6 to 9 about growing up in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II--from the iconic Star Trek actor, activist, and author of the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy.

February 19, 1942. George Takei is four years old when his world changes forever. Two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares anyone of Japanese descent an enemy of the United States.

George and his family were American in every way. They had done nothing wrong. But because of their Japanese ancestry, they were removed from their home in California and forced into camps with thousands of other families who looked like theirs.

Over the next three years, George had three different "homes" the Santa Anita racetrack, swampy Camp Rohwer, and infamous Tule Lake. But even though they were now living behind barbed wire fences and surrounded by armed soldiers, his mother and father did everything they could to keep the family safe.

In My Lost Freedom, George Takei looks back at his own memories to help children today understand what it feels like to be treated as an enemy by your own country. Featuring powerful meticulously researched watercolor paintings, this is a story of a family's courage, a young boy's resilience, and the importance of staying true to yourself in the face of injustice.

Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.

Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to--or actively engineer--each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.

Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.

This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.

Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.

What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.

Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the convergence of mass protest and mass formations of mutual aid, and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.

The
book is intended to aid and empower activists and organizers as they
attempt to map their own journeys through the work of justice-making. It includes insights from a spectrum of experienced organizers, including Sharon Lungo, Carlos Saavedra, Ejeris Dixon, Barbara Ransby, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore about some of the difficult and joyous lessons they have learned in their work.

A finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER National Indie Bestseller

A New York Times notable book of 2023 Vulture's #1 book of 2023
One of Slate's ten best books of 2023 A Guardian best ideas book of 2023 One of Time's ten best books of 2023

Winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award

"I've been raving about Naomi Klein's Doppelganger . . . I can't think of another text that better captures the berserk period we're living through." --Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

"If I had to name a single book that makes sense of these last few dark years, it would be this one." --Katie Roiphe, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

"If ever a book was necessary, it's this one." --Bill McKibben

"Thoughtful and honest . . . Incisive . . . Klein moves her reader toward the truer grounds of solidarity in these times." --Judith Butler

What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired another self--a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you'd devoted your life to fighting against?

Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience--she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us--and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger asks: What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now--and an intellectual adventure story for our times.

A New York Times Bestseller

A vital and urgent call to action about the precarious state of American democracy, charting its historical challenges and current threats, from one of our era's most important and insightful historians.

"Magisterial." -The Washington Post

"An excellent primer for anyone who needs the important facts of the last 150 years of American history-and how they got us to the sorry place we inhabit today." -Guardian

At a time when the very foundations of democracy seem under threat, the lessons of the past offer a roadmap for navigating a moment of political crisis. In Democracy Awakening, acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson delves into the tumultuous journey of American democracy, revealing how the roots of Donald Trump's "authoritarian experiment" can be traced back through the earliest days of the republic. She examines the historical forces that have led to the current political climate, showing how modern conservatism has preyed upon a disaffected population, weaponizing language and promoting false history to consolidate power.

With remarkable clarity and the same accessible voice that brings millions of readers to her newsletter, Letters from an American, Richardson wrangles a chaotic news feed into a coherent story that singles out what we should pay attention to and what possible paths lie ahead. Her command of history and trademark plainspoken prose allow her to pivot effortlessly from the Founders to the abolitionists to Reconstruction to Nixon to the January 6 insurrection, highlighting the political legacies of the New Deal, the lingering fears of socialism, the death of the liberal consensus, and the birth of "movement conservatism."

An essential read for anyone concerned about the state of America, Democracy Awakening is more than a history book; it's a call to action. Richardson reminds us that democracy is not a static institution but a living, evolving process that requires constant vigilance and participation from all of us. This powerful testament to the resilience of democratic ideals shows how we, as a nation, can take the lessons of the past to address today's challenges and secure a more just and equitable future.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.

"A ripping read--well rendered, fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that she brings to a broadcast. . . . The parallels to the present day are strong, even startling."--The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens' confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.

That effort worked--tongue and groove--alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.

At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.

None of it went as planned.

While the scheme has been remembered in history--if at all--as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country's most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.

That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.

A "gripping" (The Washington Post) account of how the major transformations in history--from the rise of Homo sapiens to the birth of capitalism--have been shaped not by humans but by germs

"Superbly written . . . Kennedy seamlessly weaves together scientific and historical research, and his confident authorial voice is sure to please readers of Yuval Noah Harari or Rutger Bregman."--The Times (U.K.)

According to the accepted narrative of progress, humans have thrived thanks to their brains and brawn, collectively bending the arc of history. But in this revelatory book, Professor Jonathan Kennedy argues that the myth of human exceptionalism overstates the role that we play in social and political change. Instead, it is the humble microbe that wins wars and topples empires.

Drawing on the latest research in fields ranging from genetics and anthropology to archaeology and economics, Pathogenesis takes us through sixty thousand years of history, exploring eight major outbreaks of infectious disease that have made the modern world. Bacteria and viruses were protagonists in the demise of the Neanderthals, the growth of Islam, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the devastation wrought by European colonialism, and the evolution of the United States from an imperial backwater to a global superpower. Even Christianity rose to prominence in the wake of a series of deadly pandemics that swept through the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries: Caring for the sick turned what was a tiny sect into one of the world's major religions.

By placing disease at the center of his wide-ranging history of humankind, Kennedy challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions about our collective past--and urges us to view this moment as another disease-driven inflection point that will change the course of history. Provocative and brimming with insight, Pathogenesis transforms our understanding of the human story.

"Never Silent is a gorgeous book . . . Peter Staley has written an electrifying primer for anyone who's thinking/worrying/wondering about how to change/save the world." --Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Angels in America

2022 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST

The previously untold stories of the life of the leading subject in David France's How To Survive A Plague, Peter Staley, including his continuing activism.

In 1987, somebody shoved a flyer into the hand of Peter Staley: massive AIDS demonstration, it announced. After four years on Wall Street as a closeted gay man, Staley was familiar with the homophobia common on trading floors. He also knew that he was not beyond the reach of HIV, having recently been diagnosed with AIDS-Related Complex.

A week after the protest, Staley found his way to a packed meeting of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power--ACT UP--in the West Village. It would prove to be the best decision he ever made. ACT UP would change the course of AIDS, pressuring the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and three administrations to finally respond with research that ultimately saved millions of lives.

Staley, a shrewd strategist with nerves of steel, organized some of the group's most spectacular actions, from shutting down trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to putting a giant condom over the house of Senator Jesse Helms. Never Silent is the inside story of what brought Staley to ACT UP and the explosive and sometimes painful years to follow--years filled with triumph, humiliation, joy, loss, and persistence.

Never Silent is guaranteed to inspire the activist within all of us.

We Will be Shelter stands as a powerful anthology of contemporary poems that unflinchingly confront issues of social justice.

What sets this collection apart is its unwavering commitment to inspiring positive transformation through the art of poetry. Within its pages, beautifully crafted verses take center stage, captivating readers with their evocative power.

This anthology serves as both a call to awareness and an invitation to introspection, urging readers to examine their role in shaping a just and equitable world. Through the eloquence of these poems, readers are compelled to take meaningful action, transforming empathy into activism and propelling society toward a brighter future.

*Half of all proceeds from this book go to the charity of Andrea Gibson's choice every year. In 2019, a donation was made to This is About Humanity.