"From the congressman who led the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump, the vital inside account of American democracy in its darkest hour, and a warning that the forces of autocracy unleashed by Trump remain as potent as ever. In the years leading up to the election of Donald Trump, Congressman Adam Schiff had already been sounding the alarm over the resurgence of autocracy around the world, and the threat this posed to the United States. But as he led the probe into Donald Trump's Russia and Ukraine-related abuses of presidential power, Schiff came to the terrible conclusion that the principal threat to American democracy now came from within. In Midnight in Washington, Schiff argues that the Trump presidency has so weakened our institutions and compromised the Republican Party that the peril will last for years, requiring unprecedented vigilance against the growing and dangerous appeal of authoritarianism. The congressman chronicles step by step just how our democracy was put at such risk, and traces his own path to meeting the crisis--from serious prosecutor, to congressman with an expertise in national security and a reputation for bipartisanship, to liberal lightning rod, scourge of the right, and archenemy of a president. Schiff takes us inside his team of impeachment managers and their desperate defense of the constitution amid the rise of a distinctly American brand of autocracy. Deepening our understanding of prominent public moments, Schiff reveals the private struggles, the internal conflicts, and the triumphs of courage that came with defending the republic against a lawless president--but also the slow surrender of people that he had worked with and admired to the dangerous immorality of a president engaged in an historic betrayal of his office. Schiff's fight for democracy is one of the great dramas of our time, told by the man who became the president's principal antagonist. It is a story that began with Trump but does not end with him, taking us through the disastrous culmination of the presidency and Schiff's account of January 6, 2021, and how the anti-democratic forces Trump unleashed continue to define his party, making the future of democracy in America more uncertain than ever."--Publisher's website.

"As the President of the United States, Donald Trump continually voices admiration for brutal strongmen such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, the Philippines' Roderigo Duterte, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Egypt's Abedel Fattah el-Sisi. He has threatened the American mainstream media, obsessed over leaks, and worked mostly through executive orders. Some Americans still believe this is part of a carefully crafted plan to bring authoritarianism to our country. As Frum reveals, carefully crafted or not, this is where Trump is taking us. In this thoughtful and hard-hitting book, he issues a warning for democracy and America's future: all over the world countries are being destroyed by similar populist bumblers, making impulsive decisions and ignoring traditions, Quietly, steadily, he and his administration are damaging the tenets and accepted practices of American democracy, perhaps irrevocably. As Trump and his family enrich themselves, the presidency itself falls into the hands of the generals and financiers who surround him. During his own White House tenure, Frum witnessed the ways the presidency is limited not by law, but by tradition, propriety, and public outcry, all now weakened. Whether the Trump presidency lasts 2, 4, or 8 more years, he has changed the nature of the office for the worse, and likely for decades. In this powerful and eye-opening book, Frum makes clear that the hard work of recovery starts at home. Trumpocracy outlines how Trump could push America towards illiberalism, what the consequences could be for our nation and our everyday lives, and what we can do to prevent it"--

“Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history. . .” – New York Times Book Review A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn’s major new collection of essays on American history, class, immigration, justice, and ordinary citizens who have made a difference. Howard Zinn unlocks America’s current political/ ethical crisis and challenges us to confront power for the common good. Bringing a profoundly human perspective to the diverse subjects he writes about – the Founding Fathers, government dishonesty, winning the war on terrorism, respecting the holocaust, defending the rights of immigrants – Zinn approaches history from an active, engaged point of view. He writes, “America’s future is linked to how we understand our past. For this reason, writing about history, for me, is never a neutral act.” Zinn opens the book with an essay titled “If History is to be Creative,” a reflection on the role and responsibility of the engaged historian. “To think that history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past,” writes Zinn, “is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat.” “If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, and occasionally win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.” Buzzing with ideas, stories, and anecdotes spanning from the Revolutionary War and the War with Mexico through to World War II, Vietnam, 9/11, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Zinn’s view of American history is not a praise of famous leaders, but those who rebelled against them in the name of social justice. While writing extensively on current events and the consequences of U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, Zinn also dedicates entire chapters to troublemakers like Henry David Thoreau, Eugene Debs, Philip Berrigan, Italian immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti, and heralds not the soldiers who fought for George Washington, but those who deserted the Revolutionary Army because of intolerable mistreatment from elitist commanding officers. For Zinn, the voices and stories of ordinary working Americans, immigrants, working people, and soldiers comprise the real storyline of our history. Featuring essays penned over an eight-year period, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn’s first writerly work in several years, an invaluable post-9/11-era addition to the themes that run through his bestselling classic, A People’s History Of the United States. "Thank you, Howard Zinn. Thank you for telling us what none of our leaders are willing to: The truth. And you tell it with such brilliance, such humanity. It is a personal honor to be able to say I am a better citizen because of you." —Michael Moore “This brilliant new book – like Howard Zinn’s presence, and his whole life, is the best possible antidote to political despair. Read it, and rejoin the struggle for a human world and a foreign policy that’s good for children.” – Daniel Ellsberg

In "Ill Fares The Land," Tony Judt, one of our leading historians and thinkers, reveals how we have arrived at our present dangerously confused moment and offers the language we need to address our common needs, rejecting the nihilistic individualism of the far right and the debunked socialism of the past. To find a way forward, Judt argues that we must look to our not so distant past and to social democracy in action: to re-enshrining fairness over mere efficiency.

* SELECTED FOR BARACK OBAMA'S SUMMER READING LIST 2022 * 'Anyone interested in the future of liberal democracy should read this book' ANNE APPLEBAUM -- One of our most important political thinkers looks to the greatest challenge of our time: how to live together equally and peacefully in diverse democracies. It's easy to be pessimistic about the fate of democracy in multi-ethnic societies. At the end of the Second World War, fewer than one in twenty-five people living in the UK were born abroad; now it is one in seven. The history of humankind is a story of us versus them, and the project of diverse democracies is a relatively new one - it is, in other words, a great experiment. How do identity groups with different ideologies and beliefs live together? Is it possible to embark on a democracy with shared values if our values are at odds? Yascha Mounk argues that group identity is both deeply rooted and malleable. No community is beyond conciliation: groups are moving towards cooperation across the world. The Great Experiment offers a profound understanding of the problem behind all our other problems, and genuine hope for our capacity to solve it.

Bill Bryson meets Thomas Frank in this deeply insightful, unexpectedly hilarious story of how politicians hijacked American democracy and how we can take it back The democracy you live in today is different--completely different--from the democracy you were born into. You probably don't realize just how radically your republic has been altered during your lifetime. Yet more than any policy issue, political trend, or even Donald Trump himself, our redesigned system of government is responsible for the peril America faces today. What explains the gap between what We, the People want and what our elected leaders do? How can we fix our politics before it's too late? And how can we truly understand the state of our democracy without wanting to crawl under a rock? That's what former Obama speechwriter David Litt set out to answer. Poking into forgotten corners of history, translating political science into plain English, and traveling the country to meet experts and activists, Litt explains how the world's greatest experiment in democracy went awry. (He also tries to crash a party at Mitch McConnell's former frat house. It goes poorly.) The result of Litt's journey is something you might not have thought possible: a page-turner about the political process. You'll meet the Supreme Court justice charged with murder, learn how James Madison's college roommate broke the Senate, encounter a citrus thief who embodies what's wrong with our elections, and join Belle the bill as she tries to become a law (a quest far more harrowing than the one in Schoolhouse Rock!). Yet despite his clear-eyed assessment of the dangers we face, Litt remains audaciously optimistic. He offers a to-do list of bold yet achievable changes--a blueprint for restoring the balance of power in America before it's too late.

"A bracing assessment of U.S. foreign policy and world disorder over the past two decades, anchored by a major new Pentagon-commissioned essay about changing power dynamics among China, Eurasia, and America--from the renowned geopolitical analyst and bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy. In the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo began a decades-long trek from Venice to China. The strength of that Silk Road--the trade route between Europe and Asia--was a foundation of Kublai Khan's sprawling empire. Now, in the early twenty-first century, the Chinese regime has proposed a land-and-maritime Silk Road that duplicates exactly the route Marco Polo traveled. In the major lead essay, recently released by the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, Robert D. Kaplan lays out a blueprint of the world's changing power politics that recalls the late thirteenth century. As Europe fractures from changes in culture and migration, Eurasia coheres into a single conflict system. China is constructing a land bridge to Europe. Iran and India are trying to link the oil fields of Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. America's ability to influence the power balance in Eurasia is declining. This is Kaplan's first collection of essays since his classic The Coming Anarchy was published in 2000. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, as well as encounters with preeminent realist thinkers, Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America's role in a turbulent world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests and American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of power via a strong navy; and more. From Kaplan's immediate thoughts on President Trump ("On Foreign Policy, Donald Trump Is No Realist," 2016) to a frank examination of what will happen in the event of war with North Korea ("When North Korea Falls," 2006), The Return of Marco Polo's World is a vigorous and honest reckoning with the difficult choices the United States will face in the years ahead. "These essays constitute a truly pathbreaking, brilliant synthesis and analysis of geographic, political, technological, and economic trends with far-reaching consequences. The Return of Marco Polo's World is another work by Robert D. Kaplan that will be regarded as a classic."--General David Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.)"--

2020: A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. Packer explores four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression. He shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy: we must look for a common American identity and find it in the passion for equality that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. -- adapted from jacket

As one of the foremost liberal voices in television and radio today, Alan Colmes has long been braving the wilds of controversial issues and conservative slander. The host of the talk-radio show Fox News Live with Alan Colmes and cohost of Fox News Channel's hit debate show Hannity & Colmes, Colmes now offers this witty, passionate wake-up call to America. Colmes takes on the fundamental question: How can we protect our nation without diminishing our liberties, and regain our place in the world as an example of democracy? Colmes urges Americans to see past the government's manipulation of the War on Terror to silence critics; the lies we've been force-fed about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan; and the conservative smear campaign that has turned "liberal" into a four-letter word. From debunking the myth of the liberal media to exposing conservative hypocrisy, Colmes presents the issues with thoughtful, provocative arguments, hard facts and logic, and searing humor. Certain to spark debate and cause readers to reevaluate and reaffirm their beliefs, Red, White & Liberal powerfully argues that despite our differences, we must extend our hands across party lines to find solutions, protect our shores, and preserve our freedoms.

Why is the Atlantic slowly filling with crude petroleum, threatening a millions-of-years-old ecological balance? Why did traders at prominent banks take high-risk gambles with the money entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of clients around the world, expanding and leveraging their investments to the point that failure led to a global financial crisis that left millions of people jobless and hundreds of cities economically devastated? Why would the world's most powerful military spend ten years fighting an enemy that presents no direct threat to secure resources for corporations? The culprit in all cases is neoliberal ideology—the belief in the supremacy of "free" markets to drive and govern human affairs. And in the years since the initial publication of Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order, the bitter vines of neoliberalism have only twisted themselves further into the world economy, obliterating the public’s voice in public affairs and substituting the bottom line in place of people’s basic obligation to care for one another as ends in themselves. In Profit Over People, Chomsky reveals the roots of the present crisis, tracing the history of neoliberalism through an incisive analysis of free trade agreements of the 1990s, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund—and describes the movements of resistance to the increasing interference by the private sector in global affairs. In the years since the initial publication of Profit Over People, the stakes have only risen. Now more than ever, Profit Over People is one of the key texts explaining how the crisis facing us operates—and how, through Chomsky’s analysis of resistance, we may find an escape from the closing net.

In Freedom Betrayed, Michael Ledeen weaves together key moments in the fall of communism with the skill of a born storyteller. His insider's knowledge of the interplay of complex personalities and Byzantine strategies makes a compelling narrative - a narrative enlivened by his wit and flair for the dramatic. He observes that just when democracy seemed everywhere triumphant - with the fall of antidemocratic regimes in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa - our leaders failed those fledgling democracies, first by misunderstanding the monumental achievement of that triumph and second by not providing the political, legal, and entrepreneurial know-how and support the new democrats so desperately needed.

At a recent meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, it was reported that a ghost was haunting the deliberations of the assembled global elite - that of the renowned social scientist and economic historian, Karl Polanyi. In his classic work, The Great Transformation, Polanyi documented the impact of the rise of market society on western civilization and captured better than anyone else the destructive effects of the economic, political and social crisis of the 1930s. Today, in the throes of another Great Recession, Polanyi's work has gained a new significance. To understand the profound challenges faced by our democracies today, we need to revisit history and revisit his work. In this new collection of unpublished texts - lectures, draft essays and reports written between 1919 and 1958 - Polanyi examines the collapse of the liberal economic order and the demise of democracies in the inter-war years. He takes up again the fundamental question that preoccupied him throughout his work - the place of the economy in society - and aims to show how we might return to an economy anchored in society and its cultural, religious and political institutions. For anyone concerned about the danger to democracy and social life posed by the unleashing of capital from regulatory control and the dominance of the neoliberal ideologies of market fundamentalism, this important new volume by one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century is a must-read.--

For decades, liberal democracy has been extolled as the best system of governance to have emerged out of the long experience of history. Today, such a confident assertion is far from self-evident. Democracy, in crisis across the West, must prove itself. This highly timely volume is both a conceptual and practical guide of impressive scope to the challenges of good governance as the world continues to undergo profound transformation in the coming decades.

While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in this penetrating look at India today, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to its democratic traditions and secular state. Since long before the 2002 Gujarat riots--in which nearly two thousand Muslims were killed by Hindu extremists--the power of the Hindu right has been growing, threatening India's hard-won constitutional practices of democracy, tolerance, and religious pluralism. Led politically by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu right has sought the subordination of other religious groups and has directed particular vitriol against Muslims, who are cast as devils in need of purging. The Hindu right seeks to return to a "pure" India, unsullied by alien polluters of other faiths, yet the BJP's defeat in recent elections demonstrates the power that India's pluralism continues to wield. The future, however, is far from secure, and Hindu extremism and exclusivity remain a troubling obstacle to harmony in South Asia. Nussbaum's long-standing professional relationship with India makes her an excellent guide to its recent history. Ultimately she argues that the greatest threat comes not from a clash between civilizations, as some believe, but from a clash within each of us, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others. India's story is a cautionary political tale for all democratic states striving to act responsibly in an increasingly dangerous world.

This book offers a fresh and original analysis of the power structure of a number of societies, past and present. There are and ever have been only two essential models of government: minority rule of all types (labelled "oligocracy") and regimes in which power is concentrated in the hands of a single individual (labelled "monocracy"). The present-day "democracies" of Britain and the United States are in reality composite oligocracies made up of several disparate elements. Oligocracies are by definition regimes with a high degree of inequality, but with variable levels of liberty. Oligocracy and inequality are the "default" features of human society. Equality is unattainable except by a radical monocracy like Fidel Castro's Cuba, and then only with difficulty and at the expense of liberty and probably of lives as well. Equality of opportunity must not be equated with equality. Equality of opportunity means an equal opportunity to become unequal. For genuine freedom of expression to exist there also needs to be equality, because the little man standing on his soap-box and shouting his lungs out at Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park cannot compete with the media moguls -- which is why genuine freedom of expression is rare. Once these truths are recognised, it becomes clear that for a Western nation to combine "regime change" in a foreign state with an attempt to impose "democracy" and Western "liberal" values on it is likely to be doomed to failure - as is amply demonstrated by the recent history of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

For two months in 1871, the workers of Paris took control of Europe's most celebrated capital city. When they established the world's first workers' democracy--the Paris Commune--they found no ready-made blueprints, and no precedents to study for how to run their city without princes, prison wardens, or professional politicians. All they had was the boundless revolutionary enthusiasm of Paris's socialists, communists, anarchists, and radical Jacobins, all of whom threw their energies into creating a new society. As the city's bakers, industrial workers, and other "ruffians" built new institutions of collective political power to overturn social and economic inequality, their former rulers sought to thwart their efforts by any means necessary--ultimately deciding to drown the Communards in blood. By paying particular attention to the historic problems of the Commune, critical debates over its implications, and the glimpse of a better world the Commune provided, Gluckstein reveals its enduring lessons and inspiration for today's struggles. Donny Gluckstein is author of The Nazis, Capitalism and the Working Class and The Tragedy of Bukharin . He is a lecturer in history in Edinburgh and is a member of the Socialist Workers Party.

This is Laski's most important book after A Grammar of Politics . It discusses, on a grand scale, every aspect of American public life. Laski surveys American traditions and the American spirit, political institutions, the entire educational, religious, economic and social scene, America as a world power, and Americanism as a principle of civilisation. Laski's unsurpassed knowledge of American constitutional, social and cultural history is set in the perspective of his deep study of comparative constitutional history and political theory. He was one of very few people to see U.S. politics from the inside, as a result of his friendships with Roosevelt, Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Wendy Doniger and Martha Nussbaum bring together leading scholars from a wide array of disciplines to address a crucial question: How does the world's most populous democracy survive repeated assaults on its pluralistic values? India's stunning linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity has been supported since Independence by a political structure that emphasizes equal rights for all, and protects liberties of religion and speech. But a decent Constitution does not implement itself, and challenges to these core values repeatedly arise-most recently in the form of the Hindu Right movements of the twenty-first century that threatened to destabilize the nation and upend its core values, in the wake of a notorious pogrom in the state of Gujarat in which approximately 2000 Muslim civilians were killed. Focusing on this time of tension and threat, the essays in this volume consider how a pluralistic democracy managed to survive. They examine the role of political parties and movements, including the women's movement, as well as the role of the arts, the press, the media, and a historical legacy of pluralistic thought and critical argument. Featuring essays from eminent scholars in history, religious studies, political science, economics, women's studies, and media studies, Pluralism and Democracy in India offers an urgently needed case study in democratic survival. As Nehru said of India on the eve of Independence: ''These dreams are for India, but they are also for the world.'' The analysis this volume offers illuminates not only the past and future of one nation, but the prospects of democracy for all.

They have a dream—a dream of a world where everything and everybody can be bought and sold, a world run efficiently by managers, a world where “freedom” means the free market. Maurice Glasman argues that this dream is an unrealizable utopia—or a nightmare if put into practice. He takes the tired old clichés of management-speak of the New Right and New Left alike and turns them on their heads: managers are not efficient, they are barriers to work and production. “Liberal democracy”—which now means the free market and the strong state—should be turned upside down, with democracy at the level of the economy and liberalism at the level of the state. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, Glasman argues that there is no need to surrender solidarity and human rights to the march of the managers and the market. There is another tradition, represented by the labour movement and Catholic Church in postwar West Germany, and Solidarity in Poland before 1989, when statist communitarianism and the New Right took over. Unnecessary Suffering examines this tradition and issues a call that human beings and the environment cannot, should not, and will not be treated like commodities. For all workers drowning in a sea of dogma and management.memos, Unnecesary Suffering is necessary reading.