Collection: Politics

Discover the life of Nelson Mandela--a story about uniting a country for kids ages 6 to 9

Nelson Mandela was the first Black president of South Africa, and he dedicated his life to fighting for equal rights for all South Africans. Before he became a symbol of peace and justice around the world, Nelson was a thoughtful kid who loved to play outside and learn new things. Throughout his life, he used his voice to fight against apartheid and didn't back down even after spending 27 years in prison. Explore how Nelson went from being a young boy to a civil rights hero.

The Story of Nelson Mandela includes:

• Core curriculum--Learn the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of Nelson's life, and take a quick quiz to test your understanding.
  
• His lasting legacy--Explore how Nelson Mandela made the world a better place for future generations, including you!
• A visual timeline--Watch Nelson progress from kid to president of South Africa with a visual timeline marking the major milestones of his life.
  

How will Nelson's strength inspire you?

Journalist Arionne Nettles believes it is time Black Chicagoans receive the acclaim, the honor, and the acknowledgment of their contributions to American culture and recognition of where they truly came from.

During the Great Migration, more than a half-million Black Americans moved from the South to Chicago, and with them, they brought the blues, amplifying what would be one of the city's greatest musical artforms. In 1958, the iconic Johnson Publishing Company, the voice of Black America, launched the Ebony Fashion Fair show, leading to the creation of the first makeup brand for Black skin. For three decades starting in the 1970s, households across the country were transported to a stage birthed in Chicago as they moved their hips in front of TV screens airing Soul Train.

Chicago is where Oprah Winfrey, a Black woman who did not have the "traditional look" TV managers pushed on talent, premiered her talk show, which went on to break every record possible and solidify her position as the "Queen of Daytime TV." It's where Hall of Famer Michael Jordan led the Bulls to six championships, including two three-peats, making the NBA a must-see attraction worldwide and wearing Jordans a style symbol to this day. And it's home to Grammy winner Chance the Rapper, whose work honors the city's cultural institutions, from the White Sox to modern art superstar Hebru Brantley.

It all happened right here, in Chicago, and for the past century, Black Chicago's influence has permeated not just the city but really what we see today as modern-day pop culture throughout the country, and in some ways, the world.

The three texts this book, all written in vastly different eras --The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Marx and Engels, Reform or Revolution (1899) by Rosa Luxemburg and Socialism and Man in Cuba (1965) by Ernesto Che Guevara--illuminate socialist ideas of the 19th and 20th centuries.

For a new generation of activists, these are classic revolutionary writings by four famous rebels, including The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg; and Che Guevara's Socialism and Man in Cuba. Includes an introduction by Cuban Marxist intellectual Armando Hart and a preface by US radical poet Adrienne Rich.

The essays in this book, Manifesto, were written by three relatively young people--Karl Marx when he was 30, Rosa Luxemburg at 27, Che Guevara at the age of 37. Born into different historical moments and different generations, they shared an energy of hope, an engagement with history, a belief that critical thinking must inform action, and a passion for the world and its human possibilities. Here are urgent conversations from the past that are still being carried on, among new voices, throughout the world.

How support from foreign superpowers propped up--and pulled down--authoritarian regimes during the Cold War, offering lessons for today's great power competition

Throughout the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union competed to prop up friendly dictatorships abroad. Today, it is commonly assumed that this military aid enabled the survival of allied autocrats, from Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek to Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam.

In Up in Arms, political scientist Adam E. Casey rebuts the received wisdom: aid to autocracies often backfired during the Cold War. Casey draws on extensive original research to show that, despite billions poured into friendly regimes, US-backed dictators lasted in power no longer than those without outside help. In fact, American aid often unintentionally destabilized autocratic regimes. The United States encouraged foreign regimes to establish strong, independent armies like its own, but those armies often went on to lead coups themselves. By contrast, the Soviets promoted the subordination of the army to the ruling regime, neutralizing the threat of military takeover. Ultimately, Casey concludes, it is subservient militaries--not outside aid--that help autocrats maintain power.

In an era of renewed great power competition, Up in Arms offers invaluable insights into the unforeseen consequences of overseas meddling, revealing how military aid can help pull down dictators as often as it props them up.

From the former heir-apparent to white nationalism, The Klansman's Son is an astonishing memoir of a childhood built on fear, of breaking from a community of hate.

Derek Black was raised to take over the white nationalist movement in the United States. Their father, Don Black, was a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan and started Stormfront, the internet's first white supremacist website--Derek built the kids' page. David Duke, was also their close family friend and mentor. Racist hatred, though often wrapped up in respectability, was all Derek knew.

Then, while in college in 2013, Derek publicly renounced white nationalism and apologized for their actions and the suffering that they had caused. The majority of their family stopped speaking to them, and they disappeared into academia, convinced that they had done so much harm that there was no place for them in public life. But in 2016, as they watched the rise of Donald Trump, they immediately recognized what they were hearing--the spread and mainstreaming of the hate they had helped cultivate--and they knew that they couldn't stay silent.

This is a thoughtful, insightful, and moving account of a singular life, with important lessons for our troubled times. Derek can trace a uniquely insider account of the rise of white nationalism, and how a child indoctrinated with hate can become an anti-racist adult. Few understand the ideology, motivations, or tactics of the white nationalist movement like Derek, and few have ever made so profound a change. When coded language and creeping authoritarianism spread the ideas of white nationalists, this is an essential book with a powerful voice.

This is the first major interpretation of the framing of the Constitution to appear in more than two decades. Forrest McDonald, widely considered one of the foremost historians of the Constitution and of the early national period, reconstructs the intellectual world of the Founding Fathers--including their understanding of law, history political philosophy, and political economy, and their firsthand experience in public affairs--and then analyzes their behavior in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in light of that world. No one has attempted to do so on such a scale before. McDonald's principal conclusion is that, though the Framers brought a variety of ideological and philosophical positions to bear upon their task of building a "new order of the ages," they were guided primarily by their own experience, their wisdom, and their common sense.

What does the US Constitution mean for you?

One of the most revered, imitated, and controversial governmental documents in the world, the US Constitution serves as the foundation for the American government and shapes the lives of Americans every day. But what do you know about its history and the impact it has on guiding an ever-evolving nation?

This book provides a clear look at the single document that defines America, including the birth of the Constitution and the history and details of its amendments.

This revision covers recent court rulings related to the Constitution and how those decisions have ramifications for everyday Americans. If you've never fully read the Constitution before, this guide will give you an opportunity to learn about the most influential document in US history.

A sweeping study of how capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power--and contributed to the worsening climate crisis

The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy--but rather superior control of subordinate labor. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today.

Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the burning heart of capital and demonstrates, in unprecedented depth, that turning down the heat will mean a radical overthrow of the current economic order.

"The definitive deep history on how our economic system created the climate crisis. Superb, essential reading from one of the most original thinkers on the subject."
--Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

A nutritionist and a renowned organic farmer explore and explain the art of eating well.

Do you want to be healthy, happy and free? But find yourself stuck in your healing journey and want some guidance and encouragement? Perhaps you are overwhelmed by all of the conflicting diet advice. Maybe you don't know where to start or who to trust. Or, maybe you just need a little motivation.

You're not alone. We're constantly bombarded with ever-changing diet recommendations and the latest diet crazes: Paleo, Keto, Whole 30, Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and the list goes on. Eggs are bad one day and good the next. Kale is good for you today. Tomorrow it contains high levels of thallium and is toxic to your thyroid gland. How do you know what to put on your plate that will bring you toward greater health and wellness?

In Beyond Labels, Joel Salatin, a farmer who is blazing the trail for regenerative farm practices, and Sina McCullough, a Ph.D. in Nutrition who actually understands unpronounceable carbon chains, bring you on a journey from generally unhealthy food and farming to an ultimately healing place.

Through compelling discussions leavened with a dose of humor, they share practical and easily doable tips about:

• What to eat
• How to find it and prepare it
• How to save money and time in the kitchen
• How to stay true to your principles in our modern culture

Whether you are just starting your health journey or you grow all of your own food, this book is designed to meet you where you are and motivate you to take the next step in your healing journey - ultimately bringing you closer to health, happiness, and freedom.

"The ideas, evidence and takeaways from this book have the power to reshape America's declining health. This is the most-fascinating, inspirational, and flat out most useful book I've ever read. Joel and Sina have done what no other authors have managed to do. They've created a survival guide for the war on our gut microbiome." -Andy Snyder, Founder of Manward Press

A powerful argument that greater inclusion of women in conservation and climate science is key to the future of the planet

Women are disproportionately impacted by climate change--floods, droughts, and extreme temperatures overwhelmingly affect women in the short and long term. In some cases, women make up almost 90 percent of casualties during dangerous climate events, and the majority of those displaced in the aftermath are women. Despite this disparity, women are underrepresented at every level of decision-making about the future of our planet: only 24 percent of CEOs in nonprofit conservation and around one-third of the representatives in national and global climate negotiating bodies have been women.

In Intertwined, writer and wildlife biologist Rebecca Kormos elevates the voices of women working to prevent the climate crisis, weaving together their stories to make a powerful case for why women are essential to changing our current trajectory toward catastrophic global warming and environmental degradation. Kormos argues that empowering women is one of the most important solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss: women's leadership and equal representation is linked to lower CO₂ emissions, better forest management, better land protection, less land grabbing, and fewer conflicts over resources.

For readers of All We Can Save and Braiding Sweetgrass, Kormos joins the ranks of recent breakthrough efforts to showcase women's voices in the movement to combat climate change. Kormos takes this endeavor one step further with a global, intersectional narrative of how women and gender nonconforming individuals are doing the crucial work at the local and national levels to reframe how we think about environmental activism. Ultimately, Intertwined proves that climate justice is inextricable from gender equality.

Learn how to process your own grief--as well as family, community, and global grief--with this fierce and openhearted guide to healing in an unjust world.

In unsettling and uncertain times, the individual and collective heartbreak that lives in our bodies and communities can feel insurmountable. Many of us have been conditioned by the dominant culture to not name, focus on, or wade through the difficulties of our lives. But in order to heal, we must make space for grief and prioritize our wholeness, our humanity, and our inherent divinity.

In Finding Refuge, social justice activist, social worker, and yoga teacher Michelle Cassandra Johnson offers those who feel brokenhearted, helpless, confused, powerless, and desperate the tools they need to be present with their grief while also remaining openhearted. Through powerful personal narrative and meditation and journaling practices at the end of each chapter that explore being present with your heart, Michelle empowers us to see that each of us has a role to play in building enough momentum to take intentional action and shift what is unsettled and unjust in the world. Finding Refuge is an invitation to pick up the shattered parts of yourself and remember your strength, wholeness, and sacredness through this practice of presence and attending to your grief.

An obsessive true crime investigation of a bizarre and unlikely perpetrator, who's serving the opioid epidemic's longest term for illegal prescriptions -- four life sentences

Written in the tradition of I'll Be Gone in the Dark and True Crime Addict, combining Dopesick's heart rending portrayal of the epidemic's victims with Empire of Pain's examination of its perpetrators

This haunting and propulsive debut follows a journalist's years-long investigation into his father's old classmate: former high school valedictorian Paul Volkman, who once seemed destined for greatness after earning his MD and his PhD from the prestigious University of Chicago, but is now serving four consecutive life sentences at a federal prison in Arizona.

Volkman was the central figure in a massive "pill mill" scheme in southern Ohio. His pain clinics accepted only cash, employed armed guards, and dispensed a torrent of opioid painkillers and other controlled substances. For nearly three years, Volkman remained in business despite raids by law enforcement and complaints from patients' family members. Prosecutors would ultimately link him to the overdose deaths of 13 patients, though investigators explored his ties to at least 20 other deaths.

This groundbreaking book is based on 12 years of correspondence and interviews with Volkman. Eil also traveled to 19 states, interviewed more than 150 people, and filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration that led to the release of nearly 20,000 pages of trial evidence.

The American opioid epidemic is, like this book, a true crime story. Through this one doctor's story, an era of unfathomable tragedy is brought down to a tangible, and devastating, human scale.

With the nation lurching from one crisis to the next, many Americans believe that something fundamental has gone wrong. Why aren't college graduates able to achieve financial security? Why is government completely inept in the face of natural disasters? And why do pundits tell us that the economy is strong even though the majority of Americans can barely make ends meet? In The Quiet Coup, Mehrsa Baradaran, one of our leading public intellectuals, argues that the system is in fact rigged toward the powerful, though it wasn't the work of evil puppet masters behind the curtain. Rather, the rigging was carried out by hundreds of (mostly) law-abiding lawyers, judges, regulators, policy makers, and lobbyists. Adherents of a market-centered doctrine called neoliberalism, these individuals, over the course of decades, worked to transform the nation--and succeeded.

They did so by changing the law in unseen ways. Tracing this largely unknown history from the late 1960s to the present, Baradaran demonstrates that far from yielding fewer laws and regulations, neoliberalism has in fact always meant more--and more complex--laws. Those laws have uniformly benefited the wealthy. From the work of a young Alan Greenspan in creating "Black Capitalism," to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's efforts to unshackle big money donors, to the establishment of the "Law and Economics" approach to legal interpretation--in which judges render opinions based on the principles of right-wing economics--Baradaran narrates the key moments in the slow-moving coup that was, and is, neoliberalism. Shifting our focus away from presidents and national policy, she tells the story of how this nation's?laws?came to favor the few against the many, threatening the integrity of the market and the state.

Some have claimed that the neoliberal era is behind us. Baradaran shows that such thinking is misguided. Neoliberalism is a failed economic idea--it doesn't, in fact, create more wealth or more freedom. But it has been successful nevertheless, by seizing the courts and enabling our age of crypto fraud, financial instability, and accelerating inequality. An original account of the forces that have brought us to this dangerous moment in American history, The Quiet Coup reshapes our understanding of the recent past and lights a path toward a better future.

An astonishing World War II military story of civil rights from New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Steve Sheinkin.

A National Book Award Finalist
A YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks, critically injuring off-duty men in their bunks, and shattering windows up to a mile away. On August 9th, 244 men refused to go back to work until unsafe and unfair conditions at the docks were addressed. When the dust settled, fifty were charged with mutiny, facing decades in jail and even execution.

The Port Chicago 50 is a fascinating story of the prejudice and injustice that faced black men and women in America's armed forces during World War II, and a nuanced look at those who gave their lives in service of a country where they lacked the most basic rights.

This thoroughly-researched and documented book can be worked into multiple aspects of the common core curriculum, including history and social studies.

"Sheinkin delivers another meticulously researched WWII story, one he discovered while working on his Newbery Honor book, Bomb...Archival photos appear throughout, and an extensive bibliography, source notes, and index conclude this gripping, even horrific account of a battle for civil rights predating Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Also by Steve Sheinkin:

Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon
The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery
Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War
Which Way to the Wild West?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About Westward Expansion
King George: What Was His Problem?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the American Revolution
Two Miserable Presidents: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War
Born to Fly: The First Women's Air Race Across America

The jaw-dropping story behind North Korea's dangerous cyber-criminals, the Lazarus Group, who hacked Hollywood and the world

'You'll never see North Korea the same way again' Oliver Bullough, author, Moneyland

Meet the Lazarus Group, a shadowy cabal of hackers accused of working on behalf of the North Korean state. They are one of the most effective criminal enterprises on the planet, having stolen more than $1bn in an international crime spree. Their targets include central banks, cryptocurrency companies, film studios and even the British National Health Service.

In this jaw-dropping, global investigation, journalist Geoff White examines how the North Korean regime has harnessed cutting-edge technology to launch a decade-long campaign of brazen and merciless raids on its richer, more powerful adversaries. From the bustling streets of Dhaka, to the glamorous studios of Hollywood, to the glittering casinos of Macau and the secretive dynastic court of Pyongyang, this is the shocking story of the world's most devastating hackers, their victims and the people who have tried - and ultimately, failed - to stop them.

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist who fights for female education, and in 2014 became the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. Penguin Readers is a series of popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction written for learners of English as a foreign language. Beautifully illustrated and carefully adapted, the series introduces language learners around the world to the bestselling authors and most compelling content from Penguin Random House, and includes language activities that help readers to develop key skills.