Civics and citizenship

America has always been a nation of laws. But today our laws have grown so vast and reach so deeply into our lives that it’s worth asking: In our reverence for law, have we gone too farOver just the last few decades, laws in this nation have exploded...

A California Teacher of the Year outlines lessons from American heroes that instill renewed admiration of their achievements, provides guidelines for self-improvement, and sets us on a constructive path to recovering our past.In his quarter century of...

What does reconciliation and truth-telling look like, and how do we as a nation find justice for Indigenous people?In this deeply personal work, Inala Cooper shares stories of her family to show the impact of colonisation on the lives of Aboriginal...

In an era defined by mass incarceration, endless war, economic crisis, catastrophic environmental destruction, and a political system offering more of the same, radical social transformation has never been more urgent-or seemed more remote. A manifesto...

Americans are more divided today than at any time since the Civil War. Our differences are not merely moral and political, but philosophical, and even spiritual. We hardly seem to experience the same reality anymore, preferring to self-select into media...

Will our past imitate our future?"The purpose of this book is threefold: to explain what makes civilisation civilization what it is; to show what we are in danger of losing in the event of collapse, and to point the way toward renewal."There is a...

How Election Fraud Is Rampant, and How to Stop It before It Kills AmericaThe mainstream media has labeled it "The Big Lie," but the facts on the ground tell a very different story. While politicians on both sides of the aisle scramble to stifle all...

Street protests are one side of a worldwide citizens' movement. Another side is the increasing use of boycotts, one of the most powerful weapons in the organizer's arsenal: it is an effective and moral lever for civil rights, most notably today in its...

"Senator Hart's voice can heal the country and chart a real course toward equality, freedom, and hope for all." -Hugh Jackman In 1776, America's Founders proclaimed the new nation a republic with a democratic form of government. Although American...

Two years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. Aftershocks collects poems, essays and photos from survivors of Hurricane Maria detailing their determination to persevere. The concept of...

The liberal arts are dying. They are dying because most Americans don't see the point of them. Americans don't understand why anyone would study literature or history or the classics-or, more contemporarily, feminist criticism, whiteness studies, or the...

American politics grows embittered because it is increasingly torn between two rival constitutions, two opposed cultures, two contrary ways of life. American conservatives rally around the founders' Constitution, as amended, and as grounded in the...

Can we solve big public problems anymore? Yes, we can. This provocative and inspiring book points the way.The huge challenges we face are daunting indeed: climate change, crumbling infrastructure, declining public education and social services. At the...

Finalist, ABA Silver Gavel Award for Books The New York Times bestseller that has cemented Elie Mystal's reputation as one of our sharpest and most acerbic legal mindsThe RootAllow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have,...

A timely and paradigm-shifting argument that all members of a democracy must participate in elections, by a leading political expert and Washington Post journalist Americans are required to pay taxes, serve on juries, get their kids vaccinated, get...

When a person is not recognised as a citizen anywhere, they are typically referred to as 'stateless'. This can give rise to challenges both for individuals and for the institutions that try to govern them. Statelessness, governance, and the problem of...

A searing critique of the "freedom" that America offers to the victims of its imperialist machinations of war and occupation Meaningless Citizenship traces the costs of America's long-term military involvement around the world by following the forced...

"Maybe the question isn't what happened to Alan Dershowitz. Maybe it's what happened to everyone else."--Politico In The Case for Liberalism in an Age of Extremism, Alan Dershowitz--New York Times bestselling author and one of America's most respected...

The Earth is flat, the World Trade Center collapse was a controlled demolition, planes are spraying poison to control the weather, and actors faked the Sandy Hook massacre....All these claims are bunk: falsehoods, mistakes, and in some cases, outright...

"Nader's assessment of how concentrated wealth and power undermine democracy is clear and compelling, but it's his substantive vision of how we ought to respond that makes Breaking Through Power essential reading. Written just before Donald Trump's...

An original defense of the unique value of voting in a democracyVoting is only one of the many ways that citizens can participate in public decision making, so why does it occupy such a central place in the democratic imagination? In Election Day,...

How a nineteenth-century lawsuit over the estate of a wealthy Tunisian Jew shines new light on the history of belongingIn the winter of 1873, Nissim Shamama, a wealthy Jew from Tunisia, died suddenly in his palazzo in Livorno, Italy. His passing...

'A book as urgent as the moment that produced it.' - Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism SchoolLong before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes...

What an intensely divisive election portends for American politics.The year 2020 was a tumultuous time in American politics. It brought a global pandemic, protests for racial justice, and a razor-thin presidential election outcome. It culminated in an...

How American political participation is increasingly being shaped by citizens who wield more resourcesThe Declaration of Independence proclaims equality as a foundational American value. However, Unequal and Unrepresented finds that political voice in...

An illuminating look at the transformative role that rituals play in our political livesThe Politics of Ritual is a major new account of the political power of rituals. In this incisive and wide-ranging book, Molly Farneth argues that rituals are social...

For Victorian lawmakers and judges, the question of whether a book should be allowed to circulate freely depended on whether it was sold to readers whose mental and moral capacities were in doubt, by which they meant the increasingly literate and...

How middle class economic dependence on the state impedes democratization and contributes to authoritarian resilienceConventional wisdom holds that the rising middle classes are a force for democracy. Yet in post-Soviet countries like Russia, where the...

It is clear that in our society today, issues of diversity and social connectedness remain deeply unresolved and can lead to crisis and instability. The major demographic changes taking place in America make discussions about such issues all the more...

How racism and discrimination have been central to democracies from the classical period to todayAs right-wing nationalism and authoritarian populism gain momentum across the world, liberals, and even some conservatives, worry that democratic principles...

A gripping in-depth account of the 2016 presidential election that explains Donald Trump's historic victory Donald Trump's election victory stunned the world. How did he pull it off? Was it his appeal to alienated voters in the battleground states? Was...

This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants, or is full citizenship somehow...

One of the greatest political advisers of all time, Niccolo Machiavelli thought long and hard about how citizens could identify great leaders--ones capable of defending and enhancing the liberty, honor, and prosperity of their countries. Drawing on the...

The first comprehensive history of how Jews became citizens in the modern worldFor all their unquestionable importance, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel now loom so large in modern Jewish history that we have mostly lost sight of the...

A gripping, intimate story of one heartbreaking day in Palestine that reveals lives, loves, enmities, and histories in violent collision Milad is five years old and excited for his school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but tragedy...