The New Press

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A powerful, in-depth look at the imprisonment of immigrants, addressing the intersection of immigration and the criminal justice system, with a new epilogue by the author

“Argues compellingly that immigrant advocates shouldn’t content themselves with debates about how many thousands of immigrants to lock up, or other minor tweaks.” —Gus Bova, Texas Observer

For most of America’s history, we simply did not lock people up for migrating here. Yet over the last thirty years, the federal and state governments have increasingly tapped their powers to incarcerate people accused of violating immigration laws.

Migrating to Prison takes a hard look at the immigration prison system’s origins, how it currently operates, and why. A leading voice for immigration reform, César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández explores the emergence of immigration imprisonment in the mid-1980s and looks at both the outsized presence of private prisons and how those on the political right continue, disingenuously, to link immigration imprisonment with national security risks and threats to the rule of law.

Now with an epilogue that brings it into the Biden administration, Migrating to Prison is an urgent call for the abolition of immigration prisons and a radical reimagining of who belongs in the United States.

Who gets to claim the legacy of the American Revolution and the mantle of patriotism that goes along with it? In a sharp, irreverent, deeply informed account of the nation’s founding moment and its enduring legacies, historian Thomas Richards Jr. invites us to see the Revolution not just as a one-time fight for political freedom from Britain but as an ongoing struggle for equality, justice, and social and political independence for all Americans.

A riveting work of narrative history, The Unfinished Business of 1776 shows that the Revolutionary struggle did not end in 1787 when the Constitution was ratified: Across nine dramatic chapters, Richards introduces readers to the vividly drawn characters who kept the Revolution alive for the next century and beyond, including the women’s rights advocate Judith Sargent Murray, the enslaved rebel Gabriel, the economic reformer Solomon Sharp, and the religious visionary Joseph Smith—each pushing for freedoms that extended well beyond the traditional narrative of the Revolution, and each revealing how the unfinished work of 1776 fueled demands for economic, social, and legal equality that lasted well beyond the Revolution itself.

A myth-busting book about the history we think we know, The Unfinished Business of 1776 is the perfect antidote to jingoistic celebrations of America—offering an inclusive vision of our common past.

“Nell Bernstein’s book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson’s book was for the environmental movement.” —Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC News, about Bernstein’s Burning Down the House

Over the past twenty years, one state after another has shuttered its youth prisons and stopped prosecuting kids as adults, slashing the number of children locked in cages by a stunning 75 percent. How did this remarkable change come about? In the follow-up to her 2014 award-winning book Burning Down the House, journalist Nell Bernstein offers an eye-opening and inspiring look at the forces that converged to move us from a moral panic about “juvenile superpredators” in the 1990s to a time in which the youth prison is rapidly fading from view.

In Our Future We Are Free begins and ends with the imprisoned youth who took a leading role in their own liberation. Through vivid profiles, Bernstein chronicles the tireless work of young activists, parents, litigators, researchers, and journalists to expose and challenge the racist brutality of youth prisons, as well as the surprising story of prison officials who worked from the inside to close their institutions for good. In a welcome “good news” account of positive change, this gripping story describes how communities are pursuing safety, rehabilitation, and accountability outside of locked institutions, and offers a model for how the United States might overcome its addiction to incarceration.

A veritable master class in social change, In Our Future We Are Free is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how large-scale transformation is possible.

NOW IN PAPERBACK  The book the American Prospect calls “an essential resource for future reformers on how not to govern,” by America’s leading defender of the public interest and a bestselling historian

“An essential read for those who want to fight the assault on public goods and the commons.” —Naomi Klein

A sweeping exposé of the ways in which private interests strip public goods of their power and diminish democracy, the hardcover edition of The Privatization of Everything elicited a wide spectrum of praise: Kirkus Reviews hailed it as “a strong, economics-based argument for restoring the boundaries between public goods and private gains,” Literary Hub featured the book on a Best Nonfiction list, calling it “a far-reaching, comprehensible, and necessary book,” and Publishers Weekly dubbed it a “persuasive takedown of the idea that the private sector knows best.”

From Diane Ravitch (“an important new book about the dangers of privatization”) to Heather McGhee (“a well-researched call to action”), the rave reviews mirror the expansive nature of the book itself, covering the impact of privatization on every aspect of our lives, from water and trash collection to the justice system and the military. Cohen and Mikaelian also demonstrate how citizens can—and are—wresting back what is ours: A Montana city took back its water infrastructure after finding that they could do it better and cheaper. Colorado towns fought back well-funded campaigns to preserve telecom monopolies and hamstring public broadband. A motivated lawyer fought all the way to the Supreme Court after the state of Georgia erected privatized paywalls around its legal code.

“Enlightening and sobering” (Rosanne Cash), The Privatization of Everything connects the dots across a wide range of issues and offers what Cash calls “a progressive voice with a firm eye on justice [that] can carefully parse out complex issues for those of us who take pride in citizenship.”

How do underdogs, facing far stronger opponents, sometimes win? In the tradition of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce’s Practical Radicals offers winning strategies, history, and theory for a new generation of activists.

Based on interviews with leading organizers, Practical Radicals combines “the hard-earned wisdom of our movement ancestors, the rigorous theory of serious practitioners and academics and the functional tools organizers need to spring into action” (In These Times). Incorporating stories of organizations and movements that have won, including Make the Road NY, the St. Paul Federation of Educators, the welfare rights movement, the Working Families Party, New Georgia Project, Occupy Wall Street, 350.org, the Fight for 15, and Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Practical Radicals “takes inspiration from successful social movements to identify tactics that pay off.” (The Guardian).

With a sweeping new afterword by the authors addressing the challenges of 2025 and beyond, the authors explore how the seven strategies the book highlights can provide a toolkit for underdogs looking both to resist authoritarianism and to win alternatives. At a time of immense uncertainty inside the United States, “this crucial book is for everyone who cares about the future of racial, gender, and economic justice and the future of democracy.” (Dorian Warren, president of Community Change).

For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we’ve ignored one critical question: what can economic and cultural loss do to pride? What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, in a work called “one of the year’s most important books” by Counterpunch, when the people of a hard-hit, long-ignored, region are grappling with a loss of pride while being confronted with a powerful political appeal—one that makes it feel “stolen”?

Hochschild’s research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where the city is reeling: coal jobs have left, crushing poverty persists, and a deadly drug crisis has struck the region. Although Pikeville was in the political center thirty years ago, by 2016, 80 percent of the district’s population voted for Donald Trump.

Hochschild, “a curious and skilled listener” (Financial Times), focuses on a group swept up in the shifting political landscape: blue-collar men. In small churches, hillside hollers, roadside diners, trailer parks, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, she introduces us to unforgettable people, and offers an original lens through which to see them and the wider world.

Harry Belafonte was more than a bestselling folk singer and Hollywood’s first Black matinée idol; he was also the secret weapon of human rights movements for seventy years—a close confidante of Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt; a trusted whisperer to JFK; and a political advisor to African heads of state.

Belafonte simultaneously advised Robert F. Kennedy on how to win the Black vote, openly supported Communist leaders including Fidel Castro, and skillfully avoided being blacklisted by J. Edgar Hoover. He was also a masterful fundraiser, almost singlehandedly bankrolling the civil rights movement from his own earnings as well as donations solicited from Hollywood friends and Vegas mobsters. It was Belafonte’s idea to organize superstar artists to record the hit song, “We Are the World” in 1984 to benefit famine victims in Africa.

In this candid, revelatory book, drawn from a series of conversations with historian Kevin Baker shortly before Belafonte’s death in 2023, the legendary singer of “Day-O” shares his philosophy on racial politics, African colonialism, the emergence of Israel, the shortcomings of Barack Obama, and the rise of Donald Trump. A Burning House offers a primer on celebrity activism at its best—as well as a cautionary tale about the rise of American authoritarianism.

Starting with the Supreme Court’s intervention in the presidential election that brought George W. Bush to power, Patterson traces a constellation of often under-appreciated turning points that runs through the accidental accession of John Roberts as Chief Justice and the moment of crisis when the subprime mortgages came due, to Donald Trump’s demand to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Marco Rubio’s sabotage of his own immigration reform bill, and Mitch McConnell’s refusal to convict Trump for his attempted coup, culminating in the Roberts Court establishing presidential autocracy.

Patterson’s near-encyclopedic knowledge of recent U.S. history along with his political acumen and training as a trial lawyer allow him to show cause and effect in a truly synthetic way, building his case for our march to the dark side one wrong turn at a time. His final chapters show the way out of our current morass, offering hope for America’s future.

Since 2016, the spectacle of Trump has overshadowed the emergence of an equally serious threat to our democracy: a small but influential group of “post-liberal” intellectuals (as they style themselves) who have become key influencers of the New Right.

Taking a ground-breaking deep dive into the world of post-liberalism, The Opportunists immerses the reader in this simmering ideological stew. Historian Hannah Gurman combines intellectual biography and political history, offering incisive profiles of key thinkers including Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, Yoram Hazony, Erika Bachiochi, Mary Harrington, Oren Cass, and Sohrab Ahmari. These figures have played a crucial role in legitimizing Trumpism beyond the MAGA base, providing intellectual fuel for the next generation of right-wing leaders who embrace such varied—and poorly understood—intellectual strains as Catholic integralism, neoconservative Zionism, reactionary feminism, and “pro-worker” conservatism. These ideas, and their proponents, are poised to determine the course of America’s future, driving the creation of new think tanks and media outlets, rebranding the agendas of existing conservative organizations, and dramatically reshaping reactionary politics in the United States and beyond.

We ignore the post-liberals, Gurman argues, at our own peril. The Opportunists is a major effort to expose the new ideas shaping our perilous world—and a first step in understanding how to combat them.

The Martin Luther King Jr. of popular memory vanquished Jim Crow in the South, but award-winning and New York Times–bestselling historian Jeanne Theoharis argues that King’s time in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—outside Dixie—was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly highlights the book’s “stellar” writing, and reveals that King of the North “makes a persuasive case that Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign for racial justice has been significantly misrepresented.”

In this bold retelling, “Theoharis depicts a complex, radical King whose fight against Northern racism alternately inspires and infuriates” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). King emerges here as someone who not only led a movement but who showed up for other people’s struggles; a charismatic speaker who also listened and learned; a Black man who experienced police brutality; a minister who lived with and organized alongside the poor; and a husband who—despite his flaws—depended on Coretta Scott King as an intellectual and political guide in the national fight against racism, poverty, and war.

In a book Democracy Now! calls “a major reexamination of the civil rights leader,” King of the North speaks directly to our struggles over racial inequality today.

A new generation of Americans has declared that another world is possible. And yet, the stubborn problems of inequality, climate change, and declining health seem as intractable as ever. Where might different answers lie?

Intrepid journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata has traveled around the world, from Costa Rica to Uganda, and Estonia to Singapore, uncovering how “other nations have successfully addressed social conditions that continue to vex America” (The New York Times Book Review). The product of in-depth reporting, including interviews with senior government officials, activists, industry professionals, and the ordinary people affected by their policies, Another World Is Possible was named a LitHub Most Anticipated title of 2025, which highlighted that it “offers international solutions to American problems.”

From Singapore’s approach to providing affordable public housing, to Costa Rica’s biodiversity law, to Finland’s universal public school system, in each instance Hakimi Zapata provides a clear-eyed assessment of the history, challenges, cost-effectiveness, and real-world impact of these programs. The result is a compelling, frame-shifting account of how we might live differently and create a safer, healthier, more sustainable future.

A “distinctive” (Library Journal) work of keen analysis as well as enormous heart and optimism, Another World Is Possible is destined to crack the mold of current debates, offering “a fascinating and inspiring glimpse of how rational governance operates” (Publishers Weekly).

Caught in the narrow world of private interests and self-advancement, Marion eschews national politics until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission throws up information that brings into question not only her family’s past but her identity and her rightful place in contemporary South African society. “Stylistically nuanced and psychologically astute,” Playing in the Light is as powerful in its depiction of Marion’s personal journey as it is in its depiction of South Africa’s bizarre, brutal history (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Wicomb’s majestic novel Still Life juggles with our perception of time and reality telling the story of an author struggling to write a biography of long-forgotten Scottish poet Thomas Pringle, whose only legacy is in South Africa where he is dubbed the “Father of South African Poetry.”

In her efforts to resurrect Pringle, the fictional biographer summons the spirit of Mary Prince, the West Indian slave; Hinza, Pringle’s adopted black South African son; and seasoned time traveler (and a character from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando), Sir Nicholas Green, all of them joining the author to help her write her book. Their adventures, as they travel across space and time to unlock the mysteries of Pringle’s life, offer a poignant exploration of colonial history and racial oppression.

Set mostly in the South African city of Cape Town and the Scottish city of Glasgow, this collection of short stories straddles two worlds, translating each character’s experience and life from one culture to another. With an array of expertly drawn characters, twelve tales explore a range of human relationships: marriage, friendship, family, and the fraught yet often intimate relations between those who serve and those who are served.

Full of ironic twists, ambiguities, and moments of startling insight, The One That Got Away showcases this award–winning author at the height of her ability.

In October, acclaimed fiction writer Zoë Wicomb tells the story of Mercia Murray, a South African woman of color in the midst of a difficult homecoming. Abandoned by her partner in Scotland, where she has been living for twenty-six years, Mercia returns to South Africa to find her family overwhelmed by alcoholism and buried secrets. Poised between her new life in Scotland and her South African roots, Mercia recollects the past and assesses the present with a keen sense of irony. October is a stark and utterly compelling novel about the contemporary experience of a woman caught between cultures, adrift in middle age with her memories and an uncertain future.

Winner of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, Zoë Wicomb is an essential voice of the South African diaspora, hailed by fellow writers—such as Toni Morrison and J. M. Coetzee—and by reviewers as “a writer of rare brilliance” (The Scotsman).

In Bounce, William Milberg, a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research, takes the game balls used in six popular sports—golf, baseball, football, soccer, tennis, and basketball—and goes deep into their complex and fascinating history, which is also the history of globalization. Each ball tells us unique and vital things about this evolution: the golf ball, for instance, uncovers the dynamics of the first wave of globalization, with colonial powers seeking rubber in the plantations of Africa, Asia, and South America, and the importance of machine technology and innovation. The football, on the other hand, shows how labor unions provided the “countervailing power” that workers needed against growing industrial corporations, prompting steady growth in pay and economic security for the average worker.

Globalization has been a series of choices, in other words—by individuals, corporations, and governments. In the vein of Simon Kuper’s Soccernomics and Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World, Bounce shows us how the history of these game balls helps us to understand the consequences of those choices and where we want the economy to go.

Ollstein, Politico’s health care reporter and one of News Media Alliances “Rising Stars,” exposes the unexpected ways in which the Dobbs decision is disrupting the already fraught experience of pregnancy and birth, causing spikes in maternal and infant mortality, and sepsis and hemorrhage for pregnant women, as physicians withhold or delay medically necessary procedures for fear of being prosecuted. A work of deep reporting and profound humanity, and the winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize, Side Effects also chronicles the experiences of real people experiencing the sudden and dangerous drop-off in all forms of sexual health care, from contraception to STD testing, and the unforeseen spillover effects to medical research, hospital staffing, wait times, access to medications, and more.

Even as she sounds the alarm, Ollstein reveals how patients, physicians, researchers, and pharmacists are fighting back, making the case that it’s not too late to protect our medical system from the side effects caused by the current existential threat to our health, safety, and privacy.

The January 6th riot, the attempted kidnapping of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the shootings of Minnesota legislators, the two attempted assassinations of Donald Trump, attacks on judges, as well as the recent killing of Charlie Kirk—Americans are increasingly embracing political violence. And the call for blood comes from both sides of the aisle.

In Our Own Worst Enemies, Robert A. Pape argues that American democracy is at a precarious moment because the principal danger in this new phase will come not from a fringe militia group. Rooting his observations in both historical data and fascinating (and terrifying) original interviews with contemporary political actors, Pape shows that support for political violence against democratic institutions is now as likely to come from “normal” political activists with nice homes and 401(k)s as it is from the Proud Boys and the cast of sometimes-oddball characters who stormed the Capitol. He identifies the precursors to the current moment, explains why the old solutions are not working this time around, and articulates what is needed to safeguard democracy in this new age of “violent populism.”

For over two centuries, American democracy has depended on citizens’ willingness to accept political differences and peaceful transitions of power. Our Own Worst Enemies tells us how we can return to those all-important norms.

In keeping with a September 2025 Trump administration plan for “patriotic education” that inspires “a love of country,” the teaching of slavery, race, and inequality in America’s schools is being suppressed, and students are increasingly rarely being taught about African/Black influence on American society and culture, or about the contributions of Black innovators, scholars, and leaders.

In a myth-busting account following the tradition of James Loewen’s bestselling Lies My Teacher Told Me, Erased peels back the layers of newly sanitized narratives to reveal the shocking, untold stories of race and racism in the United States—stories that were left out of your textbooks. From the enslaved laborers who built the White House, to the widespread phenomenon of “sundown towns,” and the Black communities destroyed by the building of highways, Erased delivers seventy concise, accessible and eye-opening chapters that challenge the core myths of American history with straightforward, little-known facts. Written by two renowned sociology professors.

For students, educators, or concerned citizens, Erased will inform, inspire, and leave readers ready to engage in meaningful conversations about America’s past and its impact on today.

“The first-ever sweeping history of how artists and organizers have worked together to advance an array of social movements,” (The GIA Reader), Ken Grossinger’s updated paperback edition of his celebrated Art Works “truly illustrates how art can be a weapon, an organizing tool, and a mirror for activists and organizers to view their own work” (The Progressive) .

Distilling lessons and insights from grassroots leaders and luminaries such as Ai Weiwei, Courtland Cox, and Shepard Fairey, and drawing from historical and present-day examples—including Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, the Hip Hop Caucus, the Legacy Museum, and the Art for Justice Fund—Grossinger “tells the complicated and fascinating story of the recent history of activism and the arts and points to new ways in which the arts, pop culture, and institutions are aligning themselves to address issues of violence, beauty, capitalism, and justice” (Laurie Anderson).

With a new preface and a postscript describing how to combat authorianism in this new political era, along with new illustrations Art Works offers a rich tapestry of tactics and successes that speak directly to the challenges and needs of today’s activists and artists.

The world knows George Floyd as the man whose murder launched a thousand protests. Less discussed is that his death was set in motion by a 911 call that needlessly dispatched the police. While 911 saves countless lives, it also creates devastating risks—almost always to people of color. In this important book full of original research, Rebecca Neusteter, the country’s leading expert on emergency response, uncovers a shockingly unregulated system with deeply racist roots.

Although fire chiefs had called for a universal emergency hotline for years, it wasn’t until 1967—when Newark, Watts, and Detroit exploded in race riots—that Congress finally moved to create a system, one designed to summon the police to put down civil unrest. Neusteter reveals that legacy of racial social control as it continues today, with armed police the default response to 911 calls, whether or not they are well-matched to the need at hand. The book covers all-too-frequent killings of unarmed mentally ill people as well as the “Karen” syndrome, in which white women call 911 to report Black people engaged in harmless activities—endangering their lives in the process.

In her final chapters, Neusteter highlights promising new models of emergency response and other changes needed to improve our 911 system to serve everyone, safely and equitably.

In this concise, incisive guide, that Kirkus Reviews describes as a “call to action,” celebrated journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire and renowned education scholar Jack Schneider expose what’s driving these coordinated attacks and explain why schools are now so vulnerable. They tackle complex topics in “compact and accessible terms” (Jacobin), unpacking everything from book-banning trends and voucher schemes to the real stakes behind the “parents’ rights” rhetoric.

The Education Wars is more than an alarm; it’s a vital handbook for parents, educators, and citizens who care about the future of public education. Packed with timely information and actionable insights, this book charts a powerful “path for protecting the fundamentals of what makes public schools so important” (Booklist).

On the day fifteen-year-old Diamond from the Bay Area stopped going to school she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school. A decade later, Black girls continue to be the fastest growing population in the juvenile justice system.

On the tenth anniversary of its publication, Pushout, Monique Couvson’s groundbreaking book, hailed by educator Lisa Delpit as “imperative reading,” remains as urgent and necessary as ever. Couvson chronicles the experiences of Black girls across the country whose complex lives are misunderstood, highly judged—by teachers, administrators, and the justice system—and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Painting “a chilling picture of the plight of Black girls and women today” (The Atlantic), Couvson exposes a world of confined potential, and supports the rising movement to challenge the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures.

Pushout’s message is more relevant than ever. This tenth-anniversary edition is truly a book “for everyone who cares about children” (The Washington Post), serving as both a call to action and a testament to the lives and futures we must protect.

The essential guide to establishing an effective opposition movement in the age of Trump, from the leading activist and organizer

“I consider [Marom] one of the most generous and important thinkers for the activist left, for anyone who cares about where we are and how to get to where we should be.” —Rebecca Solnit

Yotam Marom's For Louder Days, a brilliant, lyrical, clarion cry for a clearer, more powerful, and more efficacious approach to progressive activism, is grounded in hard-won lessons drawn from years of work with Occupy, the Sunrise Movement, multiracial organizing, and beyond. A nationally recognized strategist, Marom dives deep into the challenges that hold movements back, revealing how embracing hard truths and healthy conflict can unlock the potential for real and enduring change.

Structured as a series of reflections on Marom’s experiences across two decades, the book provides a practical handbook for today’s organizers, offering tangible tools and frameworks for building resilient, effective movements capable of confronting deep-seated injustices. For Louder Days doesn’t shy away from the complexities of organizing, but instead offers a hopeful and actionable vision. It is a vital resource for anyone committed to social justice, offering the clarity and courage needed to build a better world from the ground up.

Published at the most perilous moment in our modern political history, For Louder Days comes not a moment too soon. If the opposition is to hold back the tide of oppression and violence, Yotam Marom shows how that can be done.

A couple on vacation slowly realizes that they are unable to return to their normal lives in London due to mysterious forces. A man anxiously waits for his friend in Brussels as the violent cascade of events leading to the outbreak of WWI begin to unfold around him. A woman sends one-sided, and increasingly desperate, confessions of love as understanding dawns that her lover is with someone else.

In this collection of original writing, leading authors including J.G. Ballard, Charles Boyle, Nicci French, and Will Self create compelling narratives that challenge literary structure and strengthen the bond between image and text. Each story is told as though it were written on the back of a postcard, accompanied by images of beautiful buildings, stunning landscapes, and smiling faces. Featuring nearly eighty full-color illustrations, the collection invites readers to journey through a vivid tapestry of stories where words and visuals come together to spark the imagination.

Whether the locations are familiar or entirely fictional, the postcards offer glimpses into larger narratives, hints of entire lives unfolding. Having a Wonderful Time is a set of powerful love letters to language, storytelling, and the inspiration that it can spark in our hearts.

There’s no defeating white supremacist myths without real data. Hailed as “an important resource for anyone seeking a better understanding of . . . Black America” (Benjamin Todd Jealous, former NAACP president and CEO), this completely revised and updated edition of Black Stats offers new facts, critical analyses, and information on the current state of Black life in the United States, at the quarter-century mark, unhindered by jargon and assumptions.

Monique Couvson, author of the acclaimed Pushout, has compiled statistics from a broad spectrum of telling categories that illustrate the quality of life and the possibility of (and barriers to) advancement for a group at the heart of American society. With fascinating information on a wide range of topics including education, entertainment, sports, and the arts, the environment, health, justice, military service, money and jobs, science and technology, and more, this “invaluable resource” (International Journal of Communications) will enrich and inform many public debates while challenging commonly held yet often misguided perceptions.

Called a “great tool offering descriptive statistics on the condition of our nation’s promise of freedom, justice, equality and economic opportunity for all” by Marc H. Morial, president and CEO, National Urban League, Black Stats simultaneously highlights measures of incredible progress, conveys the disparate impacts of social policies and practices, and surprises with revelations that span many subjects. It is an essential tool for advocates, educators, and anyone seeking racial justice and to understand the complex state of our nation.

In this groundbreaking, radical analysis of contemporary classrooms, MacArthur award–winning author Lisa Delpit develops the theory that teachers must be effective “cultural transmitters” in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and assumptions often breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers educate “other people’s children” and perpetuate the imbalanced power dynamics that plague our system.

Now a classic of educational thought and a must-read for teachers, administrators, and parents striving to improve the quality of America’s education system, Other People’s Children has sold over 250,000 copies since its original publication. Winner of an American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award and Choice magazine’s Outstanding Academic Book Award, this anniversary edition features a new introduction by Delpit as well as important framing essays by Herbert Kohl and Charles Payne.

Constitutional theorists on the right and the left are united in the belief that constitutional law and review by the Supreme Court are crucial to the success of the American experiment. Both sides believe that, on issues ranging from affirmative action, reproductive freedom, and gun control, to economic regulation, regulation of speech, and the role of religion in American society, popular democracy is just too dangerous to go unchecked.

In a paradigm-shifting argument sure to change the debate about the rule of law in the age of Trump, Louis Michael Seidman argues that there is no approach to constitutionalism that can withstand the recent collapse of a progressive political coalition and an administration that has embraced a malignant populism. Seidman, called “one of our greatest living constitutional scholars” by Georgetown University Law professor Rosa Brooks, understands that a natural reaction to the current danger is to shore up the foundations of constitutional theory, uniting in the defense of “the rule of law.” But he sees this response as gravely mistaken and bound to fail. As he writes in the introduction, “no one should be fooled into thinking that a legal strategy will stop the broad thrust of the Trump revolution.”

Instead, he charts a different way forward. If both sides ended their dogmatic insistence that divisive social issues can be definitively settled by a piece of aging parchment, we might ease political tensions and begin a respectful and productive debate about the deep grievances that are tearing the country apart.

Most cases that judges decide garner little public attention. But occasionally, a case is tried both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion. In Challenging Cases, some of the country’s leading jurists talk about the most high-profile cases they’ve handled—ones where the eyes of the world were upon them.

Whether the defendant was a beloved major league baseball player, a movie star, or a well-known sex-offender, or whether the topic addressed an especially contentious aspect of the culture wars, these cases played out before millions of on-lookers, adding a whole new dimension to what is already a Solomonic responsibility.

In their previous book, Tough Cases, called “an unprecedented view from the bench” by legal commentator Greta van Susteren, and “a genuine revelation” by Justin Driver in The Washington Post, Judges Canan, Mize, and Weisberg made us privy to the thought processes of judges making some of their hardest legal decisions. In Challenging Cases, over a dozen judges from courts in DC, Texas, Seattle, Michigan, Maine, Buffalo, Virginia, and more speak to the added challenge of trials involving high-profile defendants. Cases include:

• the perjury trial of Roger Clemens
• the sentencing of January 6th rioters
• the case of Dr. Larry Nassar, accused of the sexual abuse of hundreds of female athletes
• the Kosovo international war crimes trial
• the Johnny Depp trial

Providing the fodder for a whole new season of Law and Order, Challenging Cases is for every actual and armchair legal beagle in the country.

At a time of great uncertainty for American workers and their unions, Who’s Got the Power? reminds us that unions are still a source of hope, taking readers on a journey through the resurgence of the American labor movement in the wake of a pandemic that changed everything. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, unions seemed to be fading into history. But the pandemic didn’t just disrupt the workplace; it reignited a movement.

Longtime organizer and labor historian Dave Kamper details how labor reemerged with newfound strength, as workers began to question the status quo and demand more from their employers. Interviewing workers and labor leaders across the country, Kamper captures the stories of those on the front lines, from Frito-Lay workers in Kansas and Chicago teachers, to Amazon warehouse employees in New York and Detroit autoworkers, offering a compelling account of how, in industry after industry, strikes, protests, and bold negotiations signaled the rise of a more coordinated effort to reclaim control over working conditions. Grounding the present with rich historical examples, and drawing upon his years of experience making union concepts accessible to the general reader, Kamper provides a front-row seat to a new wave of labor activism that isn’t just about wages and benefits—it’s about dignity and solidarity.

An up-to-the-minute look at a brand-new phenomenon, Who’s Got the Power?, featuring a foreword by Association of Flight Attendants president Sara Nelson, is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the seismic changes in American labor today.

A fully revised and updated tenth anniversary edition of the book that former Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney says “clearly and eloquently lays out the issues at stake”—from the founder of the ERA Coalition, with an introduction by the women’s rights icon Gloria Steinem

When the Equal Rights Amendment passed Congress in 1972, Richard Nixon was president, and All in the Family’s Archie Bunker was telling his wife Edith to “stifle it.” Over the next decade, a groundswell of support led to ratification by thirty-five states—just three short of the thirty-eight needed. With the original publication of Equal Means Equal ten years ago, a new ERA Coalition emerged, uniting the wisdom of veteran activists with the digital savvy and momentum of a new generation.

Now, thirty-eight states have ratified the ERA, it has met all the constitutional requirements for an amendment, and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Senator Lisa Murkowski have introduced a bipartisan, bicameral resolution; yet, due to a disputed time limit for ratification, it still has not been formally recognized. In this fully revised and updated tenth-anniversary edition, Jessica Neuwirth—founder and former president of the ERA Coalition—explains the current state of the Amendment and lays out the ever greater need for the Amendment through powerful contemporary legal cases and real-world examples. From pay inequity and pregnancy discrimination to violence against women, Neuwirth demonstrates how the lack of constitutional sex equality continues to harm women in the post-Roe era.

In this “vital primer” (Kansas City Star), endorsed by Jimmy Carter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, along with many others, Jessica Neuwirth makes the case “that ratification is the right thing to do” (Kirkus Reviews).

Plastic is everywhere—wrapped around our food, stitched into our clothes, even coursing through our veins. Once a marvel of modern science, plastic has become so inextricably woven into our lives that imagining a world without it can seem impossible. Over the last seventy-five years, plastic has cradled our planet in a synthetic embrace.

The Problem with Plastic critically examines the paradox of this material, first celebrated for its innovations and now recognized for its devastating environmental and public health impacts. With clarity and urgency, the book reveals how plastic pollution contributes to poisoned oceans, polluted air, a warming planet, and overwhelming waste, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities who bear the brunt of petrochemical pollution.

Revealing the alarming extent of microplastics infiltrating both the natural world and the human body, this compelling narrative challenges the illusion that recycling alone will save us. It unpacks the mechanisms of environmental racism and the deceptive greenwashing strategies used by the plastics industry to maintain the status quo.

More than a critique, The Problem with Plastic emphasizes the urgent need for action against plastic’s toxic legacy. It higlights powerful stories of frontline resistance in places like Louisiana, Texas, and Appalachia, and equips readers with practical tools—including a “Household Waste Audit” to track and reduce plastic consumption, as well as model policy guides for driving legislative change.

Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately empowering, The Problem with Plastic reminds us: plastic is a problem—but together, we can be the solution.

• the history of bail, from its inception in medieval England, as an incentive for people to return to court, to modern America where it is a “mechanism for detention”
• the roles lawyers, judges, and legislators have in the legal system and how and why they have become complicit in excessive bail
• how the current bail system undermines the promise of a fair and just system and the U.S. Constitution
• effective alternatives to cash bail

For fans of The Race to Incarcerate by Marc Mauer and James Kilgore’s Understanding Mass Incarceration, Steinberg, whose previous book was called “powerfully insightful reading” by Kirkus Reviews, and Ramirez provide an unprecedented look at America’s cash bail system and inspire us to imagine a better, fairer way forward.

Building on her groundbreaking research that exposed how schools systemically fail Black girls, Dr. Monique Couvson expands her lens in Girls, Unlimited, exploring the many ways our society overlooks the unique experiences and needs of all girls. Interweaving heartwarming and heart-wrenching stories from her own life and career with interviews with other high-profile advocates, and insightful anecdotes about the girls she’s connected with around the world, Dr. Couvson offers a wide range of recommendations for everyone from parents to policymakers.

Girls, Unlimited connects the dots, powerfully illustrating a critique of the many ways girls have been historically underinvested in—especially as compared to boys, and particularly when decision-makers assume investments made in women will trickle down to girls—making the case for the type of societal investment girls deserve and arguing that we all benefit when girls thrive.

Dr. Couvson offers an optimistic, hopeful vision for a future in which girls are supported in every arena and provides readers with a practical road map for how to get there.

There’s no defeating white supremacist myths without real data. Hailed as “an important resource for anyone seeking a better understanding of . . . Black America” (Benjamin Todd Jealous, former NAACP president and CEO), this completely revised and updated edition of Black Stats offers new facts, critical analyses, and information on the current state of Black life in the United States, at the quarter-century mark, unhindered by jargon and assumptions.

Monique Couvson, author of the acclaimed Pushout, has compiled statistics from a broad spectrum of telling categories that illustrate the quality of life and the possibility of (and barriers to) advancement for a group at the heart of American society. With fascinating information on a wide range of topics including education, entertainment, sports, and the arts, the environment, health, justice, military service, money and jobs, science and technology, and more, this “invaluable resource” (International Journal of Communications) will enrich and inform many public debates while challenging commonly held yet often misguided perceptions.

Called a “great tool offering descriptive statistics on the condition of our nation’s promise of freedom, justice, equality and economic opportunity for all” by Marc H. Morial, president and CEO, National Urban League, Black Stats simultaneously highlights measures of incredible progress, conveys the disparate impacts of social policies and practices, and surprises with revelations that span many subjects. It is an essential tool for advocates, educators, and anyone seeking racial justice and to understand the complex state of our nation.

We are witnessing an attack on equal rights in America unparalleled since the collapse of Reconstruction. In the tradition of his New York Times and Washington Post bestseller Brown Is the New White and his “spirited and persuasive” (Publishers Weekly) How We Win the Civil War, Steve Phillips’s goal is nothing less than to exhort people to go on the offensive in the fight for racial justice in this country—to flip the script from the underrepresentation of people of color to the overrepresentation of white men.

In twelve short, animated chapters covering the fields of business, arts and entertainment, government, higher education, philanthropy, and democracy itself, Phillips shows how Straight White American Male Preference (or S.W.A.M.P.) has come roaring out of the shadows once again. Far from being a country where white men have suffered under so-called reverse racism, Phillips reveals America to be a place where white men—a minority population—have enjoyed unfair legal advantages, racial quotas, grade inflation, and jumping the line for public benefits.

Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else? calls for nothing less than draining the swamp of white male privilege. Fearless, funny, and deeply researched, this much-needed corrective offers equality-loving readers the arguments and energy they need to launch a new counterattack.

Our country stands at a critical cultural crossroads, with a wave of anti-trans legislation emerging at unprecedented levels, targeting trans children, in particular, who face increasing stigmatization and erasure. Sim Butler’s And the Dragons Do Come is a poignant account of one family’s experience of parenting and supporting a trans child against this nightmarish backdrop.

In recent years, the Butler family faced an impossible reality in their home state of Alabama, where trans rights are increasingly under attack. Butler recounts their family’s struggles and sacrifices to protect their trans child against the barrage of state-sanctioned intolerance in the legal, educational, and health arenas.

Around the time she turned twelve, his daughter’s personal struggles became political fodder. Along with other trans kids, she was outlawed from playing sports and forbidden to use the girls’ bathroom. Another law made Butler and his wife felons for seeking trans-affirming health care for her. When her charter school was featured in several gubernatorial campaign ads, local community members began driving through the parking lot to yell at the trans kids.

Serving both as a compassionate story of one family’s struggle for acceptance and as a window onto a fraught issue that parents, grandparents, other family members, and friends are confronting across the nation, And the Dragons Do Come provides a firsthand perspective on the human cost of anti-trans sentiment.

When the Proud Boys stormed a library near her former school to disrupt a Drag Queen Story Hour, veteran public school teacher Sue Granzella knew she had to respond. Drawing on more than thirty years in the classroom, she began documenting the stories of fellow educators and librarians across California who have been harassed and threatened for teaching honestly about race, gender, immigration, religion, and sexuality. Many would be surprised to hear that it’s happening in California, the state long considered the haven of liberals and the pinnacle of acceptance and tolerance. If states such as Florida and Texas have been the canary-in-the-coalmine of nascent culture wars, California is now the disaster siren, screaming a state of emergency.

Pushed to the Edge is a powerful and timely collection of first-person accounts from the front lines of today’s escalating culture wars. Cassandra, a young, queer woman of color and an award-winning teacher, was shattered by homophobia and viciously emboldened parents, and was ultimately forced to leave the job she’d dreamed of since kindergarten. In Temecula, educators mobilized their community to try to overthrow the Christian nationalist school board determined to eliminate the teaching of Black history. While rooted in California, the book’s insights and urgency resonate nationwide—offering both a sobering view of what’s at stake in our schools and our libraries and a hopeful testament to those who refuse to back down.

In the opening days of the Civil War, three enslaved men approached the gates of Fort Monroe, a U.S. military installation in Virginia. In a snap decision, the fort’s commander “confiscated” them as contraband of war.

From then on, wherever the U.S. Army traveled, torrents of runaways rushed to secure their own freedom, a mass movement of 800,000 people—a fifth of the enslaved population of the South—that set the institution of slavery on a path to destruction.

In an engrossing work of narrative history, critically acclaimed historian Tom Zoellner introduces an unforgettable cast of characters whose stories will transform our popular understanding of how slavery ended. The Road Was Full of Thorns shows what emancipation looked and felt like for the people who made the desperate flight across dangerous territory: the taste of mud in the mouth, the terror of the slave patrols, and the fateful crossing into Union lines. Zoellner also reveals how the least powerful Americans changed the politics of war—forcing President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and opening the door to universal Black citizenship.

For readers of The 1619 Project—and anyone interested in the Civil War—The Road Was Full of Thorns is destined to reshape how we think about the story of American freedom.

Though a relatively young country, Italy’s culinary identity has been simmering for centuries, shaped by a shared gastronomic culture. From the dormice and pungent fish sauce of the Roman Empire to the heresy of pineapple pizza, A Bite-Sized History of Italy traces this legacy, offering a delicious romp through millennia of culinary tradition and transformation.

Author Danielle Callegari, Dartmouth College professor and celebrated Gola podcast co-host, guides readers through the kitchens, vineyards, city squares, and coastal ports of the iconic peninsula, painting an intimate portrait of a place justly famous for its cuisine—so much so that food might well be the very reason for its existence.

With boundless energy and a fearless palate, Callegari explores beloved staples—pizza, pasta, parmigiano—alongside the unsung flavors that shaped Italian identity: legumes, wild herbs, game birds, spices, and the contributions of Jewish and other minority communities. Readers will uncover the true history of the tomato, Mussolini’s failed attempt to replace pasta with rice, the “Carbonaragate” scandal that made international headlines, and more. Drawing on ancient cookbooks, medieval architecture, and contemporary cooking shows, Callegari reveals how Italy’s rise as Europe’s gastronomic heart is rooted in religious customs, class dynamics, and the echoes of empire, and how food became a language of both unity and division.

Chapters feature recipes, beverage pairings, compelling historical vignettes, and current restaurant recommendations. Vivid and entertaining, this latest addition to The New Press’s standout Bite-Sized History series, A Bite-Sized History of Italy offers a glimpse of the making of Italy itself—a nation defined, defended, and devoured around the table.

The twenty-first century has seen a profound shift in the global sociopolitical and economic landscape, shaped by seismic interventions ranging from the War on Terror to the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2000 and 2024, social movements like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, climate justice, the Fight for $15, Palestine liberation, health care for all, and queer and trans resistance have illuminated a new narrative—one rooted in an inclusive vision of society, driven by a newly politicized and radicalized generation. This shift did not happen by chance. Movement workers have meticulously crafted communications and narrative strategies, honing their political messaging and storytelling to seize narrative power in today’s struggles.

In Liberation Stories, today’s foremost progressive and leftist communicators, organizers, artists, journalists, and academics share their collective wisdom in one powerful volume. Featuring in-depth case studies of both contemporary and historical movements, Liberation Stories distills successful theories, strategies, and tactics for anyone wanting to understand—and participate in—the diverse initiatives currently shaping our society.

As far-right and conservative movements gain traction worldwide—attacking our books, our bodies, and our democracies—Liberation Stories emerges as a vital resource for constructing the world we envision, one story at a time.

For many queer people, exile begins at home. The search for safety and freedom to express themselves drives millions of LGBTQIA+ people across borders. Their stories are full of contrasts—between isolation and community, freedom and nostalgia.

In their stunning compositions, photographer Asafe Ghalib explores the identities of members of the LGBTQIA+ immigrant community in Britain with striking beauty and poise. Brought up in a religious family, Ghalib draws from their own experience of leaving Brazil behind to depict the rich lives of their subjects who live at the intersections of multiple cultures. Their work, which evokes black-and-white newspaper photographs and classic portraiture that has been present since the dawn of photography, immortalizes the lives of a community that has been misrepresented for decades.

The latest in a groundbreaking series of photobooks that highlight queer lives and communities around the world, Shine invites the viewer to enter the world of Britain’s many queer communities and, in doing so, to challenge common misconceptions and prejudices about LGBTQIA+ people. An act of both confrontation and pride, this book is also an exploration of immigration as a human right and, above all, a celebration of the triumphs of a defiant community.

Shine was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

Breakthroughs in adolescent brain science have made it clear that young people need stable relationships, meaningful opportunities and strong support to become thriving adults. Yet far too many grow up without access to these essentials. Whether it’s a young person trying to finish school and secure their first job, navigating the trauma of losing loved ones to violence or seeking connection after being placed in foster care, their experiences reveal how deeply our public systems are falling short—and how urgently we must act.

A major new book for parents, local leaders, and policymakers alike, Thrive argues that how we understand and address the unequal experiences of adolescence holds the key to ensuring that all children have an equal chance of becoming successful adults. Drawing on her deep experience working in business and alongside youth, nonprofit and public system leaders as head of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, author Lisa M. Lawson offers a powerful and accessible look at what the science of adolescent development tells us—and what it demands of us. With clarity and purpose, she reveals how our policies and practices too often fail young people, and how we can do better by creating the connections, opportunities and support they need to reach their full potential.

Arguing that we all have a shared stake in helping young people navigate the road to adulthood, Lawson lays out the ways that public systems, nonprofits, businesses and families can draw lessons from science—and take steps to help all young people thrive.

Hailed as “a valuable addition” and a “Top Tech Book” by Wired.com, The Know-It-Alls offers a prescient chronicle of the rise of Silicon Valley as a political and intellectual force. Showcasing this new class of super geeks, former New York Times technology reporter Noam Cohen sketches “finely researched portraits” (Nature) of the smart guys, including Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg, who fell in love with a radically individualistic, anti-government ideal—and then mainstreamed it.

Now, in this completely revised and updated edition, published one year after DOGE came to town, Cohen shows how the know-it-alls came to Washington, providing a richly documented account of how their influence has metastasized, their wealth has exploded, and their technologies have frayed America’s social and political fabric. The know-it-alls claim that they support Trump because the Democrats abandoned them; Cohen reveals that Trump gave them the political opening they’d been waiting for, all along.

From the decisive influence of the pandemic, to the emergence of Elon Musk as a national political force, and the appearance of new characters and technologies, Cohen’s “unabashed critique” (Library Journal) is the essential guide to the real power players on today’s political scene.

Prisons and jails are America’s hidden “food deserts,” where hunger and malnourishment coexist with shocking levels of food waste because much of what is served is so awful it ends up in the trash. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are tense and humiliating when incarcerated people are forced to eat in silence, finish meals within minutes, and disciplined with food deliberately worse than the standard fare.

This disturbing portrait came to light in 2020 when the nonprofit Impact Justice released the first-ever national examination of food in prison, catapulting the issue from the margins of prison litigation to the center of national conversations about mass incarceration and food justice. This landmark book digs deeper, revealing a systemic drive to cut costs at the expense of health and decency. It is also a story of resistance and hope, chronicling how incarcerated people and their allies are fighting back, as well as exploring “farm to tray” programs, chef-led initiatives, and other ways to make food in prison a source of healing and bring dignity back to the table.

Fair Game offers an insightful, timely examination of the ongoing battle for equality in athletics. As LGBTQ athletes break barriers in the Olympics, transgender athletes still face harsh restrictions in many areas. With twenty-four states passing anti-trans sports legislation in the last two years, nearly half of Americans live under laws that restrict or ban transgender individuals from participating in sports. Fair Game explores why taking the next step and increasing the acceptance of trans athletes is important not only for everyone with an Olympic dream but also everyone whose kids just want to join the town soccer league.

Fair Game explores the role of sports in the lives of transgender youth and adults, offering a comprehensive, nuanced, and multivoiced picture of the transgender athletic experience. Through a woven collection of the narratives from a marginalized population, Fair Game examines the patterns of fear and gender stereotypes that undergird anti-trans legislation and offers helpful historical and political context about sex segregation in sports and how bodies (including trans bodies) work in sports.

Timely, accessible, inspiring, and rigorous, Fair Game presents a sports landscape beyond our current conceptions, a world changed by unrestricted and joyful movement in sports.

The use of restorative justice is becoming more commonplace around the country. This practice brings victims together with offenders to discuss the impact of the offense, restore breaches of community, and draw up a plan for repair. Unlike proceedings in a court of law that prioritize punishment, restorative justice addresses victims’ desire for accountability, understanding, and healing.

But it is also a confidential process—rarely videotaped or accessible to those who want to know: What actually happens in a restorative justice session? Restorative Justice Up Close is the first book to relate stories of actual dialogues, in the words of participants. Affecting and direct, the book features stories from K–12 school staff about restorative circles that got to the root of misbehavior without suspensions, and from skeptical police and probation officers who learn that a facilitated dialogue can produce better outcomes than a prosecution ever could. And in stories that will make readers cry, Restorative Justice Up Close recounts meetings between survivors of violent crime and those responsible, where both parties emerge with a sense of relief and healing.

A book for educators, justice reformers, and anyone curious about a more humane approach to wrongdoing, Restorative Justice Up Close offers a compelling picture of what it truly means to “do justice.”

Lisa Delpit was one of the first educators to receive a MacArthur “genius” Award. Her book Other People’s Children is a classic in the field, and she has been called “a visionary scholar and reformer” by the Harvard Education School, which awarded her an outstanding alumni award. Chris Emdin is an award-winning educator whose book For White People Who Teach in the Hood . . . and the Rest of Y’all Too was a national bestseller. He is the creator of the HipHopEd social media movement and has been named one of Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans and one of twenty-seven people bridging divides in the U.S. by Time magazine.

In this powerful and deeply personal volume, these two educators, generations apart but united by a shared commitment to transformative education, compare notes for the first time. Readers are treated to candid exchanges on topics including the role of art in education, students and politics, how educators of color can navigate the academy, specific approaches to pedagogy, the role of rap in education, and how spirituality informs their work. With honesty, humor, and hard-won wisdom, they reflect on their own journeys into education, the challenges they’ve faced, and the strategies they’ve developed to uphold equity and justice in a system too often resistant to both. These conversations are not only intellectually rich but emotionally resonant, offering a model of mentorship, mutual respect, and the power of dialogue across difference.

A gift to teachers, scholars, and anyone passionate about reimagining public education, this book is a lasting contribution to the field—one that will inspire readers for generations to come.

With a new preface by the author on the Gaza war

An unflinching exposé of the hidden costs of American war-making written with “an immense and rare humanity” (Naomi Klein) by one of our premier political analysts

Every election cycle, candidates across the political spectrum repudiate what has become one of the most consequential and enduring components of American foreign policy: the forever war. Yet, once the ballots have been cast and the camera crews go home, the American war machine chugs along in almost complete obscurity.

The journalist and political analyst Norman Solomon’s War Made Invisible is a “gripping and painful study” (Noam Chomsky) of the mechanisms behind our invisible, but perpetual, national state of war. From ever-compliant journalists serving as little more than stenographers for the Pentagon to futuristic military technology, horrifying in its destructive power, that makes dropping a bomb or pulling the trigger on a drone strike more of an abstraction than a moral calculation, Solomon’s “staggeringly important intervention” (Naomi Klein) exposes the profoundly human consequences at home and abroad of the bipartisan commitment to war making.

In an era of increasing global instability in which it is all too easy to succumb to despair, Solomon pierces the “manufactured ‘fog of war’ . . . [and] casts sunlight, the best disinfectant, on the propaganda that fuels perpetual war” (Amy Goodman). Now in paperback with a new preface by the author on the Gaza war, Solomon’s incisive, ever-timely analysis “provide[s] the fresh and profound clarity that our country desperately needs” (Daniel Ellsberg) now more than ever.

For centuries, Westerners have tried to “fix” African economies. From the abolition of slavery onward, missionaries, philanthropists, development economists, and NGOs have arrived on the continent, full of good intentions and bad ideas. Their experiments have invariably gone awry, to the great surprise of all involved.

Historian Bronwen Everill argues that these interventions fail, and frequently cause harm, because they start from a misguided premise: that African economies just need to be more like the West. Ignoring Africa’s own traditions of economic thought, Americans and Europeans assumed a set of universal economic laws that they thought could be applied anywhere. They enforced specifically Western ideas about growth, wealth, debt, unemployment, inflation, women’s work and more, and used Western metrics to find African countries wanting.

The West does not know better than African nations how an economy should be run. By laying bare the myths and realities of our tangled economic history, Africonomics moves from Western ignorance to African knowledge.

The 2024 U.S. presidential election reverberated internationally, a global event whose outcome has already reshaped trade, migration, security, and rising authoritarianism across the world. Inside the United States, we are swamped by a news cycle; but how does the wider world see and interpret what is happening under Trump?

In How We See It, twelve of some of the most talented and insightful journalists from around the world probe their home countries’ complex relationship with the United States—and especially, how this has swerved under the new administration. A diverse, international cast of writers examines:

• how Turkey’s recent history helps us understand America’s slide into autocracy
• how Argentina’s century-long obsession with the dollar has changed under Trump
• the new wave of anti-American tourism activism in Italy
• what Elon Musk gets wrong about South Africa
• how Taiwan is navigating the uncertainty of Trump’s response in the event of a Chinese invasion
• the newly fraught view of the U.S. among Canadians

Featuring all new pieces commissioned by The Dial, the celebrated magazine of culture, politics, and ideas from around the world, How We See It both shifts and expands our frame of reference, our self-awareness, and our understanding of how much our world has changed since the fateful election of 2024.

A prizewinning historian uncovers one of the earliest instances of reparations in America—ironically, though perhaps not surprisingly, paid to slaveholders, not former slaves

“A spectacular achievement of historical research. Forret shows for the first time just how far the American government went to secure reparations.”
—Robert Elder‚ author of Calhoun: American Heretic

Winner of the Carr P. Collins Award for Best Book of Nonfiction
Winner,  John Lyman Book Award in North American Maritime History

In 1831, the American ship Comet, carrying 165 enslaved men, women, and children, crashed onto a coral reef near the shore of the Bahamas, then part of the British Empire. Shortly afterward, the Vice Admiralty Court in Nassau, over the outraged objections of the ship’s owners, set the rescued captives free. American slave owners and the companies who insured the liberated human cargo would spend years lobbying for reparations from Great Britain, not for the emancipated slaves, of course, but for the masters deprived of their human property.

In a work of profoundly relevant research and storytelling, historian and Frederick Douglass Prize–winner Jeff Forret uncovers how the Comet incident—as well as similar episodes that unfolded over the next decade—resulted in the British Crown making reparations payments to a U.S. government that strenuously represented slaveholder interests. Through a story that has never been fully explored, The Price They Paid shows how, unlike their former owners and insurers, neither the survivors of the Comet and other vessels, nor their descendants, have ever received reparations for the price they paid in their lives, labor, and suffering during slavery.

Any accounting of reparations today requires a fuller understanding of how the debts of slavery have been paid, and to whom. The Price They Paid represents a major step forward in that effort.

When Nazis wanted to express their right to free speech in 1977 by marching through Skokie, Illinois—a town with a large population of Holocaust survivors—Aryeh Neier, then the national executive director of the ACLU and himself a Holocaust survivor, came to the Nazis’ defense. Explaining what many saw as a despicable bridge too far for the First Amendment, Neier spelled out his thoughts about free speech in his 1979 book Defending My Enemy.

Nearly fifty years later, Neier revisits the topic of free speech in a volume that includes his original essay along with a new chapter addressing present-day First Amendment battles, including the Charlottesville march, book bans, the heckler’s veto, attacks on free speech on college campuses, and the threat to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision in The New York Times v. Sullivan.

Including a foreword by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and an afterword by longtime free speech champion Nadine Strossen, Defending My Enemy offers razor-sharp analysis from the man Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute describes as “an icon of justice and fearlessness.”

Fake news, outright political lies, a shamelessly partisan press, and the collapse of truth, civility, and shared facts, Philip Kadish argues, are nothing new. The Great White Hoax, a masterpiece of historical and literary sleuthing, reveals that the era of Fox News and Donald Trump is simply a return to form. We have been here before.

In a book that brilliantly puts our current era into historical context, The Great White Hoax uncovers a centuries-long tradition of white supremacist hoaxes, perpetrated on the American public by a succession of political hucksters and opportunists, all of them willfully using racial frauds as tools for political and social advantage. In the antebellum era, slavery’s defenders used bogus science to “prove” the inferiority of African American people; during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s enemies circulated a sham pamphlet accusing him of promoting a dilution of the white race through “miscegenation” (a racist term invented by the pamphlet’s authors).

From these murky beginnings, author Philip Kadish draws a direct thread to D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, Henry Ford’s adaptation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Madison Grant’s embrace of eugenics (which directly influenced Adolf Hitler), Alabama Governor George Wallace’s race-baiting, and Roger Ailes’s creation of Fox News.

The Great White Hoax reveals white supremacy as today’s real “fake news”—and exposes the cast of villains, past and present, who have kept American racism alive.

In 1954, the American labor movement reached its historic height, with one-third of all nonagricultural workers belonging to a union—and much higher percentages in the nation’s key industries. That same year, a group of writers and activists, many with close ties to organized labor, founded Dissent magazine, which quickly became the publishing home for the most important progressive voices on American unions.

Today, at a time of both resurgent union organizing and socialist politics, the need for this rich tradition of ideas is as pressing as ever.

With over twenty-five contributions by some of the nation’s most influential progressive voices, Labor’s Partisans brings to life a history of labor that is of immediate relevance to our own times. Introduced and edited by leading labor historians Nelson Lichtenstein and Samir Sonti, this essential volume reveals the powerful currents and debates running through the labor movement, from the 1950s to today.

Combining stunning writing, political passion, and deep historical perspective, Labor’s Partisans will be a source of ideas and inspiration for anyone concerned with a more just future for working people.

A sweeping account of the first Trump administration’s systematic dismantling of the national agencies that protect our health, safety, and climate—and the progressive and equitable political future that is possible when we put people over power and greed

Now revised with a new preface and final chapter on what to expect from the current administration and how we can secure a thriving collective future—both socially and economically

In the wake of a return to Trump-era governance, Demolition Agenda is more urgent than ever, revealing the ministration’s destruction of our government institutions—exposing Americans to greater risks while empowering corporate interests.

Thomas O. McGarity, author, legal scholar, and former president of Center for Progressive Reform, profiles the toxic leaders and intricate strategies that the Trump administration employed to rid the government of protective policies and institutions—harming the health of a nation and accelerating climate change and economic turmoil. Including:

• Scott Pruitt’s corruption scandal at the EPA 
• Elaine Chao’s weakening of transportation safety measures
• Ryan Zinke’s stint as secretary of the interior before he faced eighteen federal inquiries and was fired 
• And the actions and impacts of other controversial figures such as Rick Perry, Betsy DeVos, Sonny Perdue, and Andrew Puzder

While chronicling these abuses of power that defined the first Trump administration, McGarity also provides precise clarity on what we can continue to expect from the rest of his current term, what further harm can be done, and what this means for the future of our nation.

While harrowing at times, Demolition Agenda ends hopefully, with a new chapter that provides a road map for future progressive politicians to reinstate a safe, healthy, and equitable society for all Americans—and most importantly, regain their trust.

The Martin Luther King Jr. of popular memory vanquished Jim Crow in the South. But in this myth-shattering book, award-winning and New York Times bestselling historian Jeanne Theoharis argues that King’s time in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—outside Dixie—was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice. King of the North follows King as he crisscrosses the country from the Northeast to the West Coast, challenging school segregation, police brutality, housing segregation, and job discrimination. For these efforts, he was relentlessly attacked by white liberals, the media, and the federal government.

In this bold retelling, King emerges as a someone who not only led a movement but who showed up for other people’s struggles; a charismatic speaker who also listened and learned; a Black man who experienced police brutality; a minister who lived with and organized alongside the poor; and a husband who—despite his flaws—depended on Coretta Scott King as an intellectual and political guide in the national fight against racism, poverty, and war.

King of the North speaks directly to our struggles over racial inequality today. Just as she restored Rosa Parks’s central place in modern American history, so Theoharis radically expands our understanding of King’s life and work—a vision of justice unfulfilled in the present.

Mere decades from now, millions of people all over the world will be forced to move because of climate change. Entire islands will disappear into the sea. Once-in-a-century hurricanes will occur on a regular basis, decimating cities and wiping out peoples’ homes. Wildfires fed by prolonged drought will rage through communities. No one will be immune: in countries rich and poor, climate change will usher in a new era of migration.

In Shelter from the Storm noted journalist and migration researcher Julian Hattem tells the story of the massive human displacement that is already being caused by climate change. With hard-hitting journalism from the front lines of the environmental apocalypse, Hattem takes the reader on a journey from the South Pacific to the Indian subcontinent, the Mediterranean, and beyond, offering a shocking glimpse into the human geography wrecked by a warming planet.

Shelter from the Storm also provides rich historical perspective on how climate has impacted migration and a primer on cutting-edge climatological research, creating a multidimensional portrait of this uncertain new age. A work of profound expertise and storytelling, Shelter from the Storm gives a human face to the millions of climate migrants who are leaving their homes—and the millions more who will follow.

California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the country. It is also ground zero for a new “lithium gold rush”—a race to extract a mineral critical to the rapidly expanding electric vehicle and renewable energy storage markets. With enough lithium lurking beneath the surface to provide a third of global demand, who will benefit from the development of this precious resource? 

A work of stunning analysis and reporting, Charging Forward shows that the questions raised by Lithium Valley lie at the heart of the “green transition.” Weaving together movement politics, federal policy, and global supply chains, noted experts Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor stress that extracting lithium is just a first step: the real question is whether the region and the nation will address and overcome the environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and racial injustice that have been as much a part of the landscape as the Salton Sea itself.

What happens in Lithium Valley, the authors argue, will not stay there. This tiny patch of California is a microcosm of the broad climate challenges we face; understanding Lithium Valley today is the key to grasping the future of our economy and our planet.

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book

Brilliant thoughts on modern African literature and postcolonial literary criticism from one of the giants of contemporary letters

“One of the greatest writers of our time.” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, bestselling author

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was a towering figure in African literature, and his novels A Grain of Wheat; Weep Not, Child; and Petals of Blood are modern classics. Emerging from a literary scene that flourished in the 1950s and ’60s during the last years of colonialism in Africa, he became known not just as a novelist—one who, in the late ’70s, famously stopped writing novels in English and turned to the language he grew up speaking, Gĩkũyũ—but as a major postcolonial theorist.

In Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas, Ngũgĩ gives us a series of essays that build on the revolutionary ideas about language and its constructive role in national culture, history, and identity that he set out in his earlier work—illuminating the intrinsic importance of keeping intact and honoring these native languages throughout time.

Intricate and deeply nuanced, this collection examines the enduring power of African languages in resisting both the psychic and material impacts of colonialism, past and present. These themes are elucidated through chapters on some contemporaries of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, including Chinua Achebe, Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo, and Wole Soyinka—each offering a distinct lens on the liberatory potential of language.

A brave call for discourse and immensely relevant to our present moment, Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas works both as a wonderful introduction to the enduring themes of Ngũgĩ’s work as well as a vital addition to the library of the world’s greatest and most provocative writers.

“Nell Bernstein’s book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson’s book was for the environmental movement.” —Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC News, about Bernstein’s Burning Down the House

Over the past twenty years, one state after another has shuttered its youth prisons and stopped prosecuting kids as adults, slashing the number of children locked in cages by a stunning 75 percent. How did this remarkable change come about? In the follow-up to her 2014 award-winning book Burning Down the House, journalist Nell Bernstein offers an eye-opening and inspiring look at the forces that converged to move us from a moral panic about “juvenile superpredators” in the 1990s to a time in which the youth prison is rapidly fading from view.

In Our Future We Are Free begins and ends with the imprisoned youth who took a leading role in their own liberation. Through vivid profiles, Bernstein chronicles the tireless work of young activists, parents, litigators, researchers, and journalists to expose and challenge the racist brutality of youth prisons, as well as the surprising story of prison officials who worked from the inside to close their institutions for good. In a welcome “good news” account of positive change, this gripping story describes how communities are pursuing safety, rehabilitation, and accountability outside of locked institutions, and offers a model for how the United States might overcome its addiction to incarceration.

A veritable master class in social change, In Our Future We Are Free is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how large-scale transformation is possible.

Bankruptcy is the busiest federal court in America. In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many—a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially.

In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and class inequality in America. When cities go bankrupt, for example, police unions enjoy added leverage while police brutality victims are denied a seat at the negotiating table; the system is more forgiving of civil rights abuses than of the parking tickets disproportionately distributed in African American neighborhoods. Across a broad range of crucial issues, Unjust Debts reveals the hidden mechanisms by which bankruptcy impacts everything from sexual harassment to health care, police violence to employment discrimination, and the opioid crisis to gun violence.

In the tradition of Matthew Desmond’s groundbreaking Evicted, Unjust Debts is a riveting and original work of accessible scholarship with huge implications for ordinary people and will set the terms of debate for this vital subject.

Stefan M. Bradley was a young professor in Saint Louis University when Black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, by a local white police officer. Bradley quickly became a key media activist during the protests that ensued, giving on-the-ground interviews to Chris Hayes, CNN, Al Jazeera, the BBC, and others.

In If We Don’t Get It, Bradley, now a named professor of Black studies at Amherst College, shows how Brown’s murder sparked a grassroots movement for democracy, led by Black youth, which transformed the way we talk about race, justice, and policing in the United States.

Bradley conducted over two dozen oral history interviews with young Black protesters. Through the authentic voices of the movement’s participants, Bradley describes the motivation and tensions coursing through the uprising’s early days and weeks, the problems of media representation (and misrepresentation), intergenerational conflict over protest tactics, clashes with the police and politicians, and much more. If We Don’t Get It also explores the new generation of elected officials, including Congresswoman Cori Bush, who emerged from the local movement’s ranks.

A rich story with deep relevance for the protests of our own time, If We Don’t Get It offers a gripping account of how young activists, without previous political experience, succeeded in changing our national political narrative.

Recent years have seen an unprecedented push by state legislatures to pass anti-LGBTQ bills across the United States. Hundreds of laws, mainly attempting to ban access to gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth and to ban discussions of gender identity and sexuality from high school curriculums, have been introduced this year alone—a new and deeply troubling record.

In these times visual representation of queer love is as important as it has ever been, and in Transcend, award-winning Taiwanese American photographer Sandra Chen Weinstein showcases some of the work from a long career of photographing the LGBTQ community, especially the trans community. Weinstein’s own child recently came out as queer, trans, and non-binary at the age of twenty-eight, and the core of the book is a series of photographs that focuses on their relationship.

A gorgeously packaged, full-color book, Transcend challenges many assumptions about LGBTQ life in the United States and is an enduring visual testament to the strength, resilience, and joy of the queer community in the face of discrimination, inequality, and violence.

Transcend was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

In a wholly original argument, Collins charts this economic, social, and ecological destruction and shows how these effects manifest in every facet of our society, including:

• Increasing the tax burden on ordinary working people
• Reducing public funding for schools, roads, and other essential infrastructure
• Shrinking the pool of affordable housing, especially in poor and urban areas
• Accelerating climate change and dictating what ends up on our dinner plate
• Shaping the news we consume and fueling the spread of misinformation

Collins argues that perhaps, worst of all, the concentration of wealth and power is leading to political hijacking, undermining the democratic principle that our votes matter equally. Full of engrossing charts, graphs, political cartoons, and more, this book is an urgent call-to-action and road map to a more equitable society, where everyone has access to the resources that will allow them to thrive—and one where it is no longer commonplace to live in a constant state of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety Burned by Billionaires offers a pointed prescription for taking power back from the billionaire class and achieving the shared prosperity that comes from a healthy and equal society.

In Bad Law, the New York Times bestselling author of Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution reimagines what our legal system, and society at large, could look like if we could move past legislation plagued by racism, misogyny, and corruption. Through accessible yet detailed prose and trenchant wit, Mystal argues that these egregiously awful laws—his “Bill of Wrongs”—continue to cause systematic and individual harm and should be repealed completely.

By exposing the flawed foundations of the rules we live by, and through biting humor and insight, Bad Law offers a crisp, pertinent take on:

• abortion and the Hyde Amendment, and the role federal funding, or lack thereof, has played in depriving women of necessary health and reproductive care
• immigration and illegal reentry, and the illusions that have been sold to us regarding immigration policy, reform, and whiteness at large
• voter registration laws, and how the right to vote has become a moral issue, and ironically, antidemocratic
• gun control and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and the extreme yet obvious dangers of granting immunity to gun manufacturers

But, as the man Samantha Bee calls “irrepressible and righteously indignant” and Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion calls “the funniest lawyer in America,” points out, these laws do not come to us from on high; we write them, and we can and should unwrite them. In a fierce, funny, and wholly original takedown spanning all the hot-button topics in the country today, one of our most brilliant legal thinkers points the way to a saner tomorrow.

Since its first publication in the 1990s, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important and successful—and beloved—history books of our time. As the late Howard Zinn said, “Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book.” Having sold well over 2 million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and numerous other commendations and prizes and was even heralded on the front page of the New York Times long after its first publication.

Now, the brilliant and award-winning artist Nate Powell—the first cartoonist ever to win a National Book Award—has adapted Loewen’s classic work into a graphic edition that perfectly captures both Loewen’s text and the irreverent spirit of his work. Eye-popping illustrations bring to life the true history chronicled in Lies My Teacher Told Me, and ample text boxes and callouts ensure nothing is lost in translation. The book is perfect for those making their first foray past the shroud of history textbooks, and it will also be beloved by those who had their worldviews changed by the original.

In Policing White Supremacy, former FBI agent Mike German, who worked undercover in white supremacist and militia groups, issues a wake-up call about law enforcement’s dangerously lax approach to far-right violence.

Despite over a hundred deadly acts by far-right militants since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and the far right’s attempts to obstruct transfer of power to a duly elected president on January 6, the FBI continues to deprioritize investigations into white supremacist violence, instead targeting marginalized groups such as environmentalists and Black Lives Matter. In 2005, for example, the FBI labeled eco-terrorists as the top domestic threat, despite not a single fatal attack in the United States.

Noting that the FBI does not even compile accurate national data on white supremacist violence, German also exposes the continuing tolerance of overt racism in law enforcement, and police membership in white supremacist organizations. The threat these officers pose became clear when at least twenty-eight current and former law enforcement officials were alleged to have participated in the 2021 Capitol breach.

With chapters on “The Rise of the Proud Boys,” “A New Approach to Policing Hate Crimes,” and “Policing the Police,” Policing White Supremacy shows how the lack of transparency and accountability in federal, state, and local law enforcement has eroded public trust and undermined democracy. “Law Enforcement’s Role in Resisting White Supremacy” points the way forward to a future where far-right violence is recognized and addressed as the true threat it presents to our country.

The canonical work of cultural criticism by the “profoundly influential critic” (Artnet), in a beautiful thirtieth-anniversary edition, featuring a new foreword by esteemed visual artist Mickalene Thomas

“Sharp and persuasive.” —The New York Times Book Review on the original publication of Art on My Mind

In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the "pride paradox" that has given the right's appeals such resonance.

A 2024 New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Pick
A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024
Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction

For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel "stolen"?

Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where the city was reeling: coal jobs had left, crushing poverty persisted, and a deadly drug crisis struck the region. Although Pikeville was in the political center thirty years ago, by 2016, 80 percent of the district's population voted for Donald Trump. Her brilliant exploration of the town's response to a white nationalist march in 2017 — a rehearsal for the deadly Unite the Right march that would soon take place in Charlottesville, Virginia — takes us deep inside a torn and suffering community.

Hochschild focuses on a group swept up in the shifting political landscape: blue-collar men. In small churches, hillside hollers, roadside diners, trailer parks, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Hochschild introduces us to unforgettable people, and offers an original lens through which to see them and the wider world. In Stolen Pride, Hochschild incisively explores our dangerous times, even as she also points a way forward.

"A piercing . . . impressive and nuanced assessment of a critical factor in American politics." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Soon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called “the most important story” he would ever film: a big budget dramatization of the Manhattan Project and the invention and use of the revolutionary new weapon.

Over at Paramount, Hal B. Wallis was ramping up his own film version. His screenwriter: the novelist Ayn Rand, who saw in physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer the model for a character she was sketching for Atlas Shrugged.

Greg Mitchell’s The Beginning or the End chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military—for reasons of propaganda, politics, and petty human vanity (this was Hollywood).

Mitchell has found his way into the lofty rooms, from Washington to California, where it happened, unearthing hundreds of letters and dozens of scripts that show how wise intentions were compromised in favor of defending the use of the bomb and the imperatives of postwar politics. As in his acclaimed Cold War true-life thriller The Tunnels, he exposes how our implacable American myth-making mechanisms distort our history.

Since the dawn of germ theory, from cholera to sleeping sickness, syphilis to COVID-19, the history of infectious diseases and related policies has shown us how vulnerable communities have been impacted in the name of research or disease control.

In Infected, award-winning scientist and author Muhammad H. Zaman navigates the exceptionalism of infection and tells the epic story of compromised doctors and administrators, and the heroes who challenged them. It is a tale describing how exclusionary immigration acts, the Tuskegee syphilis study and the Guatemala experiments, the development of biological weapons, the fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan, and the rhetoric around the recent pandemic are all parts of the same deeper story—one of infectious diseases intertwined with power and politics.

This is a story that continues today, in poor nations that have long been impacted by the foreign policies of the rich, and at borders, where asylum seekers are denied necessary medical treatment regardless of who is in power. Melding science and history, Infected presents infection as a key to understanding our recent past, present, and future.

We are living through a time when real social change seems to be in the rearview mirror. But this rousing new book offers a beacon of hope: the stories of organizers who have shown America the way forward in the darkest of times.

Author of the celebrated A History of America in Ten Strikes (a Kirkus Reviews best book of 2018), Erik Loomis uncovers a rich and revealing history of social change activism with immediate relevance to our present. In twenty short biographies, Organizing America tells the story of America through its most important organizers. A chronological story with a vast sweep, Organizing America considers a cross section of social justice activists across time, race, gender, and movement, examining lives as varied as Benjamin Lay, Ida B. Wells, Eugene V. Debs, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Bob Moses, Yuri Kochiyama, Daniel Berrigan, Dolores Huerta, Barbara Gittings, and many more.

With an introduction that explains what organizing is and how collective action works—and how we should think about the power of organizing in 2025 and beyond—Loomis sets a tone that is both practical and historical, providing context and inspiration for anyone seeking to step into the work of changing America for the better.

In late 2022, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dragged on, President Vladimir Putin signed new legislation cracking down on LGBTQ communities. Almost ten years earlier, Russia had enacted a federal law that prohibited the promotion of “non-traditional sexual values”—seen as Western values—to anyone under the age of eighteen. Known by many as the “gay propaganda law,” it has been used to silence any public discussion or positive messaging about LGBTQ issues in any place or format accessible to minors, including the media and online. The new legislation expands on the 2013 law to cover all ages and all media, causing many to fear for a new wave of homophobic violence.

In Ordinary People, Ksenia Kuleshova, a rising star in the world of photography, has taken a series of color portraits, accompanied by short interviews, of LGBTQ Russians who, despite the relentless homophobia from politicians, religious leaders, and the media, remain open about their sexuality and seek happiness and joy in their everyday lives. Kuleshova also looks beyond Russia’s borders to people in former Soviet states, many of which have taken their lead from Russia’s homophobic policies. Powerful and intimate, Ordinary People is a moving and ultimately joyful testament to the survival and resilience of the LGBTQ community in one of the most oppressive countries in the world.

Ordinary People was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

Across twenty years of U.S.-backed government, Afghan women obtained legal degrees, became judges, and set out to transform their country—tackling corruption, challenging traditional gender norms, and reducing horrifying levels of violence against women and children. These educated and powerful women led the mission to build Afghanistan as a modern democracy that respected the rule of law and human rights.

Their work, however, posed an existential threat to everything the Taliban believed in—and when the United States withdrew in August 2021, the women judges of Afghanistan faced mortal danger.

Escape from Kabul is the extraordinary, never-before-told story of their escape—with the assistance of the International Association of Women Judges—and the shocking fates of those who were unable to flee. Veteran journalist Karen Bartlett had unique access to many of the women involved, including those in exile and the judges still trapped in Afghanistan, as well as women judges from around the world who were vital to the escape effort.

Combining real-life drama with searing critique, Escape from Kabul is also an indictment of the West—which abandoned its allies and the cause of women’s rights. The book closes with the judges’ recommendations for their beloved country, in their own words.

From the anti-CRT panic to efforts to divert tax dollars to charter schools, the right-wing attack on education has cut deep. In response, millions of Americans have rallied to defend their cherished public schools. But this incisive book asks whether choosing between our embattled status quo and the stingy privatized vision of the right is the only path forward. In As Public as Possible, education expert David I. Backer argues for going on the offensive by radically expanding the very notion of the “public” in our public schools.

Helping us to imagine a more just and equitable future, As Public as Possible proposes a concrete set of financial policies aimed at providing a high-quality and truly public education for all Americans, regardless of wealth and race. With witty and provocative prose, Backer shows how we can decouple school funding from property tax revenue, evening out inequalities across districts by distributing resources according to need. He argues for direct federal grants instead of the predations of municipal debt markets. And he offers eye-opening examples spanning the past and present, from the former Yugoslavia to contemporary Philadelphia, which help us to imagine a radically different way of financing the education of all of our children.

It’s well known that our industrialized food system has abandoned priorities of nutrition and environmental stability in the pursuit of profit—a model designed to fail, especially as climate change escalates. Yet this groundbreaking book describes a glimmer of hope: a green wave of diverse female farmers, entrepreneurs, community organizers, scientists, and political leaders who operate with the shared goals of combatting climate change through regenerative agriculture, redesigning the food system, and producing healthy, socially responsible food.

From the Ground Up, by award-winning author Stephanie Anderson, offers a journey into the root causes of our unsustainable food chain, revealing its detrimental reliance on extractive agriculture, which depletes soil and water, produces nutritionally deficient food, and devastates communities and farmers. Anderson then delivers an uplifting, deeply reported narrative of women-led farms and ranches nationwide, supported by women-led investment firms, farmer training programs, restaurants, supply chain partners, and advocacy groups, all working together to create a more inclusive and sustainable world.

From the Ground Up sheds light on a set of inspiring journeys, with stories that will transform the way we think about the food chain—one that can weather the storms of climate change, conflicts, and global pandemics.

Echoing James Forman Jr.’s Locking Up Our Own, a riveting story of race, civil rights, and rebellion in Washington, DC

In April 1968, following the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., a wave of uprisings swept across America. None was more visible—or resulted in more property damage, arrests, or federal troop involvement—than in Washington, DC, where thousands took to the streets in protest against racial inequality, looting and burning businesses in the process. The nation’s capital was shaken to its foundations.

When the Smoke Cleared tells the story of the Washingtonians who seized the moment to rebuild a more just society, one that would protect and foster Black political and economic power. A riveting account of activism, urban reimagination, and political transformation, Kyla Sommers’s revealing and deeply researched narrative is ultimately a tale of blowback, as the Nixon administration and its allies in Congress thwarted the ambitions of DC’s reformers, opposing civil rights reforms and self-governance. And nationwide, conservative politicians used the specter of crime in the capital to roll back the civil rights movement and create the modern carceral state.

A vital chapter in the struggle for racial equality, When the Smoke Cleared is an account of open wounds, paths not taken, and their unforeseen consequences—revealed here in all of their contemporary significance.

A new generation of Americans has declared that another world is possible. And yet, the stubborn problems of inequality, climate change, and declining health seem as intractable as ever. Where might different answers lie?

Intrepid journalist Natasha Hakimi Zapata has traveled around the world, from Costa Rica to Uganda, and Estonia to Singapore, uncovering how different countries solve the problems that plague the United States. Through in-depth reporting, including interviews with senior government officials, activists, industry professionals, and the ordinary people affected by their policies, Another World Is Possible examines innovative programs that address public health, social services, climate change, housing, education, addiction, and more.

In each instance Hakimi Zapata provides a clear-eyed assessment of the history, challenges, cost-effectiveness, and real-world impact of these programs. The result is a compelling, frame-shifting account of how we might live differently and create a safer, healthier, more sustainable future.

A work of keen analysis as well as enormous heart and optimism, Another World Is Possible is destined to crack the mold of current debates, and to refresh our sense of what might be possible tomorrow.

A Ms. Magazine Most Anticipated Book

In Silver Repetition, Lily Wang’s endless, perfect loops of memory and dream, loss and return, combine to create a formally inventive coming-of-age novel. Told from the perspective of a young Asian immigrant thoughtfully navigating dual identities, grief, family, migration, and modern relationships, this is a novel infused with the rich language of a poet.

Having left China for Canada with her parents as a child, Yuè Yuè yearns to discover who she is as she nears the end of her undergraduate degree and starts a new relationship. In urgent poetic fragments, she seeks common ground with her Canadian-born younger sister and grieves the beloved cousin she lost touch with back home. After Yuè Yuè receives a call from a girl making accusations, her date ghosts her. Meanwhile, her mother’s illness advances like snow. On a walk in the woods, Yuè Yuè sees a little girl digging in the mud, but when she peeks behind the curtain of black hair, her own face haunts her.

In a moving reunion, Yuè Yuè’s cousin comes to visit and everyone is caught, laughing, in the rain. The novel shows how, despite the weight of grief, isolation, and difference, even the most delicate family bonds can knit together tightly enough for the future to overcome the past.

Leading lights of the NBA on why the fight for social justice and racial equality matters to them—and to all of us

“At the root of this coalition, what binds and joins us together is a shared desire to fight for everyone to be treated with dignity, no matter their race, education, religion, sexual orientation, or economic situation.”
—CJ McCollum, president, National Basketball Players Association, and guard, New Orleans Pelicans

Professional basketball players are famous for their otherworldly athletic talents and accomplishments—but many of them also are deeply committed to using their platform to improve their communities and shed light on injustice. In 2020, the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), and the National Basketball Coaches Association (NBCA) harnessed this commitment and created the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition—a nonprofit dedicated to advancing social justice and combating racial inequality.

The Power of Basketball is a book of essays written by members of this coalition and other leaders across the NBA and WNBA community—players, coaches, and executives who are committed to promoting voting rights, meaningful police reform, transforming the criminal justice system, and creating community safety. Each essay delves into a particular issue at the heart of the author’s activism and tells the personal story and motivation behind the cause they champion. With contributions from players including CJ McCollum, Malcolm Brogdon, and Tierra Ruffin-Pratt; coaches including Doc Rivers, Caron Butler, and Jamahl Mosley; and team governors including Steve Ballmer, Vivek Ranadivé, and Clara Wu Tsai, The Power of Basketball reveals the authenticity of the drive that NBA players, coaches, and executives bring to the fight for social justice even when the bright lights of NBA games are not shining.

With contributions from:

Steve Ballmer, chairman, Los Angeles Clippers, and board, National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

J.B. Bickerstaff, head coach, Cleveland Cavaliers, and board, National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

Malcolm Brogdon, guard, Portland Trail Blazers, and founder, Brogdon Family Foundation

Caron Butler, assistant coach, Miami Heat; founder, 3D Foundation; board of trustees, Vera Institute of Justice; and author, Tuff Juice: My Journey from the Streets to the NBA

James Cadogan, executive director, National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

Ed Chung, Vice President of Initiatives, Vera Institute of Justice

Tre Jones, guard, San Antonio Spurs, and board, National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

CJ McCollum, guard, New Orleans Pelicans; president, National Basketball Players Association (NBPA); and founder, CJ McCollum Dream Centers

Jamahl Mosley, head coach, Orlando Magic, and board, National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

Larry Nance Jr., center-forward, New Orleans Pelicans; founder, Zero Hunger Challenge; founder, Athletes vs. Crohn’s & Colitis (AVC); and board, National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

Vivek Ranadivé, owner and chairman, Sacramento Kings, and board, National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

Glenn “Doc” Rivers, head coach, Milwaukee Bucks, and founding board, National Basketball Social Justice Coalition

Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, guard, Washington Mystics, Los Angeles Sparks (ret. 2022)

Clara Wu Tsai, governor, New York Liberty; owner, Brooklyn Nets; vice chairman, BSE Global, and founder, Brooklyn Social Justice Fund

The U.S. Senator from Oregon who is leading the fight to restore the talking filibuster explains how changing just one rule could save our democracy

In a compelling and powerfully argued book, Senator Jeff Merkley and his longtime chief of staff tell the insiders’ story of how the Senate used to work and how the filibuster came to cripple the self-styled “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” with paralyzing gridlock. And they make the surprising case that restoring a modified version of the old-style, talking filibuster may just be our democracy’s path back from the brink.

For nearly two centuries, the Senate designed by the Founders served the purpose they envisioned: it was a deliberative legislative body where the nation’s thorniest challenges were hashed out. Senators had the ability to speak at length and offer any manner of amendments to influence bills, and then when all had had a say, the Senate voted. Senators who objected to passing a bill could wage a defiant filibuster—in the spirit of fictional Senator Smith who talked until he collapsed in order to block a corrupt railroad deal in the classic 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But at the end of the day, nearly all legislation, amendments, and nominations went to a vote, and the majority prevailed.

Today, however, thanks to abuse of a fifty-year-old reform intended to make it easier for the Senate to pass legislation, the exceedingly difficult, rare filibuster has morphed, plunging the Senate into dysfunction and threatening the very foundations of our democracy. Now, the minority party can simply declare a “no-talk” filibuster, insisting on a supermajority of sixty votes to pass nearly any bill or a lengthy process to confirm any of the president’s nominees—giving themselves a veto over the majority’s agenda. Wildly popular bills languish, judgeships and administrative posts remain unfilled, but ordinary citizens can’t see why because the obstruction all takes place behind closed doors.

Filibustered! combines a marvelous romp through key moments in filibuster history—from the first filibuster in 1841 through Southern Dixiecrat filibusters of civil rights legislation, up through Mitch McConnell’s transformation of the filibuster into a routine tool of perennial gridlock—with firsthand accounts of recent high-profile legislative fights, and a compelling argument that the key to the Senate’s future may be found in its past.

Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poor Americans, including antipoverty programs such as the earned income tax credit, Medicaid, and affordable housing vouchers and subsidies. States and local governments spend tens of billions more. Ironically, these enormous sums fuel the “corporate poverty complex,” a vast web of hidden industries and entrenched private-sector interests that profit from the bureaucracies regulating the lives of the poor. From bail bondsmen to dialysis providers to towing companies, their business models depend on exploiting low-income Americans, and their political influence ensures a thriving set of industries where everyone profits except the poor, while U.S. taxpayers foot the bill.

In Poverty for Profit, veteran journalist Anne Kim investigates the multiple industries that infiltrate almost every aspect of the lives of the poor—health care, housing, criminal justice, and nutrition. She explains how these businesses are aided by public policies such as the wholesale privatization of government services and the political influence these industries wield over lawmakers and regulators.

Supported by original investigative reporting on the lesser-known players profiting from the antipoverty industry, Poverty for Profit adds a crucial dimension to our understanding of how structural inequality and structural racism function today.

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.

A groundbreaking collective work of history by a group of incarcerated scholars that resurrects the lost truth about the first women’s prison

A Ms. Magazine Most Anticipated Book

What if prisoners were to write the history of their own prison? What might that tell them—and all of us—about the roots of the system that incarcerates so many millions of Americans?

In this groundbreaking and revelatory volume, a group of incarcerated women at the Indiana Women’s Prison have assembled a chronicle of what was originally known as the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls, founded in 1873 as the first totally separate prison for women in the United States. In an effort that has already made the national news, and which was awarded the Indiana History Outstanding Project for 2016 by the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project worked under conditions of sometimes-extreme duress, excavating documents, navigating draconian limitations on what information incarcerated scholars could see or access, and grappling with the unprecedented challenges stemming from co-authors living on either side of the prison walls.

With contributions from ten incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women, the result is like nothing ever produced in the historical literature: a document that is at once a shocking revelation of the roots of America’s first prison for women, and also a meditation on incarceration itself. Who Would Believe a Prisoner? is a book that will be read and studied for years to come as the nation continues to grapple with the crisis of mass incarceration.

Based on years of research by the criminal justice organization Worth Rises—best known for campaigns that have revolutionized prison telecom and made prison and jail communication free in cities and states around the country—The Prison Industry maps the range of ways in which private corporations, often with their government partners, make money off incarceration. It further details the gross extraction of wealth from incarcerated people and their families, who have been brutalized by overpolicing and mass surveillance.

Chapters on labor, telecom, healthcare, community corrections, and more explore the origin story of privatization for each sector and how much money is in it for the corporations involved. Stretching far beyond private prisons to look at all the sectors that benefit from incarceration, the authors illuminate the methods used to extract resources from public coffers and communities, which corporations are most active and how they partner with governments, and the harms these profit-based approaches to justice cause people, families, and communities.

Ultimately, The Prison Industry makes a compelling case for dismantling the prison industry and prison abolition more broadly. It serves as a tool for the tearing down of our wholly oppressive carceral system—the ashes of which we can use to create a better world built on care, not cages.

With a foreword by Angela Garbes

From the president of the Economic Security Project, a book showing how a just future is around the corner, if we are ready to seize it

The Guarantee asks us to imagine an America where housing, health care, a college education, dignified work, family care, an inheritance, and an income floor are not only attainable by all but guaranteed, by our government, for everyone.

But isn’t this pie-in-the-sky thinking? Not by a long shot, as this provocative new book reveals. As it stands, our current economic system is chock full of government-backed guarantees, from bailouts to bankruptcy protection, to keep the private sector in business. So why can’t the same be true for the rest of us?

Author Natalie Foster, co-founder of the Economic Security Project, has had a front-row seat to the dramatic leaps forward in government guarantees over the past decade, from student debt relief to the child tax credit expansion. Her brilliantly sketched vision for a new Guarantee Framework is rooted in real life experiences, collaborations with some of today’s most important activists and visionaries, and a concrete sense of the policies that are possible—and ready to implement—in twenty-first-century America.

The Guarantee is the rare book that will shift the terms of debate, moving us from the expired and defunct assumptions of no-guardrails capitalism to a nation that works for all of its people.

In the fevered battles over immigration, Democrats and Republicans alike agree on this: that migrants who have committed a crime have no place in this country. But targeting migrants because they have committed a crime is a short-sighted appeal to nativist fear. To predicate a migrant’s right to stay in the country on whether they are law-abiding and therefore deserving or “criminal” and undeserving does little to improve public safety and has an especially devastating impact on low-income migrants of color.

While César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández’s first book, Migrating to Prison, focuses on the explosion of migrant detention centers over the past decades, Welcome the Wretched tackles head-on what happens when a deeply flawed and racist criminal legal system and immigration system converge to senselessly cruel effect. Drawing on everything from history to legal analyses and philosophy, García Hernández counters the fundamental assumption that criminal activity has a rightful place in immigration matters, arguing that instead of using the criminal legal system to identify people to deport, the United States should place a reimagined sense of citizenship and solidarity at the center of immigration policy.

Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flourish. In this powerful polemic, formerly incarcerated activist, essayist, and organizer Emile Suotonye DeWeaver argues that the root of the problem is white supremacy. In the same vein as James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, DeWeaver’s Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine brilliantly combines social commentary and personal narrative. This fiery debut is an original and provocative critique of the deeply troubling racial logic behind parole boards, police unions, prison administrations, and more.

During his twenty-one years in prison, DeWeaver covertly organized to pass legislation impacting juveniles in California’s criminal legal system; was a culture writer for Easy Street Magazine; and co-founded Prison Renaissance, an organization centering incarcerated voices and incarcerated leadership. DeWeaver draws on these experiences to interrogate the central premise of reform efforts, including prisoner rehabilitation programs, arguing that they demand self-abnegation, entrench white supremacy, and ignore the role of structural oppression.

With lucid, urgent prose, DeWeaver intervenes in contemporary debates on criminal justice and racial justice efforts with his eye-opening discussion of the tools we need to end white supremacy—both within and outside the carceral setting. For readers of Mariame Kaba, Susan Burton, and Derecka Purnell, Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine adds a sharp and unique perspective to the growing discourse on racial justice, incarceration, and abolition.

Finalist, Colorado Book Award

A gripping work of narrative nonfiction, told across time, that exposes what’s at stake when prosecutors conceal evidence—and what we can do about it

The Brady rule was meant to transform the U.S. justice system. In soaring language, the Supreme Court decreed in 1963 that prosecutors must share favorable evidence with the defense—part of a suite of decisions of that reform-minded era designed to promote fairness for those accused of crimes. But reality intervened. The opinion faced many challenges, ranging from poor legal reasoning and shaky precedent to its clashes with the very foundations of the American criminal legal system and some of its most powerful enforcers: prosecutors.

In this beautifully wrought work of narrative nonfiction, Thomas L. Dybdahl illustrates the promise and shortcomings of the Brady rule through deft storytelling and attention to crucial cases, including the infamous 1984 murder of Catherine Fuller in Washington, DC. This case led to eight young Black men being sent to prison for life after the prosecutor, afraid of losing the biggest case of his career, hid information that would have proven their innocence.

With a seasoned defense lawyer’s unsparing eye for detail, Thomas L. Dybdahl chronicles the evolution of the Brady rule—from its unexpected birth to the series of legal decisions that left it defanged and ineffective. Yet Dybdahl shows us a path forward by highlighting promising reform efforts across the country that offer a blueprint for a legislative revival of Brady’s true spirit.

For the past two decades, the Marguerite Casey Foundation has dedicated its resources to building a movement of low-income families advocating on their own behalf. Now, founding president Luz Vega-Marquis offers a history of the foundation, intertwined with her own history as a Nicaraguan immigrant whose family was exiled, plunged into poverty, and forced to start over in the United States. Ask, Listen, Act is riveting in its description of the evolution of an iconoclastic foundation and of Vega-Marquis herself as she rises from a bookkeeper to become the first Latina to lead a major national foundation.

In a powerful counter to the blame-laden narrative we tell ourselves about poverty in this nation, Vega-Marquis explores how the foundation has worked to eliminate poverty through intensive listening, movement building, and the leadership of families who have experienced poverty firsthand. The founder of Hispanics in Philanthropy and a member of numerous philanthropic boards, Vega-Marquis offers a vivid look at the worlds of philanthropy, social change, and, most importantly, the families we are most likely to ignore.

Beautifully written and filled with moving stories, Ask, Listen, Act explores the world of philanthropy from the perspective of someone who is at once an insider and an outsider, offering illuminating insights for all.

Jacques Books is a bespoke imprint of The New Press, dedicated to publishing culturally significant books that might not otherwise garner the attention of a trade publisher.

For the past two decades, the Marguerite Casey Foundation has dedicated its resources to building a movement of low-income families advocating on their own behalf. Now, founding president Luz Vega-Marquis offers a history of the foundation, intertwined with her own history as a Nicaraguan immigrant whose family was exiled, plunged into poverty, and forced to start over in the United States. Ask, Listen, Act is riveting in its description of the evolution of an iconoclastic foundation and of Vega-Marquis herself as she rises from a bookkeeper to become the first Latina to lead a major national foundation.

In a powerful counter to the blame-laden narrative we tell ourselves about poverty in this nation, Vega-Marquis explores how the foundation has worked to eliminate poverty through intensive listening, movement building, and the leadership of families who have experienced poverty firsthand. The founder of Hispanics in Philanthropy and a member of numerous philanthropic boards, Vega-Marquis offers a vivid look at the worlds of philanthropy, social change, and, most importantly, the families we are most likely to ignore.

Beautifully written and filled with moving stories, Ask, Listen, Act explores the world of philanthropy from the perspective of someone who is at once an insider and an outsider, offering illuminating insights for all.

Jacques Books is a bespoke imprint of The New Press, dedicated to publishing culturally significant books that might not otherwise garner the attention of a trade publisher.

Brilliant essays from the renowned Nation columnist—aka the Mad Law Professor—tackling questions of identity, bioethics, race, surveillance, and more

Beginning with a jaw-dropping rumination on a centuries-old painting featuring a white man with a Black man’s leg surgically attached (with the expired Black leg-donor in the foreground), contracts law scholar and celebrated journalist Patricia J. Williams uses the lens of the law to take on core questions of identity, ethics, and race.

With her trademark elegant prose and critical legal studies wisdom, Williams brings to bear a keen analytic eye and a lawyer’s training to chapters exploring the ways we have legislated the ownership of everything from body parts to gene sequences—and the particular ways in which our laws in these areas isolate nonnormative looks, minority cultures, and out-of-the-box thinkers.

At the heart of “Wrongful Birth” is a lawsuit in which a white couple who use a sperm bank sue when their child “comes out Black”; “Bodies in Law” explores the service of genetic ancestry testing companies to answer the question of who owns DNA. And “Hot Cheeto Girl” examines the way that algorithms give rise to new predictive categories of human assortment, layered with market-inflected cages of assigned destiny.

In the spirit of Dorothy Roberts, Rebecca Skloot, and Anne Fadiman, The Miracle of the Black Leg offers a brilliant meditation on the tricky place where law, science, ethics, and cultural slippage collide.

Confidential follows on the success of acclaimed photographer, psychologist, and writer Mikołaj Grynberg’s highly acclaimed short story collection, I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To, which was a finalist for numerous awards, including Poland’s most prestigious literary prize, the Nike, a National Jewish Book Award, the Sami Rohr Prize, and the National Translation Award in Prose for Sean Gasper Bye’s translation.

This powerful new novella is a darkly comic portrait of a Jewish family in today’s Poland, struggling to express their love for one another in the face of a past that cannot and will not be forgotten. The grandfather is a doctor, a Holocaust survivor who has now vowed to live only for pleasure. His son, born at the start of the war, becomes a well-respected physicist, but finds himself emotionally unable to attend conferences in Germany, despite the benefit it would give his career. The mother is loving but firm, though she has a secret habit of attending strangers’ funerals so that she can cry.

A masterpiece of concision, Confidential expands on one of the stories in I’d Like to Say Sorry . . . , tackling themes of memory, trauma, and care, as well as enduring anti-Semitism, with unforgettable power, emotional complexity, and Grynberg’s trademark black humor.