"From Rebecca Traister, the New York Times bestselling author of All the Single Ladies--whom Anne Lamott called "the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country"--comes a vital, incisive exploration into the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement. In the year 2018, it seems as if women's anger has suddenly erupted into the public conversation. But long before Pantsuit Nation, before the Women's March, and before the #MeToo movement, women's anger was not only politically catalytic--but politically problematic. The story of female fury and its cultural significance demonstrates the long history of bitter resentment that has enshrouded women's slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when it comes from women as opposed to when it comes from men. With eloquence and fervor, Rebecca tracks the history of female anger as political fuel--from suffragettes chaining themselves to the White House to office workers vacating their buildings after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Here Traister explores women's anger at both men and other women; anger between ideological allies and foes; the varied ways anger is perceived based on its owner; as well as the history of caricaturing and delegitimizing female anger; and the way women's collective fury has become transformative political fuel--as is most certainly occurring today. She deconstructs society's (and the media's) condemnation of female emotion (notably, rage) and the impact of their resulting repercussions. Highlighting a double standard perpetuated against women by all sexes, and its disastrous, stultifying effect, Traister's latest is timely and crucial. It offers a glimpse into the galvanizing force of women's collective anger, which, when harnessed, can change history"--

"If you want to understand not only what happened in 2016, but what's going to happen tomorrow, this book is essential reading. Susan Bordo brings a scholar's rigor and a lioness' heart to this important work." --Paul Begala "Among the best books I've read on the 2016 election . . . the perfect companion to Clinton's What Happened ." --Peter Daou The Destruction of Hillary Clinton is an answer to the question many have been asking: How did an extraordinarily well-qualified, experienced, and admired candidate--whose victory would have been as historic as Barack Obama's--come to be seen as a tool of the establishment, a chronic liar, and a talentless politician? In this masterful narrative of the 2016 campaign year and the events that led up to it, Susan Bordo unpacks the Rights' assault on Clinton and her reputation, the way the left provoked suspicion and indifference among the youth vote, the inescapable presence of James Comey, questions about Russian influence, and the media's malpractice in covering the candidate. Urgent, insightful, and engrossing, The Destruction of Hillary Clinton is an essential guide to understanding the most controversial presidential election in American history.

In 2016, when millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump, many believed his claims that personal wealth would free him from wealthy donors and allow him to “drain the swamp.” But then Trump appointed several billionaires and multimillionaires to high-level positions and pursued billionaire-friendly policies, such as cutting corporate income taxes. Why the change from his fiery campaign rhetoric and promises to the working class? This should not be surprising, argue Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe: As the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us has widened, the few who hold one billion dollars or more in net worth have begun to play a more and more active part in politics—with serious consequences for democracy in the United States. Page, Seawright, and Lacombe argue that while political contributions offer a window onto billionaires’ influence, especially on economic policy, they do not present a full picture of policy preferences and political actions. That is because on some of the most important issues, including taxation, immigration, and Social Security, billionaires have chosen to engage in “stealth politics.” They try hard to influence public policy, making large contributions to political parties and policy-focused causes, leading policy-advocacy organizations, holding political fundraisers, and bundling others’ contributions—all while rarely talking about public policy to the media. This means that their influence is not only unequal but also largely unaccountable to and unchallengeable by the American people. Stealth politics makes it difficult for ordinary citizens to know what billionaires are doing or mobilize against it. The book closes with remedies citizens can pursue if they wish to make wealthy Americans more politically accountable, such as public financing of political campaigns and easier voting procedures, and notes the broader types of reforms, such as a more progressive income tax system, that would be needed to increase political equality and reinvigorate majoritarian democracy in the United States.

"The 1963 Children's March in Birmingham, Alabama. Tiananmen Square, 1989. The 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests. March for Our Lives, and School Strike for Climate. What do all these social justice movements have in common? They were led by passionate, informed, engaged young people. Jamie Margolin has been organizing and protesting since she was fourteen years old. Now the co-leader of a global climate action movement, she knows better than most how powerful a young person can be. You don't have to be able to vote or hold positions of power to change the world. In Youth to Power, Jamie presents the essential guide to changemaking, with advice on writing and pitching op-eds, organizing successful events and peaceful protests, time management as a student activist, utilizing social media and traditional media to spread a message, and sustaining long-term action. She features interviews with prominent young activists including Tokata Iron Eyes of the #NoDAPL movement and Nupol Kiazolu of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, who give guidance on handling backlash, keeping your mental health a priority, and how to avoid getting taken advantage of. Jamie walks readers through every step of what effective, healthy, intersectional activism looks like. Young people have a lot to say. Youth to Power gives you the tools to raise your voice"--

" The public intellectual, as a person and ideal, has a long and storied mythology. Writing in venues like the New Republic and Foreign Affairs, they are expected to opine on a broad array of topics, from foreign policy to literature to economics. Yet in recent years a new kind of thinker has supplanted that archetype: the thought leader. Equipped with one big idea, thought leaders focus their energies on TED talks more than highbrow periodicals. How did this shift happen? In The Ideas Industry, Daniel W. Drezner points to the roles of political polarization, heightened inequality, and eroding trust in authority as ushering in the change. In contrast to public intellectuals, thought leaders gain fame as single-idea merchants. Their ideas are often laudable and highly ambitious: ending global poverty by 2025, for example. But instead of a class composed of university professors and freelance intellectuals debating in highbrow magazines, thought leaders can bypass traditional gatekeepers to directly influence policymakers and the public. They are more immune to criticism--and in this century, the criticism of public intellectuals also counts for less. Three factors have reshaped the world of ideas: waning trust in expertise, increasing political polarization and rising levels of plutocracy. The erosion of trust has lowered the barriers to entry in the marketplace of ideas. Thought leaders don't need doctorates or fellowships to advance their arguments. Polarization is hardly a new phenomenon, but in contrast to their predecessors, today's intellectuals are more likely to enjoy the support of ideologically friendly private funders and be housed in ideologically-driven think tanks. Increasing inequality is a key driver: more than ever before, contemporary plutocrats fund intellectuals and policy shops that generate arguments that align with their own. There are downsides to the contemporary ideas industry, but Drezner argues that it is very good at broadcasting ideas widely and reaching large audiences of people hungry for new thinking. Both fair-minded and trenchant, The Ideas Industry will reshape our understanding of contemporary public intellectual life in America and the West."--

In this "stunning" new history, New York Times bestselling author Max Wallace draws on groundbreaking research to reframe Helen Keller's journey after the miracle at the water pump, vividly bringing to light her rarely discussed, lifelong fight for social justice across gender, class, race, and ability (Rosemary Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author). Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2023 Raised in Alabama, she sent shockwaves through the South when she launched a public broadside against Jim Crow and donated to the NAACP. She used her fame to oppose American intervention in WWI. She spoke out against Hitler the month he took power in 1933 and embraced the anti-fascist cause during the Spanish Civil War. She was one of the first public figures to alert the world to the evils of Apartheid, raising money to defend Nelson Mandela when he faced the death penalty for High Treason, and she lambasted Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Cold War, even as her contemporaries shied away from his notorious witch hunt. But who was this revolutionary figure? She was Helen Keller. From books to movies to Barbie dolls, most mainstream portrayals of Keller focus heavily on her struggles as a deafblind child--portraying her Teacher, Annie Sullivan, as a miracle worker. This narrative--which has often made Keller a secondary character in her own story--has resulted in few people knowing that her greatest accomplishment was not learning to speak, but what she did with her voice when she found it. After the Miracle is a much-needed corrective to this antiquated narrative. In this first major biography of Keller in decades, Max Wallace reveals that the lionization of Sullivan at the expense of her famous pupil was no accident, and calls attention to Keller's efforts as a card-carrying socialist, fierce anti-racist, and progressive disability advocate. Despite being raised in an era when eugenics and discrimination were commonplace, Keller consistently challenged the media for its ableist coverage and was one of the first activists to highlight the links between disability and capitalism, even as she struggled against the expectations and prejudices of those closest to her. Peeling back the curtain that obscured Keller's political crusades in favor of her "inspirational" childhood, After the Miracle chronicles the complete legacy of one of the 20th century's most extraordinary figures.

This is the untold story of how some of Germany's top aristocrats contributed to Hitler's secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe, especially in Britain, where their contacts included the press baron and Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere and the future King Edward VIII. Using previously unexplored sources from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the USA, this book unravels the story of top-level go-betweens such as the Duke of Coburg, grandson of Queen Victoria, and the seductive Stephanie von Hohenlohe, who rose from a life of poverty in Vienna to become a princess and an intimate of Adolf Hitler. As Urbach shows, Coburg and other senior aristocrats were tasked with some of Germany's most secret foreign policy missions from the First World War onwards, culminating in their role as Hitler's trusted go-betweens, as he readied Germany for conflict during the 1930s and later, in the Second World War. Tracing what became of these high-level go-betweens in the years after the Nazi collapse in 1945, from prominent media careers to sunny retirements in Marbella, the book concludes with an assessment of their overall significance in the foreign policy of the Third Reich.

"The whole world is watching!" chanted the demonstrators in the Chicago streets in 1968, as the TV cameras beamed images of police cracking heads into homes everywhere. In this classic book, originally published in 1980, acclaimed media critic Todd Gitlin first scrutinizes major news coverage in the early days of the antiwar movement. Drawing on his own experiences (he was president of the Students for a Democratic Society in 1963-64) and on interviews with key activists and news reporters, he shows in detail how the media first ignore new political developments, then select and emphasize aspects of the story that treat movements as oddities. He then demonstrates how the media glare made leaders into celebrities and estranged them from their movement base; how it inflated the importance of revolutionary rhetoric, destabilizing the movement, then promoted "moderate" alternatives--all the while spreading the antiwar message. Finally, Gitlin draws together a theory of news coverage as a form of anti-democratic social management--which he sees at work also in media treatment of the anti-nuclear and other later movements. Updated for 2003 with a new preface, The Whole World Is Watching is a subtle and sensitive book, true to the passions and ironic reversals of its subject, and filled with provocative insights that apply to the media's relationship with all activist movements.