The New Press

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.

With a new afterword from the authors, the critically praised indictment of widely embraced “alternatives to incarceration”

“But what does it mean—really—to celebrate reforms that convert your home into your prison?” —Michelle Alexander, from the foreword

Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But in a searing, “cogent critique” (Library Journal), Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal that many of these so-called reforms actually weave in new strands of punishment and control, bringing new populations who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment under physical control by the state.

Whether readers are seasoned abolitionists or are newly interested in sensible alternatives to retrograde policing and criminal justice policies and approaches, this highly praised book offers “a wealth of critical insights” that will help readers “tread carefully through the dizzying terrain of a world turned upside down” and “make sense of what should take the place of mass incarceration” (The Brooklyn Rail).

With a foreword by Michelle Alexander, Prison by Any Other Name exposes how a kinder narrative of reform is effectively obscuring an agenda of social control, challenging us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change, and offering a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.

Featuring Noam Chomsky’s trademark directness and analytical precision, this is a sobering assessment of American foreign policy from the end of the Vietnam War to the Reagan era

“What Chomsky has made vivid is the truth that western political leaders, respectable people whose ‘moderation’ contains not a hint of totalitarianism, can, at great remove in physical and cultural distance, kill and maim people on a scale comparable with the accredited monsters of our time.” —from John Pilger’s foreword to Towards a New Cold War

With the same uncompromising style that characterized his breakthrough, Vietnam-era writings, Towards a New Cold War extends Chomsky’s critique of U.S. foreign policy through the early 1970s to Ronald Reagan’s first term.

Expanding on themes such as the cozy relationship of intellectuals to the state and American adventurism after World War II, Chomsky goes on to examine the way that U.S. policy makers set about the task of rewriting their horrible history of involvement in Southeast Asia and turned their attention more squarely on the Middle East and Central America. He also assesses U.S. oil strategy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dissects the first volume of Henry Kissinger’s memoirs, issues an urgent call to stem the bloodshed in then-unknown East Timor and, in the title essay, marks the increased posture of confrontation and rearmament under presidents Carter and Reagan that signaled the end of détente with the Soviet Union. As the United States adopts this same aggressive posture toward China in a sort of twenty-first-century Cold War, Chomsky’s words are newly relevant.

A riveting primer on the growing trend of surveillance, monitoring, and control that is extending our prison system beyond physical walls and into a dark future—by the prize-winning author of Understanding Mass Incarceration

“James Kilgore is one of my favorite commentators regarding the phenomenon of mass incarceration and the necessity of pursuing truly transformative change.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

In the last decade, as the critique of mass incarceration has grown more powerful, many reformers have embraced changes that release people from prisons and jails. As educator, author, and activist James Kilgore brilliantly shows, these rapidly spreading reforms largely fall under the heading of “e-carceration”—a range of punitive technological interventions, from ankle monitors to facial recognition apps, that deprive people of their liberty, all in the name of ending mass incarceration.

E-carceration can block people’s access to employment, housing, healthcare, and even the chance to spend time with loved ones. Many of these technologies gather data that lands in corporate and government databases and may lead to further punishment or the marketing of their data to Big Tech.

This riveting primer on the world of techno-punishment comes from the author of award–winning Understanding Mass Incarceration. Himself a survivor of prison and e-carceration, Kilgore captures the breadth and complexity of these technologies and offers inspiring ideas on how to resist.

The "heart-stopping" (The Millions), "richly layered" (Brooklyn Rail), "haunting, beautiful" (BuzzFeed) story of an escaped captive and the killer hound that pursues him

"Slave Old Man is a cloudburst of a novel, swift and compressed—but every page pulses, blood-warm. . . . The prose is so electrifyingly synesthetic that, on more than one occasion, I found myself stopping to rub my eyes in disbelief."
—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Patrick Chamoiseau's Slave Old Man was published to accolades in hardcover in a brilliant translation by Linda Coverdale, winning the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and chosen as a Publishers WeeklyBest Book of 2018.

Now in paperback, Slave Old Man is a gripping, profoundly unsettling story of an elderly enslaved person's daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his enslaver and a fearsome hound on his heels. We follow them into a lush rain forest where nature is beyond all human control: sinister, yet entrancing and even exhilarating, because the old man's flight to freedom will transform them all in truly astonishing—even otherworldly—ways, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest reshapes reality and time itself.

Chamoiseau's exquisitely rendered new novel is an adventure for all time, one that fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs in vivid, sometimes hallucinatory prose. Offering a loving and mischievous tribute to the Creole culture of early nineteenth-century Martinique, this novel takes us on a unique and moving journey into the heart of Caribbean history.

Hopeful and forward-looking futuristic short stories that explore how the power of storytelling can help create the world we need

“This is a glorious book that challenges our conceptions of bookmaking as much as it questions our conceptions of world-building. We, as earthlings, will be better to the earth after experiencing this book. That is not hyperbole.”
—New York Times bestselling author Kiese Laymon

Afterglow is a stunning collection of original short stories in which writers from many different backgrounds envision a radically different climate future. Published in collaboration with Grist, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions, these stirring tales expand our ability to imagine a better world.

Inspired by cutting-edge literary movements, such as Afrofuturism, hopepunk, and solarpunk, Afterglow imagines intersectional worlds in which no one is left behind—where humanity prioritizes equitable climate solutions and continued service to one’s community. Whether through abundance or adaptation, reform, or a new understanding of survival, these stories offer flickers of hope, even joy, as they provide a springboard for exploring how fiction can help create a better reality.

Afterglow welcomes a diverse range of new voices into the climate conversation to envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress. A creative work rooted in the realities of our present crisis, Afterglow presents a new way to think about the climate emergency—one that blazes a path to a clean, green, and more just future.

A crucial indictment of widely embraced "alternatives to incarceration" that exposes how many of these new approaches actually widen the net of punishment and surveillance

"But what does it mean—really—to celebrate reforms that convert your home into your prison?"
—Michelle Alexander, from the foreword

Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data-driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost-effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But many of these so-called reforms actually widen the net, weaving in new strands of punishment and control, and bringing new populations, who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment, under physical control by the state.

As mainstream public opinion has begun to turn against mass incarceration, political figures on both sides of the spectrum are pushing for reform. But—though they're promoted as steps to confront high rates of imprisonment—many of these measures are transforming our homes and communities into prisons instead.

In Prison by Any Other Name, activist journalists Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal the way the kinder, gentler narrative of reform can obscure agendas of social control and challenge us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change. A foreword by Michelle Alexander situates the book in the context of criminal justice reform conversations. Finally, the book offers a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.

As a U.S. senator and former federal prosecutor, Sheldon Whitehouse has had a front-row seat for the spectacle of dark money in government. In his widely praised book Captured, he describes how corporations buy influence over our government— not only over representatives and senators, but over the very regulators directly responsible for enforcing the laws under which these corporations operate, and over the judges and prosecutors who are supposed to be vigilant about protecting the public interest.

In a case study that shows these operations at work, Whitehouse reveals how fossil fuel companies have held any regulation related to climate change at bay. The problem is structural: as Kirkus Reviews wrote, "many of the ills it illuminates are bipartisan."

This paperback edition features a new preface by the author that reveals how corporate influence has taken advantage of Donald Trump's presidency to advance its agenda—and what we can do about it.

Finalist, Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism

In the tradition of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, a groundbreaking global investigation into the industry ravaging the environment and global health—from the James Beard Award–winning journalist

Over the past few decades, palm oil has seeped into every corner of our lives. Worldwide, palm oil production has nearly doubled in just the last decade: oil-palm plantations now cover an area nearly the size of New Zealand, and some form of the commodity lurks in half the products on U.S. grocery shelves. But the palm oil revolution has been built on stolen land and slave labor; it’s swept away cultures and so devastated the landscapes of Southeast Asia that iconic animals now teeter on the brink of extinction. Fires lit to clear the way for plantations spew carbon emissions to rival those of industrialized nations.

James Beard Award–winning journalist Jocelyn C. Zuckerman spent years traveling the globe, from Liberia to Indonesia, India to Brazil, reporting on the human and environmental impacts of this poorly understood plant. The result is Planet Palm, a riveting account blending history, science, politics, and food as seen through the people whose lives have been upended by this hidden ingredient.

This groundbreaking work of first-rate journalism compels us to examine the connections between the choices we make at the grocery store and a planet under siege.

The "heart-stopping" (The Millions), "richly layered" (Brooklyn Rail), "haunting, beautiful" (BuzzFeed) story of an escaped captive and the killer hound that pursues him

"Slave Old Man is a cloudburst of a novel, swift and compressed—but every page pulses, blood-warm. . . . The prose is so electrifyingly synesthetic that, on more than one occasion, I found myself stopping to rub my eyes in disbelief."
—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Patrick Chamoiseau's Slave Old Man was published to accolades in hardcover in a brilliant translation by Linda Coverdale, winning the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and chosen as a Publishers WeeklyBest Book of 2018.

Now in paperback, Slave Old Man is a gripping, profoundly unsettling story of an elderly enslaved person's daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his enslaver and a fearsome hound on his heels. We follow them into a lush rain forest where nature is beyond all human control: sinister, yet entrancing and even exhilarating, because the old man's flight to freedom will transform them all in truly astonishing—even otherworldly—ways, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest reshapes reality and time itself.

Chamoiseau's exquisitely rendered new novel is an adventure for all time, one that fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs in vivid, sometimes hallucinatory prose. Offering a loving and mischievous tribute to the Creole culture of early nineteenth-century Martinique, this novel takes us on a unique and moving journey into the heart of Caribbean history.

In a world torn apart by wars over oil, politicians have increasingly begun to look for alternative energy sources—and their leading choice is nuclear energy. Among the myths that have been spread over the years about nuclear-powered electricity are that it does not cause global warming or pollution, that it is inexpensive, and that it is safe.

Helen Caldicott's look at the actual costs and environmental consequences of nuclear energy belies the incessant barrage of nuclear industry propaganda. Caldicott "reveals truths," Martin Sheen has said, "that confirm we must take positive action now if we are to make a difference." In fact, nuclear power contributes to global warming; the true cost of nuclear power is prohibitive, with taxpayers picking up most of the tab; there's simply not enough uranium in the world to sustain nuclear power over the long term; and the potential for a catastrophic accident or a terrorist attack far outweighs any benefits. Concluding chapters detail alternative sustainable energy sources that are the key to a clean, green future.

Americans are required to pay taxes, serve on juries, get their kids vaccinated, get driver’s licenses, and sometimes go to war for their country. So why not ask—or require—every American to vote?

In 100% Democracy, E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport argue that universal participation in our elections should be a cornerstone of our system. It would be the surest way to protect against voter suppression and the active disenfranchisement of a large share of our citizens. And it would create a system true to the Declaration of Independence’s aspirations by calling for a government based on the consent of all of the governed.

It’s not as radical or utopian as it sounds: in Australia, where everyone is required to vote (Australians can vote “none of the above,” but they have to show up), 91.9 percent of Australians voted in the last major election in 2019, versus 60.1 percent in America’s 2016 presidential race. Australia hosts voting-day parties and actively celebrates this key civic duty.

It is time for the United States to take a major leap forward and recognize voting as both a fundamental civil right and a solemn civic duty required of every eligible U.S. citizen.

An essential handbook of eye-opening—and frequently myth-busting—facts and figures about the real lives of Black Americans today

There’s no defeating white supremacist myths without data—real data. Black Stats is a compact and useful guide that offers up-to-date figures on Black life in the United States today, avoiding jargon and assumptions and providing critical analyses and information.

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 everything from disease trends, incarceration rates, and lending practices to voting habits, green jobs, and educational achievement, the material in this book will enrich and inform a range of public debates while challenging commonly held yet often misguided perceptions.

Black Stats simultaneously highlights measures of incredible progress, conveys the disparate impacts of social policies and practices, and surprises with revelations that span subjects including the entertainment industry, military service, and marriage trends. An essential tool for advocates, educators, and anyone seeking racial justice, Black Stats is an affordable guidebook for anyone seeking to understand the complex state of our nation.

This is a love story like no other: Elinor Powell was an African American nurse in the U.S. military during World War II; Frederick Albert was a soldier in Hitler's army, captured by the Allies and shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Arizona desert. Like most other black nurses, Elinor pulled a second-class assignment, in a dusty, sun-baked—and segregated—Western town. The army figured that the risk of fraternization between black nurses and white German POWs was almost nil.

Brought together by unlikely circumstances in a racist world, Elinor and Frederick should have been bitter enemies; but instead, at the height of World War II, they fell in love. Their dramatic story was unearthed by journalist Alexis Clark, who through years of interviews and historical research has pieced together an astounding narrative of race and true love in the cauldron of war.

Based on a New York Times story by Clark that drew national attention, Enemies in Love paints a tableau of dreams deferred and of love struggling to survive, twenty-five years before the Supreme Court's Loving decision legalizing mixed-race marriage—revealing the surprising possibilities for human connection during one of history's most violent conflicts.

The lyrical and globe-spanning memoir by the influential feminist economist, with introductory pieces from two American icons

“Your heart and world will be opened by reading The Brass Notebook, the intimate and political life of Devaki Jain, a young woman who dares to become independent.” —Gloria Steinem

When she was barely thirty, the Indian feminist economist Devaki Jain befriended Doris Lessing, Nobel winner and author of The Golden Notebook, who encouraged Jain to write her story. Over half a century later, Jain has crafted what Desmond Tutu has called “a riveting account of the life story of a courageous woman who has all her life challenged what convention expects of her.”

Across an extraordinary life intertwined with those of Iris Murdoch, Gloria Steinem, Julius Nyerere, Henry Kissinger, and Nelson Mandela, Jain navigated a world determined to contain her ambitions. While still a young woman, she traveled alone across the subcontinent to meet Gandhi’s disciple Vinoba Bhave, hitchhiked around Europe in a sari, and fell in love with a Yugoslav at a Quaker camp in Saarbrücken. She attended Oxford University, supporting herself by washing dishes in a local café. Later, over the course of an influential career as an economist, Jain seized on the cause of feminism, championing the poor women who labored in the informal economy long before mainstream economics attended to questions of inequality.

With a foreword by Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen and an introduction by the well-known American feminist Gloria Steinem, whose own life and career were inspired by time spent with Jain, The Brass Notebook perfectly merges the political with the personal—a book full of life, ideas, politics, and history.

Winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize
Recommended by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Book Riot and Autostraddle

Nominated for a 2019 NAACP Image Award, a groundbreaking collection of profiles of African American women leaders in the twentieth-century fight for civil rights

During the Civil Rights Movement, African American women did not stand on ceremony; they simply did the work that needed to be done. Yet despite their significant contributions at all levels of the movement, they remain mostly invisible to the larger public. Beyond Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King, most Americans would be hard-pressed to name other leaders at the community, local, and national levels.

In Lighting the Fires of Freedom Janet Dewart Bell shines a light on women's all-too-often overlooked achievements in the Movement. Through wide-ranging conversations with nine women, several now in their nineties with decades of untold stories, we hear what ignited and fueled their activism, as Bell vividly captures their inspiring voices. Lighting the Fires of Freedom offers these deeply personal and intimate accounts of extraordinary struggles for justice that resulted in profound social change, stories that are vital and relevant today.

A vital document for understanding the Civil Rights Movement, Lighting the Fires of Freedom is an enduring testament to the vitality of women's leadership during one of the most dramatic periods of American history.

On November 1, 1911, over the North African oasis Tagiura, Lieutenant Giulio Cavotti leaned out of the cockpit of his primitive aircraft and, dropping a Haasen hand grenade, initiated one of the twentieth century’s most devastating military tactics: aerial bombing.

The bomb shatters history into hundreds of fragments scattered throughout time in this fascinating book from Sven Lindqvist, author of the acclaimed “Exterminate All the Brutes”. More than just a history, it is an overview and interrogation of the cultural and political dimensions—and the devastating effects—of war from above. Forming a labyrinth of events that illustrates the genocidal fantasies underlying so much conflict and the devastation wrought by aerial bombing, A History of Bombing links the total war of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War with centuries-past colonial warfare.

Mining such diverse topics as military history and strategy, the evolution of international law, turn-of-the-century science fiction, and the civilian experience during wartime, Lindqvist has produced a rich meditation on the past and the future of human conflict.

In American Hate: Survivors Speak Out, Arjun Singh Sethi, a community activist and civil rights lawyer, chronicles the stories of individuals affected by hate. In a series of powerful, unfiltered testimonials, survivors tell their stories in their own words and describe how the bigoted rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration have intensified bullying, discrimination, and even violence toward them and their communities.

We hear from the family of Khalid Jabara, who was murdered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in August 2016 by a man who had previously harassed and threatened them because they were Arab American. Sethi brings us the story of Jeanette Vizguerra, an undocumented mother of four who took sanctuary in a Denver church in February 2017 because she feared deportation under Trump's cruel immigration enforcement regime. Sethi interviews Taylor Dumpson, a young black woman who was elected student body president at American University only to find nooses hanging across campus on her first day in office. We hear from many more people impacted by the Trump administration, including Native, black, Arab, Latinx, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, undocumented, refugee, transgender, queer, and people with disabilities.

A necessary book for these times, American Hate explores this tragic moment in U.S. history by empowering survivors whose voices white supremacists and right-wing populist movements have tried to silence. It also provides ideas and practices for resistance that all of us can take to combat hate both now and in the future.