The Politics & Government category has 4,793 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 40,708 ratings. The most-rated is A Promised Land.
The Bill of Rights Primer
Summary
A valuable reference to understanding your freedoms. Many Americans reference the Bill of Rights, a document that represents many of the freedoms that define the United States. Who doesn’t know about the First Amendment’s freedom of religion or Second Amendment’s right to bear arms? In this succinct volume, Akhil Reed Amar and Les Adams offer a wealth of knowledge about the Bill of Rights that goes beyond a basic understanding.The Bill of Rights Primer is an authoritative guide to all American freedoms. Uncluttered and well-organized, this audiobook is perfect for those who want to study up on the Bill of Rights without needing a law degree to do so. This elementary guidebook presents a short historical survey of the people, events, decrees, legislation, writings, and cultural milestones, in England and the American colonies, that influenced the Founding Fathers as they drafted the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. With helpful comments and fun facts, the book will provide a deeper understanding of the Bill of Rights, exhibiting that it is not a stagnant document but one with an evolving meaning shaped by historical events, such as the American Civil War and Reconstruction.
©2013 Skyhorse Publishing (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Friendly Fire
Summary
In this deeply personal journey of discovery, Ami Ayalon seeks input and perspective from Palestinians and Israelis whose experiences differ from his own. As head of the Shin Bet security agency, he gained empathy for "the enemy" and learned that when Israel carries out anti-terrorist operations in a political context of hopelessness, the Palestinian public will support violence, because they have nothing to lose. Researching and writing Friendly Fire, he came to understand that his patriotic life had blinded him to the self-defeating nature of policies that have undermined Israel's civil society while heaping humiliation upon its Palestinian neighbors. "If Israel becomes an Orwellian dystopia," Ayalon writes, "it won't be thanks to a handful of theologians dragging us into the dark past. The secular majority will lead us there motivated by fear and propelled by silence." Ayalon is a realist, not an idealist, and many who consider themselves Zionists will regard as radical his conclusions about what Israel must do to achieve relative peace and security and to sustain itself as a Jewish homeland and a liberal democracy.
©2020 Ami Ayalon (P)2020 Steerforth
Suffrage
Summary
Honoring the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, this exciting history explores the full scope of the movement to win the vote for women through portraits of its bold leaders and devoted activists. Distinguished historian Ellen Carol DuBois begins in the pre-Civil War years with foremothers Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth as she explores the links of the woman suffrage movement to the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War, Congress granted freed African-American men the right to vote but not white and African-American women, a crushing disappointment. DuBois shows how suffrage leaders persevered through the Jim Crow years into the reform era of Progressivism. She introduces new champions Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul, who brought the fight into the 20th century, and she shows how African-American women, led by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, demanded voting rights even as white suffragists ignored them. DuBois explains how suffragists built a determined coalition of moderate lobbyists and radical demonstrators in forging a strategy of winning voting rights in crucial states to set the stage for securing suffrage for all American women in the Constitution. In vivid prose, DuBois describes suffragists' final victories in Congress and state legislatures, culminating in the last, most difficult ratification, in Tennessee. DuBois follows women's efforts to use their voting rights to win political office, increase their voting strength, and pass laws banning child labor, ensuring maternal health, and securing greater equality for women. Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote is sure to become the authoritative account of one of the great episodes in the history of American democracy.
©2020 Ellen Carol DuBois (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
Standing at Armageddon
Summary
Standing at Armageddon is a comprehensive and lively historical account of America's shift from a rural and agrarian society to an urban and industrial society.
©2008, 1987 Nell Irvin Painter (P)2020 Tantor
"Every Man Should Try"
Summary
Jeremy Stone, a renowned, almost Zelig-like figure in the world of public interest activism offers his antic, wry and moving memoirs of a life spent trying to make the world a better place. There probably isn't another human being who's been involved with more issues as an activist than Jeremy Stone. During his tenure as head of the 2,000 member Federation of American Scientists, Stone has been involved with just about every major activist issue of the past quarter century. He was crucial in freeing Sakharov; influential in getting arms control treaties signed; the secret force behind the arrest of the Shining Paths leader; the man who helped save Cambodia from a return of the Khmer Rouge; the scientist who discredited the sonic boom scare; and the one person who just might have an idea that brings peace to Kosovo. John F. Kennedy once said, "Not every man can make a difference, but every man should try". Jeremy Stone took JFK up on his word, and this book is a wonderful memoir of his wild, sometimes successful, heartening life.
©1999 Jeremy J. Stone (P)2016 Jeremy J. Stone
Executing the Rosenbergs
Summary
In 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested for allegedly passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, an affair FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover labeled the "crime of the century". Their case became an international sensation, inspiring petitions, letters of support, newspaper editorials, and protests in countries around the world. Nevertheless, the Rosenbergs were executed after years of appeals, making them the only civilians ever put to death for conspiracy-related activities. Yet even after their executions, protests continued. The Rosenberg case quickly transformed into legend, while the media spotlight shifted to their two orphaned sons. In Executing the Rosenbergs, Lori Clune demonstrates that the Rosenberg case played a pivotal role in the world's perception of the United States. Based on newly discovered documents from the State Department, Clune narrates the widespread dissent against the Rosenberg decision in 80 cities and 48 countries. Even as the Truman and Eisenhower administrations attempted to turn the case into pro-democracy propaganda, US allies and potential allies questioned whether the United States had the moral authority to win the Cold War. Meanwhile, the death of Stalin in 1953 also raised the stakes of the executions; without a clear hero and villain, the struggle between democracy and communism shifted into morally ambiguous terrain. Transcending questions of guilt or innocence, Clune weaves the case - and its aftermath - into the fabric of the Cold War, revealing its far-reaching global effects. An original approach to one of the most fascinating episodes in Cold War history, Executing the Rosenbergs broadens a quintessentially American story into a global one.
©2016 Oxford University Press (P)2016 Wetware Media
A Nation Forged by Crisis
Summary
A concise new history of the US revealing that crises - not unlike those of the present day - have determined our nation's course from the start. In A Nation Forged by Crisis, historian Jay Sexton contends that our national narrative is not one of halting yet inevitable progress, but of repeated disruptions brought about by shifts in the international system. Sexton shows that the American Revolution was a consequence of the increasing integration of the British and American economies; that a necessary precondition for the Civil War was the absence, for the first time in decades, of foreign threats; and that we cannot understand the New Deal without examining the role of European immigrants and their offspring in transforming the Democratic Party. A necessary corrective to conventional narratives of American history, A Nation Forged by Crisis argues that we can only prepare for our unpredictable future by first acknowledging the contingencies of our collective past.
©2018 Jay Sexton (P)2018 Hachette Audio
America in the World
Summary
Ranging from Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson to Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, and James Baker, America in the World tells the vibrant story of American diplomacy. Recounting the actors and events of US foreign policy, Zoellick identifies five traditions that have emerged from America's encounters with the world: the importance of North America; the special roles trading, transnational, and technological relations play in defining ties with others; changing attitudes toward alliances and ways of ordering connections among states; the need for public support, especially through Congress; and the belief that American policy should serve a larger purpose. These traditions frame a closing review of post-Cold War presidencies, which Zoellick foresees serving as guideposts for the future. Both a sweeping work of history and an insightful guide to US diplomacy past and present, America in the World serves as an informative companion and practical adviser to listeners seeking to understand the strategic and immediate challenges of US foreign policy during an era of transformation.
©2020 Robert B. Zoellick (P)2020 Twelve
Campaign '92
Summary
A collection of 1992 presidential campaign addresses, including: Introduction - a personal message from Bill Clinton Senator Al Gore, July 16, 1992 - address to the 1992 Democratic National Convention on its final night to accept his nomination, Madison Square Garden Governor Bill Clinton, July 16, 1992 - Address to the 1992 Democratic National Convention on its final night to accept his nomination, Madison Square Garden Bill Clinton ’92 campaign speech excerpts: on education, on gun control, on job training, on jobs, on foreign policy, on the environment, on family values, on abortion, on health, on the ’92 election George H.W. Bush, August 20, 1992 - remarks accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention, Houston Astrodome George H.W. Bush, August 25, 1992 - remarks at the American Legion National Convention, Chicago
Public Domain (P)1992 Dove Audio, Phoenix Books
House of War
Summary
This landmark, myth-shattering work chronicles the most powerful institution in America, the people who created it, and the pathologies it has spawned. Carroll proves a controversial thesis: the Pentagon has, since its founding, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society. It is the biggest, loosest cannon in American history, and no institution has changed this country more. To argue his case, he marshals a trove of often chilling evidence. He recounts how "the Building" and its denizens achieved what Eisenhower called "a disastrous rise of misplaced power" from the unprecedented aerial bombing of Germany and Japan during World War II to the "shock and awe" of Iraq. He charts the colossal U.S. nuclear buildup, which far outpaced that of the USSR and has outlived it. He reveals how consistently the Building has found new enemies just as old threats and funding evaporate. He demonstrates how Pentagon policy brought about U.S. indifference to an epidemic of genocide during the 1990s. And he shows how the forces that attacked the Pentagon on 9/11 were set in motion exactly sixty years earlier, on September 11, 1941, when ground was broken for the house of war. Carroll draws on rich personal experience (his father was a top Pentagon official for more than 20 years) as well as exhaustive research and extensive interviews with Washington insiders, from Robert McNamara to John McCain to William Cohen to John Kerry. The result is a grand yet intimate work of history, unashamedly polemical and personal but unerringly factual.
©2006 James Carroll (P)2006 Random House, Inc.
The Operators
Summary
Few outside the security services have heard of 14 Company. As deadly as the SAS yet more secret, the operators of 14 Company are Britain's most effective weapon against international terrorism. For every bomb that goes off, 14 Company prevent 12. The selection process is the most physically, intellectually, and emotionally demanding anywhere in the world. This is the true story of one operator and of some of the most hair-raising military operations ever conducted on the streets of Britain.
©2016 James Rennie (P)2020 Pen and Sword Military
Coding Democracy
Summary
Hackers as vital disruptors, inspiring a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens take back democracy. Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure. In Coding Democracy, Maureen Webb offers another view. Hackers, she argues, can be vital disruptors. Hacking is becoming a practice, an ethos, and a metaphor for a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens are inventing new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy for a digital era. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance, and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, the hacking movement is trying to "build out" democracy into cyberspace. Webb describes an amazing array of hacker experiments that could dramatically change the current political economy. These ambitious hacks aim to displace such tech monoliths as Facebook and Amazon; enable worker cooperatives to kill platforms like Uber; give people control over their data; automate trust; and provide citizens a real say in governance, along with capacity to reach consensus. Coding Democracy is not just another optimistic declaration of technological utopianism; instead, it provides the tools for an urgently needed upgrade of democracy in the digital era.
©2020 Maureen Webb (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Freedom from the Market
Summary
Health insurance, student loan debt, retirement savings, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership - these are the issues driving America's current political debates. And they are all linked, as this brilliant and timely book reveals, by a single question: should we allow the free market to determine our lives? In the tradition of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, noted economic commentator Mike Konczal answers this question with a resounding no. Freedom from the Market blends passionate political argument and a bold new take on American history to reveal that, from the earliest days of the republic, Americans have defined freedom as what we keep free from the control of the market. With chapters on the history of Homestead Act and land ownership, the eight-hour work day and free time, social insurance and Social Security, World War II day cares, Medicare and desegregation, free public colleges, intellectual property, and the public corporation, Konczal shows how citizens have fought to ensure that everyone has access to the conditions that make us free. At a time when millions of Americans - and more and more politicians - are questioning the unregulated free market as un-American, Freedom from the Market offers a new narrative, and new intellectual ammunition, for the fight that lies ahead.
©2021 Mike Konczal (P)2021 Tantor
Red State Revolt
Summary
Thirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of "the white working class", a strike wave - the first in over four decades - rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity. Confounding all expectations, these working-class rebellions erupted in regions with Republican electorates, weak unions, and bans on public sector strikes. By mobilizing to take their destinies into their own hands, red state school workers posed a clear alternative to politics as usual. And with similar actions now gaining steam in Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, and Virginia, there is no sign that this upsurge will be short-lived. Red State Revolt is a compelling analysis of the emergence and development of this historic strike wave, with an eye to extracting its main strategic lessons for educators, labor organizer, and radicals across the country. A former high school teacher and longtime activist, Eric Blanc embedded himself into the rank-and-file leaderships of the walkouts, where he was given access to internal organizing meetings and secret Facebook groups inaccessible to most journalists.
©2019 Eric Blanc (P)2019 Tantor
The War That Forged a Nation
Summary
More than 140 years ago, Mark Twain observed that the Civil War had "uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations". In fact five generations have passed, and Americans are still trying to measure the influence of the immense fratricidal conflict that nearly tore the nation apart. In The War that Forged a Nation, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson considers why the Civil War remains so deeply embedded in our national psyche and identity. The drama and tragedy of the war, from its scope and size - an estimated death toll of 750,000, far more than the rest of the country's wars combined - to the nearly mythical individuals involved - Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson - help explain why the Civil War remains a topic of interest. But the legacy of the war extends far beyond historical interest or scholarly attention. McPherson ultimately proves the impossibility of understanding the issues of our own time unless we first understand their roots in the era of the Civil War. From racial inequality and conflict between the North and South to questions of state sovereignty or the role of government in social change - these issues, McPherson shows, are as salient and controversial today as they were in the 1860s. Thoughtful, provocative, and authoritative, The War That Forged a Nation looks anew at the reasons America's Civil War has remained a subject of intense interest for the past century and a half and affirms the enduring relevance of the conflict for America today.
©2015 James McPherson (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Police State
Summary
We all want to feel safe. But safe from what and from whom? In his 60-plus years as a trial lawyer, Gerry Spence has never represented a person accused of a crime in which the police hadn't themselves violated the law. Whether by covering up their own corrupt dealings, by the falsification or manufacture of evidence, or by the outright murder of innocent civilians, those individuals charged with upholding the law break it every day - in ways more scandalous than the courts have dared admit. The police and prosecutors won't charge or convict themselves, and so the crimes of the criminal justice system are swept under the rug. Nothing changes. Too many police officers are killers on the loose, and every uninformed American is a potential next victim. Police culture is mired in the dead weight of precedent and ruled by trigger-happy tyrants. Power will march our nation over the police state precipice unless "we the people" take action. The FBI's massacre of the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, the killing of mortally wounded Fouad Kaady by a group of police officers, the torture of teenaged Dennis Williams by cops seeking a murder confession - again and again, the question arises: When the very men and women we pay to protect us instead persecute us every day, how can we be safe? In Police State, Spence slaps a stinging indictment upon the American justice system and puts forth a plan to restore liberty and justice for all.
©2015 G.L. Spence and Lanelle P. Spence Living Trust (P)2015 Macmillan Audio
The Girl Who Beat Isis
Summary
In August 2014, Farida Abbas was just a normal Yazidi girl living in a village high in the mountains of Northern Iraq. Then her village was attacked and swiftly taken by ISIS fighters, and her whole world changed. The jihadists murdered the men and the boys of her village, including her father and brothers, before taking Farida prisoner along with the rest of the women. This is the story of what happened to Farida after she was captured: the beatings, the rapes, the markets where ISIS sold their female prisoners like cattle, and Farida's realisation that the more difficult and resistant she became, the harder it was for her captors to continue their atrocities against her. So she struggled, she bit, she kicked, she accused her captors of going against their religion, and then one day the door to her room was left unlocked. She took her chance along with five other women and set out across the Syrian desert.... This is a story of incredible courage in the face of unthinkable atrocity. As the battle against ISIS continues to ravage the Middle East, The Girl Who Beat Isis provides an astonishing perspective on this very terrifying global threat.
©2016 Farida Khalaf (P)2016 Random House Audiobooks
Die infantile Gesellschaft
Summary
Vom Glück der Souveränität - warum wir endlich erwachsen werden müssen. Gefühl ist Trumpf, Argumente stören, Diskretion war gestern. Wir sind eine Gesellschaft der Kindsköpfe geworden. Erwachsene verhalten sich ungeniert wie Kinder, sind es aber längst nicht mehr. Sie halten das Leben für einen großen Spaß, senden Emojis in die Datenumlaufbahn, schwärmen hemmungslos für Greta & Co. Zugleich behandeln Politiker ihre Wähler wie kleine Kinder. Berlin gibt den Takt vor, die Stadt als Versuchslabor und Partyzone, in der kaum etwas klappt. Alexander Kissler nimmt die Politik ebenso wie den Kulturbetrieb, die Wirtschaft und die Kirchen aufs Korn. Er folgt den mal albernen, mal tragikomischen Verrenkungen unreifer Erwachsener und zeigt die Folgen einer infantilen Gesellschaft: Wenn Vernunft nicht mehr zählt, regiert die Unvernunft. Sein Buch ist eine Einladung, das größte Abenteuer zu wagen, das das Leben für uns bereithält: erwachsen zu werden. Ein fulminanter Aufruf zu mehr Mündigkeit, mehr Eigenverantwortung und weniger Gefühligkeit. "Die Kunst des Erwachsenseins besteht darin, Distanz zu ertragen, von sich selbst absehen zu können, den Unterschied zwischen drinnen und draußen, Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit, Ich und Nicht-Ich ermessen zu können. Der innerlich erwachsene Mensch ist grundsätzlich in der Lage, sein Leben selbstständig und nach eigenen Vorstellungen zu gestalten, ohne zu erwarten, dass er sich mit diesen Vorstellungen immer durchsetzen wird. Er kennt seine Schwächen und seine Stärken und die lange Strecke zwischen den Polen. Er arbeitet mehr an sich als an anderen, nimmt es mit den eigenen Plänen genauer als mit den eigenen Rechtfertigungen. Er hält weder die Welt für eine Ausformung des Ichs noch das Ich für einen bloßen Wurmfortsatz der Welt. Er weiß, was er will. Er will nicht alles und nicht alles sofort. Er scheitert und verzweifelt nicht, er gewinnt und vergisst sich nicht. Er lässt andere nicht für eigene Niederlagen büßen und bleibt im Triumph nicht allein. Wir müssen uns den Erwachsenen als einen glücklichen Menschen vorstellen. Sind Sie bereit?"
©2021 HarperCollins Germany GmbH (P)2021 HarperCollins Germany GmbH
The Big Sort
Summary
In 2004, journalist Bill Bishop coined the term "the big sort". Armed with startling new demographic data, he made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves into alarmingly homogeneous communities - not by region or by state but by city and even neighborhood. Over the past three decades, we have been choosing the neighborhoods (and churches and news shows) compatible with our lifestyles and beliefs. The result is a country that has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don't know and can't understand those who live a few miles away. How this came to be, and its dire implications for our country, is the subject of this groundbreaking work. In The Big Sort, Bishop has taken his analysis to a new level. He begins with stories about how we live today and then draws on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.
©2008 Bill Bishop (P)2017 Tantor
The FBI
Summary
No institution in American society generates as much curiosity, fear, and intrigue as the FBI. No institution can obtain so much information and penetrate so deeply into our private lives. And no institution plays a greater role in safeguarding our freedom - or potentially threatening it. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning journalist Ronald Kessler provides a firsthand look at the people who run the Bureau, the methods they use, the powers they wield, and the secrets they hold. Learn how the FBI solved some of the most highly publicized cases in history, including Watergate, the Pan Am 103 bombing, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and the World Trade Center bombing. Learn also how and why the FBI fumbled such important cases as the David Koresh cult tragedy in Waco and the Rodney King beating. This revealing book will change the way America perceives the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
©1996 Ronald Kessler (P)1996 Blackstone Audio, Inc.