Saturday, February 3, 2024

iTunes Store: Top 25 Books in Politics & Current Events 2024-02-04

Desmond Cole - The Skin We're In artwork The Skin We're In
A Year of Black Resistance and Power
Desmond Cole
Genre: Political Science
Price: $2.99
Publish Date: January 28, 2020
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2020 TORONTO BOOK AWARD A bracing, provocative, and perspective-shifting book from one of Canada's most celebrated and uncompromising writers, Desmond Cole. The Skin We're In will spark a national conversation, influence policy, and inspire activists. In his 2015 cover story for Toronto Life magazine, Desmond Cole exposed the racist actions of the Toronto police force, detailing the dozens of times he had been stopped and interrogated under the controversial practice of carding. The story quickly came to national prominence, shaking the country to its core and catapulting its author into the public sphere. Cole used his newfound profile to draw insistent, unyielding attention to the injustices faced by Black Canadians on a daily basis.   Both Cole’s activism and journalism find vibrant expression in his first book, The Skin We’re In . Puncturing the bubble of Canadian smugness and naive assumptions of a post-racial nation, Cole chronicles just one year—2017—in the struggle against racism in this country. It was a year that saw calls for tighter borders when Black refugees braved frigid temperatures to cross into Manitoba from the States, Indigenous land and water protectors resisting the celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, police across the country rallying around an officer accused of murder, and more.   The year also witnessed the profound personal and professional ramifications of Desmond Cole’s unwavering determination to combat injustice. In April, Cole disrupted a Toronto police board meeting by calling for the destruction of all data collected through carding. Following the protest, Cole, a columnist with the Toronto Star , was summoned to a meeting with the paper’s opinions editor and informed that his activism violated company policy. Rather than limit his efforts defending Black lives, Cole chose to sever his relationship with the publication. Then in July, at another police board meeting, Cole challenged the board to respond to accusations of a police cover-up in the brutal beating of Dafonte Miller by an off-duty police officer and his brother. When Cole refused to leave the meeting until the question was publicly addressed, he was arrested. The image of Cole walking out of the meeting, handcuffed and flanked by officers, fortified the distrust between the city’s Black community and its police force.   Month-by-month, Cole creates a comprehensive picture of entrenched, systemic inequality. Urgent, controversial, and unsparingly honest, The Skin We’re In is destined to become a vital text for anti-racist and social justice movements in Canada, as well as a potent antidote to the all-too-present complacency of many white Canadians.



Christopher Hitchens & James Wolcott - A Hitch in Time artwork A Hitch in Time
Reflections Ready for Reconsideration
Christopher Hitchens & James Wolcott
Genre: Political Science
Price: $20.99
Publish Date: January 02, 2024
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Seller: Hachette Digital, Inc.

“An extended spa treatment that stretches tired brains and unkinks the usual habitual responses where Hitchens is concerned.” —James Wolcott in his introduction   An outstanding new collection, A HITCH IN TIME is a must have for Hitchens completists and the perfect starting point for understanding one of the most brilliant essayists of all time. Anthologized here for the first time, A HITCH IN TIME is a choice selection of Christopher Hitchens’s finest reviews, diary entries and essays - along with a smattering of ferocious letters. Familiar bêtes noires— Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger, Clinton —rub shoulders with lesser-known preoccupations:  P.G. Wodehouse, Princess Margaret  and, magisterially,  Isaiah Berlin . A HITCH IN TIME is a banquet of entertaining stories ranging from his thoughts on  Salman Rushdie  to being spanked by  Margaret Thatcher  in The House of Lords and the night he took his son to the Oscars. The broad scope and high caliber of Hitchens’ essays allows his work to transcend the occasion for which it was written and continues to be essential reading.  Along with an introduction by James Wolcott, A HITCH IN TIME recaptures the brilliance of Hitchens - barnstorming, cauterizing, and ultimately uncontainable.



Melissa Murray & Andrew Weissmann - The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary artwork The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary
Melissa Murray & Andrew Weissmann
Genre: Political Science
Price: $14.99
Expected Publish Date: February 27, 2024
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Timed to the start of the first trial in March 2024, this essential volume collects the four unprecedented indictments against Donald Trump and features extensive commentary by NYU law professors and MSNBC contributors Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissmann. In the long span of American history, Donald Trump is the first former president to face criminal indictment. He is the subject of a series of explosive charges across four cases: the January 6 case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith; the election interference case in Georgia; the classified documents case also brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith; and the "hush money" case in New York. The first trial, in New York City, is set to begin on March 4, 2024. Collecting the four indictments in a single, accessible volume, prominent legal scholars and commentators Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissmann walk us through each one in turn, with explanatory and contextual notes that enhance our understanding of these historic documents. The Trump Indictments includes: • An introduction offering background—historical and contemporary—for the charges against the former president. • The four indictments with annotations throughout, including insider notes from an eminent scholar (Murray) and a former federal prosecutor (Weissmann). • A cast of characters, from Trump and his alleged co-conspirators to notable Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who face prison sentences as a result of related January 6 cases. • A timeline that brings together in one place the critical events that led to the four indictments. A necessary handbook for any concerned citizen following the trials of Donald Trump in early 2024, The Trump Indictments will also endure as an indispensable record of a democracy in peril.



Åsne Seierstad & Seán Kinsella - Two Sisters artwork Two Sisters
A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey into the Syrian Jihad
Åsne Seierstad & Seán Kinsella
Genre: Political Science
Price: $12.99
Publish Date: April 03, 2018
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Seller: Macmillan

The riveting true story of two sisters’ journey to the Islamic State and the father who tries to bring them home Two Sisters , by the international bestselling author Åsne Seierstad, tells the unforgettable story of a family divided by faith. Sadiq and Sara, Somali immigrants raising a family in Norway, one day discover that their teenage daughters, Leila and Ayan, have vanished—and are en route to Syria to aid the Islamic State. Seierstad’s riveting account traces the sisters’ journey from secular, social democratic Norway to the front lines of the war in Syria, and follows Sadiq’s harrowing attempt to find them. Employing the same mastery of narrative suspense she brought to The Bookseller of Kabul and One of Us , Seierstad puts the problem of radicalization into painfully human terms, using instant messages and other primary sources to reconstruct a family’s crisis from the inside. Eventually, she takes us into the hellscape of the Syrian civil war, as Sadiq risks his life in pursuit of his daughters, refusing to let them disappear into the maelstrom—even after they marry ISIS fighters. Two Sisters is a relentless thriller and a feat of reporting with profound lessons about belief, extremism, and the meaning of devotion.



Maria Ressa - How to Stand Up to a Dictator artwork How to Stand Up to a Dictator
The Fight for Our Future
Maria Ressa
Genre: Political Science
Price: $1.99
Publish Date: November 29, 2022
Publisher: Harper
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

Introduction by Amal Clooney From the recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, an impassioned and inspiring memoir of a career spent holding power to account. Maria Ressa is one of the most renowned international journalists of our time. For decades, she challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, on its rocky path from an authoritarian state to a democracy. As a reporter from CNN, she transformed news coverage in her region, which led her in 2012 to create a new and innovative online news organization, Rappler. Harnessing the emerging power of social media, Rappler crowdsourced breaking news, found pivotal sources and tips, harnessed collective action for climate change, and helped increase voter knowledge and participation in elections. But by their fifth year of existence, Rappler had gone from being lauded for its ideas to being targeted by the new Philippine government, and made Ressa an enemy of her country’s most powerful man: President Duterte. Still, she did not let up, tracking government seeded disinformation networks which spread lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate. Hounded by the state and its allies using the legal system to silence her, accused of numerous crimes, and charged with cyberlibel for which she was found guilty, Ressa faces years in prison and thousands in fines. There is another adversary Ressa is battling. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is also the story of how the creep towards authoritarianism, in the Philippines and around the world, has been aided and abetted by the social media companies. Ressa exposes how they have allowed their platforms to spread a virus of lies that infect each of us, pitting us against one another, igniting, even creating, our fears, anger, and hate, and how this has accelerated the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world. She maps a network of disinformation—a heinous web of cause and effect—that has netted the globe: from Duterte’s drug wars to America's Capitol Hill; Britain’s Brexit to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare; Facebook and Silicon Valley to our own clicks and votes. Democracy is fragile. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an urgent cry for Western readers to recognize and understand the dangers to our freedoms before it is too late. It is a book for anyone who might take democracy for granted, written by someone who never would. And in telling her dramatic and turbulent and courageous story, Ressa forces readers to ask themselves the same question she and her colleagues ask every day: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?



Dele Adeyemo, Natalie Diaz, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Rinaldo Walcott & Christina Sharpe - Borders, Human Itineraries, and All Our Relation artwork Borders, Human Itineraries, and All Our Relation
2022
Dele Adeyemo, Natalie Diaz, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Rinaldo Walcott & Christina Sharpe
Genre: Political Science
Price: $3.99
Publish Date: October 17, 2023
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

Four Alchemists. One book. A constellation of ideas. In November 2022, the first annual Alchemy Lecture took place at York University in Toronto, bringing four deep and agile writers from different geographies and disciplines into vibrant conversation on a topic of urgent relevance: humans and borders. Now, in these pages, that conversation is captured and expanded in insightful, passionate ways.     Architect, artist, and urban theorist Dele Adeyemo (UK/Nigeria) calls attention to the complexity of Black infrastructures, questioning how “the environments that surround us condition the possibility of our being.” Poet Natalie Diaz (US/Mojave/Akimel O’otham) writes: “Like story, migration is the sensual movement of knowledge,” and asks, “What is the language we need to live right now?” Philosopher Nadia Yala Kisukidi (France) suggests there is no diasporic life “without the dynamics of fabulation, where we pass down, from generation to generation, the stories of our ancestors who walked barefoot for many months.” And cultural theorist Rinaldo Walcott (Canada) asks us to consider inheritances beyond white supremacist logics: “What might it mean to live a life, if we can’t risk desiring and working towards utopia?”     As each Alchemist considers the legacies of anti-colonial struggle, the future of the planet, and the textures of Black and Indigenous life, their essays speak to each other in multiple ways, creating something startling and revelatory: a vision of the world as it is, and as it could be.



Patricia Evangelista - Some People Need Killing artwork Some People Need Killing
A Memoir of Murder in My Country
Patricia Evangelista
Genre: World Affairs
Price: $16.99
Publish Date: October 17, 2023
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

TIME ’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “riveting” ( The Atlantic ) account of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens under President Rodrigo Duterte, hailed as “a journalistic masterpiece” ( The New Yorker )   “Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story.”—Tara Westover, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated   A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library, CrimeReads, The Mary Sue “My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.” Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte. Some People Need Killing is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines’ drug war. For six years, Evangelista documented the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs—a crusade that has led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of terror created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others. The book takes its title from a vigilante, whose words demonstrated the psychological accommodation many across the country had made: “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.” A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an investigation into the human impulses to dominate and resist.



Michael Isikoff & Daniel Klaidman - Find Me the Votes artwork Find Me the Votes
A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election
Michael Isikoff & Daniel Klaidman
Genre: Political Science
Price: $20.99
Publish Date: January 30, 2024
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Seller: Hachette Digital, Inc.

From veteran award-winning investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, the epic inside story of the prosecution of a president.   In Find Me the Votes, two years of immersive reporting by Isikoff and Klaidman has produced the most authoritative and dramatic account yet of a defeated president’s conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and how a local Georgia prosecutor—a daughter of the civil rights movement—decided to indict him and his allies for his desperate attempt to hold on to power.  From the beginning, Fani Willis saw Donald Trump’s crimes as a voting rights case, and an attempt by the former president to deprive the citizens of Georgia of the franchise, a right for which her forebears had bled.    Isikoff and Klaidman take us deep inside both the nerve center of Trump’s effort to steal the election and the DA’s team of prosecutors as they build their case against the president. Their reporting reveals new information on the plot to criminally seize voting equipment in several states; Sidney Powell’s attempt to obtain preemptive pardons from Trump; and revelatory communications between the president and his co-conspirators. We see the prosecution take shape in Willis’s office in the face of heinous threats of violent retaliation from Trump’s supporters.    With blockbuster original reporting and exclusive access to thousands of secret documents, emails, text messages, and audio recordings, Find Me the Votes  is investigative journalism at its finest. The authors also conducted exclusive interviews with key sources in the Trump conspiracy, as well as with the president’s top targets, including Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and the Fulton County DA’s team–featuring hours of interviews with Fani Willis herself. This is riveting contemporary history, and a lasting account of the prosecution of a president who tested the rule of law as no president ever had before. Isikoff and Klaidman have written a story for the ages.  



Tim Alberta - The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory artwork The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory
American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
Tim Alberta
Genre: Political Science
Price: $21.99
Publish Date: December 05, 2023
Publisher: Harper
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

A Best in Political Books for 2023 New York Times Bestseller One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of the Year An Economist and Air Mail Best Book of the Year “Alberta is not just a thorough and responsible reporter but a vibrant writer, capable of rendering a farcical scene in vivid hues.” --Washington Post “Tim Alberta delivers another essential read. It is substantive, news-filled and personal. . . . Alberta is a fine guide to the world of conservative US Christians, their dispiriting march to the right, and its ugly cost.”—Guardian The award-winning journalist and staff writer for The Atlantic follows up his New York Times bestseller American Carnage with this timely, rigorously reported, and deeply personal examination of the divisions that threaten to destroy the American evangelical movement. Evangelical Christians are perhaps the most polarizing—and least understood—people living in America today. In his seminal new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, journalist Tim Alberta, himself a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor, paints an expansive and profoundly troubling portrait of the American evangelical movement. Through the eyes of televangelists and small-town preachers, celebrity revivalists and everyday churchgoers, Alberta tells the story of a faith cheapened by ephemeral fear, a promise corrupted by partisan subterfuge, and a reputation stained by perpetual scandal. For millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom—a land set apart, a nation uniquely blessed, a people in special covenant with God. This love of country, however, has given way to right-wing nationalist fervor, a reckless blood-and-soil idolatry that trivializes the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Alberta retraces the arc of the modern evangelical movement, placing political and cultural inflection points in the context of church teachings and traditions, explaining how Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated historical trends that long pointed toward disaster. Reporting from half-empty sanctuaries and standing-room-only convention halls across the country, the author documents a growing fracture inside American Christianity and journeys with readers through this strange new environment in which loving your enemies is "woke" and owning the libs is the answer to WWJD. Accessing the highest echelons of the American evangelical movement, Alberta investigates the ways in which conservative Christians have pursued, exercised, and often abused power in the name of securing this earthly kingdom. He highlights the battles evangelicals are fighting—and the weapons of their warfare—to demonstrate the disconnect from scripture: Contra the dictates of the New Testament, today's believers are struggling mightily against flesh and blood, eyes fixed on the here and now, desperate for a power that is frivolous and fleeting. Lingering at the intersection of real cultural displacement and perceived religious persecution, Alberta portrays a rapidly secularizing America that has come to distrust the evangelical church, and weaves together present-day narratives of individual pastors and their churches as they confront the twin challenges of lost status and diminished standing. Sifting through the wreckage—pastors broken, congregations battered, believers losing their religion because of sex scandals and political schemes—Alberta asks: If the American evangelical movement has ceased to glorify God, what is its purpose?



Adi Schwartz & Einat Wilf - The War of Return artwork The War of Return
How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace
Adi Schwartz & Einat Wilf
Genre: World Affairs
Price: $12.99
Publish Date: April 28, 2020
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Seller: Macmillan

Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group—unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts—has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return , Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf—both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution—reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees - gave in to Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. They argue that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal or moral basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. A runaway bestseller in Israel, the first English translation of The War of Return is certain to spark lively debate throughout America and abroad.



Harriet Lerner - The Dance of Fear artwork The Dance of Fear
Rising Above Anxiety, Fear, and Shame to Be Your Best and Bravest Self
Harriet Lerner
Genre: Public Administration
Price: $11.99
Publish Date: October 06, 2009
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

Unhappiness, says bestselling author Harriet Lerner, is fueled by three key emotions: anxiety, fear, and shame. They are the uninvited guests in our lives. When tragedy or hardship hits, they may become our constant companions. Anxiety can wash over us like a tidal wave or operate as a silent thrum under the surface of our daily lives. With stories that are sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking, Lerner takes us from "fear lite" to the most difficult lessons the universe sends us. We learn: how a man was "cured in a day" of the fear of rejection -- and what we can learn from his storyhow the author overcame her dread of public speaking when her worst fears were realizedhow to deal with the fear of not being good enough, and with the shame of feeling essentially flawed and inadequatehow to stay calm and clear in an anxious, crazy workplacehow to manage fear and despair when life sends a crash course in illness, vulnerability, and losshow "positive thinking" helps -- and harmshow to be our best and bravest selves, even when we are terrified and have internalized the shaming messages of others No one signs up for anxiety, fear, and shame, but we can’t avoid them either. As we learn to respond to these three key emotions in new ways, we can live more fully in the present and move into the future with courage, clarity, humor, and hope. Fear and Other Uninvited Guests shows us how.



William Sheridan Allen - The Nazi Seizure of Power artwork The Nazi Seizure of Power
The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945
William Sheridan Allen
Genre: Political Science
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: December 02, 2018
Publisher: Echo Point Books
Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC

“Tells us how Nazism happened, in microcosm, in a single German town that was neither typical nor exceptional in admitting and then yielding to tyranny.” — The New York Times   In this classic work of twentieth-century history, William Sheridan Allen demonstrates how dictatorship subtly surmounted democracy in Germany and how the Nazi seizure of power encroached from below. Relying upon legal records and interviews with primary sources, Allen dissects Northeim, Germany with microscopic precision to depict the transformation of a sleepy town to a Nazi stronghold. This cogent analysis argues that Hitler rose to power primarily through democratic tactics that incited localized support rather than through violent means. Revised on the basis of newly discovered Nazi documents, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922–1945 continues to significantly contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon and the political and moral debate over the roots of fascism. Allen’s research provides an intimate, comprehensive study of the mechanics of revolution and an analysis of the Nazi Party’s subversion of democracy. Beginning at the end of the Weimar Republic, Allen examines the entire period of the Nazi Revolution within a single locality.   “The book’s distinction lies . . . in its fidelity to the facts in one particular town, with one set of civic officials (notably the Nazi ‘Local Group Leader’), and one population—whose shift in attitudes, indifference and, in the end, total lack of comprehension of what was really happening convert the theory into actuality and make it both clearer and more readable.” — Kirkus Reviews   “A first-rate study of absorbing interest…Hitler did not seize power single-handed.” —Walter Laqueur, The New York Review of Books



Jeremy W. Peters - Insurgency artwork Insurgency
How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted
Jeremy W. Peters
Genre: Political Science
Price: $16.99
Publish Date: February 08, 2022
Publisher: Crown
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • How did the party of Lincoln become the party of Trump? From an acclaimed political reporter for The New York Times comes the definitive story of the mutiny that shattered American politics. “A bracing account of how the party of Lincoln and Reagan was hijacked by gadflies and grifters who reshaped their movement into becoming an anti-democratic cancer that attacked the U.S. Capitol.”—Joe Scarborough An epic narrative chronicling the fracturing of the Republican Party, Jeremy Peters’s Insurgency is the story of a party establishment that believed it could control the dark energy it helped foment—right up until it suddenly couldn’t. How, Peters asks, did conservative values that Republicans claimed to cherish, like small government, fiscal responsibility, and morality in public service, get completely eroded as an unshakable faith in Donald Trump grew to define the party? The answer is a tale traced across three decades—with new reporting and firsthand accounts from the people who were there—of populist uprisings that destabilized the party. The signs of conflict were plainly evident for anyone who cared to look. After Barack Obama’s election convinced many Republicans that they faced an existential demographics crossroads, many believed the only way to save the party was to create a more inclusive and diverse coalition. But party leaders underestimated the energy and popular appeal of those who would pull the party in the opposite direction. They failed to see how the right-wing media they hailed as truth-telling was warping the reality in which their voters lived. And they did not understand the complicated moral framework by which many conservatives would view Trump, leading evangelicals and one-issue voters to shed Republican orthodoxy if it delivered a Supreme Court that would undo Roe v. Wade . In this sweeping history, Peters details key junctures and episodes to unfurl the story of a revolution from within. Its architects had little interest in the America of the new century but a deep understanding of the iron will of a shrinking minority. With Trump as their polestar, their gamble paid greater dividends than they’d ever imagined, extending the life of far-right conservatism in United States domestic policy into the next half century.



Joanna Baron - Pandemic Panic artwork Pandemic Panic
How Canadian Government Responses to COVID-19 Changed Civil Liberties Forever
Joanna Baron
Genre: Political Science
Price: $16.99
Publish Date: November 14, 2023
Publisher: Optimum Publishing International
Seller: ECW Press Ltd.

In October 2022, the economist Emily Oster wrote a plea for a “pandemic amnesty.” After detailing various ill-conceived public health policies throughout the pandemic, Oster concluded that “The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well.” She reasoned that many admittedly poor, public health decisions were made in an information vacuum and that the salubrious thing to do going forward would be to forgive and forget. Oster was concerned about the fraying social fabric because of polarizing online discourse and urged the need to move forward. However, our anecdotal experience has shown a second common response to pandemic mishaps—going blank entirely on what occurred during the pandemic. We have observed a phenomenon of the surreal, sometimes inane, often unprecedented and unusual public health measures taken over the roughly three-year pandemic period being a “memory hole,” where the mind completely fogs over. Many times in the course of writing this book, we have messaged one another upon unearthing one public policy absurdity upon another: the City of Toronto taping off cherry blossoms, Quebec requiring unvaccinated people to be chaperoned in plexiglass carts through the essential aisles of big-box stores. We are not psychologists, but no doubt there is an evolutionary benefit to allowing a collective trauma to dissolve into the slip-stream: it is unproductive to dwell on how we got by and how our government coped in real-time. Our memories are warped, first, by the “primacy effect” our tendency to remember “firsts” exemplified by people universally naming George Washington when asked to recall former U.S. presidents. Most people have a crystal clear memory of the moment their plague year started in earnest; for us and many others; it was March 11, 2020, the day the NBA suspended games for the rest of the season.



Anthony King - Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century artwork Urban Warfare in the Twenty-First Century
Anthony King
Genre: Political Science
Price: $25.99
Publish Date: July 07, 2021
Publisher: Polity Press
Seller: John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd.

Warfare has migrated into cities. From Mosul to Mumbai, Aleppo to Marawi, the major military battles of the twenty-first century have taken place in densely populated urban areas. Why has this happened? What are the defining characteristics of urban warfare today? What are its military and political implications? Leading sociologist Anthony King answers these critical questions through close analysis of recent urban battles and their historical antecedents. Exploring the changing typography and evolving tactics of the urban battlescape, he shows that although not all methods used in urban warfare are new, operations in cities today have become highly distinctive. Urban warfare has coalesced into gruelling micro-sieges, which extend from street level – and below – to the airspace high above the city, as combatants fight for individual buildings, streets and districts. At the same time, digitalized social media and information networks communicate these battles to global audiences across an urban archipelago, with these spectators often becoming active participants in the fight. A timely reminder of the costs and the horror of war and violence in cities, this book offers an invaluable interdisciplinary introduction to urban warfare in the new millennium for students of international security, urban studies and military science, as well as military professionals.



Michel Collon - Ukraine - La guerre des images artwork Ukraine - La guerre des images
50 exemples de désinformation
Michel Collon
Genre: World Affairs
Price: $25.99
Publish Date: June 16, 2023
Publisher: Investig'Action
Seller: RC WEB SOLUTIONS

La première victime d’une guerre, c’est toujours la vérité. C’est devenu un lieu commun. Mais alors pourquoi croyons-nous que « cette fois-ci », notre info est correcte ? Après les « armes de destruction massive », avons-nous réellement appris à repérer – à temps – les nouveaux médiamensonges ? Lecteur, t’es-tu interrogé sur les possibles manipulations des images et des émotions ? Cette guerre qui fait tant souffrir l’Ukraine, pouvait-on l’éviter ? Ou l’arrêter assez vite en épargnant de nombreuses vies ? Pourquoi y a-t-on englouti des milliards en armements alors que cet argent manque cruellement à nos hôpitaux, nos écoles, nos retraites, nos jeunes en recherche d’emploi ? Une enquête complète et minutieuse. Un livre pour réfléchir, partager, convaincre. À PROPOS DU COLLECTIF Michel Collon , fondateur du Collectif Investig’Action. Analyste des stratégies de guerre et de désinformation. Auteur d’ Attention, médias ! , Israël, parlons-en , La gauche et la guerre , et USA - les 100 pires citations . Anime l’émission Michel Midi. Test Media International est un collectif d’enquête. Avec un réseau international de témoins et d’experts, il vérifie, recoupe et analyse la couverture médiatique des grands conflits mondiaux.



Preston Manning - Do Something! artwork Do Something!
365 Ways You Can Strengthen Canada
Preston Manning
Genre: Political Science
Price: $19.99
Publish Date: March 04, 2020
Publisher: Sutherland House Books
Seller: Ingram DV LLC

Politicians, legislatures and parliament are widely mistrusted. Canadians do not see their issues and concerns reflected in the priorities of the people elected to serve them. The rise of populism is one symptom of discontent. Others are low voter turnouts and an increasingly vicious public sphere. It is time for Canadians to repair and strengthen their democracy. It is time to Do Something! In this riveting and inspirational book, author and parliamentarian Preston Manning calls on Canadians of all beliefs and allegiances to renew their nation’s democracy and the ideas, processes, and institutions that support it. Drawing on a lifetime of public service, he offers 365 practical ways that people can get involved and make a difference, in their communities and on the national stage. “There is an old saying,” writes Manning, “that a Canadian optimist is someone who believes things could be worse. But I am an optimist who believes the future can be better if enough of us resolve to make it so.”



Ilan Pappé - La propagande d'Israël artwork La propagande d'Israël
Préface de Michel Collon
Ilan Pappé
Genre: Political Science
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: June 17, 2020
Publisher: Investig'Action
Seller: RC WEB SOLUTIONS

Comment puis-je aider les Palestiniens à obtenir enfin leurs droits ? Quand vous discutez d’Israël pour convaincre un hésitant, bien souvent vous vous retrouvez face à des arguments en réalité façonnés par des experts en com’. Ilan Pappe est Israélien et il a vécu longtemps en Israël. Il connaît la machine de l’intérieur. Aujourd’hui, il expose la manipulation orchestrée de l’Histoire, mais aussi la propagande au quotidien : cinéma, théâtre, médias, l’instrumentalisation de l’Holocauste… Comment se fabriquent les arguments. Comment fonctionnent les réseaux internationaux de lobbying et les moyens financiers énormes investis pour « redorer » l’image d’Israël à l’étranger. Ce livre est indispensable pour que votre interlocuteur puisse vraiment penser par lui-même. Et pour défaire un appareil de propagande extrêmement puissant qui reporte sans cesse la paix. À PROPOS DE L'AUTEUR Ilan Pappé est un historien israélien en exil en Angleterre. Il est professeur d’histoire. Il dirige aussi le Centre Européen pour les Études Palestiniennes et co-dirige le Centre pour les Études Ethno-Politiques, à l’Université d’Exeter.



Mongo Beti - Main basse sur le Cameroun artwork Main basse sur le Cameroun
Autopsie d'une décolonisation
Mongo Beti
Genre: Politics & Current Events
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: April 30, 2020
Publisher: La Découverte
Seller: Interforum, S.A.

Mongo Beti, écrivain camerounais, est connu pour ses romans, notamment ceux des années 1950, qui ont joué un rôle important dans la prise de conscience du colonialisme et dans la lutte contre celui-ci. Publié en 1972 par les Éditions François Maspero, Main basse sur le Cameroun était un réquisitoire contre les crimes du président Ahidjo, dictateur du Cameroun par la grâce du néocolonialisme français. Son but fut largement atteint, semble-t-il, puisque le livre fut interdit, saisi, l'éditeur poursuivi, et l'auteur l'objet de multiples pressions et menaces. Sa réédition, en 1977, dans une version revue, était encore d'une actualité brûlante à l'heure de l'intervention française au Zaïre. Mongo Beti montre en effet que les anciennes colonies d'Afrique occidentale française et d'Afrique équatoriale française, formellement indépendantes depuis les années 1960, n'en sont pas moins restées étroitement contrôlées par la France. Trente ans plus tard, ce livre demeure un document historique majeur, indispensable pour comprendre les évolutions ultérieures de la Françafrique.



John Bolton - The Room Where It Happened artwork The Room Where It Happened
A White House Memoir
John Bolton
Genre: Political Science
Price: $16.99
Publish Date: June 23, 2020
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

As President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton spent many of his 453 days in the room where it happened, and the facts speak for themselves. The result is a White House memoir that is the most comprehensive and substantial account of the Trump Administration, and one of the few to date by a top-level official. With almost daily access to the President, John Bolton has produced a precise rendering of his days in and around the Oval Office. What Bolton saw astonished him: a President for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation. “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” he writes. In fact, he argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping its prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy—and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them. He shows a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government. In Bolton’s telling, all this helped put Trump on the bizarre road to impeachment. “The differences between this presidency and previous ones I had served were stunning,” writes Bolton, who worked for Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. He discovered a President who thought foreign policy is like closing a real estate deal—about personal relationships, made-for-TV showmanship, and advancing his own interests. As a result, the US lost an opportunity to confront its deepening threats, and in cases like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ended up in a more vulnerable place. Bolton’s account starts with his long march to the West Wing as Trump and others woo him for the National Security job. The minute he lands, he has to deal with Syria’s chemical attack on the city of Douma, and the crises after that never stop. As he writes in the opening pages, “If you don’t like turmoil, uncertainty, and risk—all the while being constantly overwhelmed with information, decisions to be made, and sheer amount of work—and enlivened by international and domestic personality and ego conflicts beyond description, try something else.” The turmoil, conflicts, and egos are all there—from the upheaval in Venezuela, to the erratic and manipulative moves of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to the showdowns at the G7 summits, the calculated warmongering by Iran, the crazy plan to bring the Taliban to Camp David, and the placating of an authoritarian China that ultimately exposed the world to its lethal lies. But this seasoned public servant also has a great eye for the Washington inside game, and his story is full of wit and wry humor about how he saw it played.



Elie Honig - Untouchable artwork Untouchable
How Powerful People Get Away with It
Elie Honig
Genre: Political Science
Price: $1.99
Publish Date: January 31, 2023
Publisher: Harper
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB 'MUST-READ' #1 ON COSMOPOLITAN'S 11 BEST NEW NON-FICTION BOOKS TO ADD TO YOUR TBR PILE IN 2023 CNN senior legal analyst and nationally bestselling author Elie Honig explores America’s two-tier justice system, explaining how the rich, the famous, and the powerful— including, most notoriously, Donald Trump—manipulate the legal system to escape justice and get away with vast misdeeds. How does he get away with it? That question, more than any other, vexes observers of and participants in the American criminal justice process. How do powerful people weaponize their wealth, political power, and fame to beat the system? And how can prosecutors fight back? In Untouchable, Elie Honig exposes how the rich and powerful use the system to their own benefit, revealing how notorious figures like Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby successfully eluded justice for decades. He demonstrates how the Trump children dodged a fraud indictment. He makes clear how countless CEOs and titans of Wall Street have been let off the hook, receiving financial penalties without suffering criminal consequences. This doesn’t happen by accident. Over the four years of his administration, Donald Trump’s corruption seemed plain for all to see. The former president obstructed justice, flouted his responsibility to the Constitution, lied to the American people, and set the United States on a dark path to disunity and violence. Yet he has never been held accountable for any of his misdeeds. Why not? Untouchable holds the answer. Honig shows how Trump and others use seemingly fair institutions and practices to build empires of corruption and get away with misdeeds for which ordinary people would be sentenced to years behind bars. It’s not just that money talks, Honig makes clear, but how it can corrupt otherwise reliable institutions and blind people to the real power dynamics behind the scenes. In this vital, incisive book, Honig explains how the system allows the powerful to become untouchable, takes us inside their heads, and offers solutions for making the system more honest and fairer, ensuring true justice for all—holding everyone, no matter their status, accountable for their criminal misdeeds.



Rachel Maddow - Prequel artwork Prequel
An American Fight Against Fascism
Rachel Maddow
Genre: Political Science
Price: $18.99
Publish Date: October 17, 2023
Publisher: Crown
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis.   “A ripping read—well rendered, fast-paced and delivered with the same punch and assurance that she brings to a broadcast. . . . The parallels to the present day are strong, even startling.”— The New York Times (Editors’ Choice) Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.   That effort worked—tongue and groove—alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection.   At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court.   None of it went as planned.   While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation.   That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.



Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf artwork Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
Genre: Politics & Current Events
Price: $2.99
Publish Date: July 07, 2013
Publisher: Liber Electronicus
Seller: Kamil Jodelko

Mein Kampf written by Adolf Hitler is known as one of the most dangerous books in history. It is a fundamental exposition of Nazi ideology, which caused deaths of milions of people. The publisher would like to inform, that propaganda of any totalitarianism, such as Nazism, Fascism and Communism is not his target and this book should be only perceived as a historical source. Every man wanting to understand the complexity of the World War II should be acquainted with this position. 



Ibram X. Kendi - How to Be an Antiracist artwork How to Be an Antiracist
Ibram X. Kendi
Genre: Political Science
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: August 13, 2019
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” ( Time ) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves —now updated, with a new preface. “The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.”— The New York Times ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR— The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Shelf Awareness, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist , Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.



Kim Richard Nossal - Charlie Foxtrot artwork Charlie Foxtrot
Fixing Defence Procurement in Canada
Kim Richard Nossal
Genre: Public Administration
Price: $9.99
Publish Date: December 10, 2016
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Seller: Dundurn Press Limited

Defence expert Kim Richard Nossal presents a damning indictment of defence procurement in Canada, and shows how to fix it. Defence procurement in Canada is a mess. New equipment is desperately needed for the Canadian Armed Forces, but most projects are behind schedule, over budget, or both. Not only has mismanagement cost Canadian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, it has also deprived Canada and the CAF of much-needed military capacity. Successive governments — both Liberal and Conservative — have managed the complexities of defence procurement so poorly that it will take years before the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the Canadian Army regain the capabilities they need. While new prime ministers invariably come to power promising to fix problems inherited from their predecessors, getting it right has remained frustratingly elusive. Charlie Foxtrot offers a fresh take on this important policy issue. It shows why governments have found it so difficult to equip the CAF efficiently, and offers a set of political prescriptions for fixing defence procurement in Canada.