Critical commentary accompanies the story of Antonio who risks his life to borrow money from his enemy, Shylock, and is saved by Portia, an heiress posing as a lawyer. (view table of contents)

Product Description: "Block's memories of [her period underground] are consistently evocative and occasionally emotionally wrenching, compelling the reader to stay glued to the text."—CounterPunch“Diana Block’s Arm the Spirit is a stunning piece of work with pitch-perfect voice and strong writing...read more

Product Description: Diane Wilson is an activist, shrimper, and all around hell-raiser whose first book, An Unreasonable Woman, told of her battle to save her bay in Seadrift, Texas. Back then, she was an accidental activist who worked with whistleblowers, organized protests, and eventually sunk her own boat to stop the plastic-manufacturing giant Formosa from releasing dangerous chemicals into water she shrimped in, grew up on, and loved...read more

Critical commentary accompanies the story of Antonio who risks his life to borrow money from his enemy, Shylock, and is saved by Portia, an heiress posing as a lawyer.

Product Description: In Radical, Nicholas von Hoffman tells the story of Saul Alinsky, the “father” of community organizing. Von Hoffman, who worked with Alinsky for years, gives a moving, often funny portrait of his mentor, a man who forever changed American politics, along with a rigorous historical analysis of what made his contribution so vital...read more

Product Description: Insider Richard Kirsch offers a vivid, first-person account of how health care reform came to be. This first-person account brings readers inside the biggest and most consequential issue campaign in American history. Fighting for Our Health recounts how a reform campaign led by grassroots organizers played a crucial role in President Obama’s signing historic health reform legislation in March of 2010—defeating the tea partiers, Republican Party, health insurance industry, and the US Chamber of Commerce...read more

In his memoir, Barack Obama omits the full name of his mentor, simply calling him "Frank." Now, the truth is out: Never has a figure as deeply troubling and controversial as Frank Marshall Davis had such an impact on the development of an American president.Although other radical influences on Obama—from Jeremiah Wright to Bill Ayers—have been scrutinized, the public knows little about Davis, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA, cited by the Associated Press as an "important influence" on Obama, one whom he "looked to" not merely for "advice on living" but as a "father" figure.While the Left has willingly dismissed Davis (with good reason), here are the indisputable, eye-opening facts: Frank Marshall Davis was a pro-Soviet, pro-Red China communist. His Communist Party USA card number, revealed in FBI files, was CP number 47544. He was a prototype of the loyal Soviet patriot, so radical that the FBI placed him on the federal government's Security Index. In the early 1950s, Davis opposed U.S. attempts to slow Stalin and Mao. He favored Red Army takeovers of Central and Eastern Europe, and communist control in Korea and Vietnam. Dutifully serving the cause, he edited and wrote for communist newspapers in both Chicago and Honolulu, courting contributors who were Soviet agents. In the 1970s, amid this dangerous political theater, Frank Marshall Davis came into Barack Obama's life.Aided by access to explosive declassified FBI files, Soviet archives, and Davis's original newspaper columns, Paul Kengor explores how Obama sought out Davis and how Davis found in Obama an impressionable young man, one susceptible to Davis's worldview that opposed American policy and traditional values while praising communist regimes. Kengor sees remnants of this worldview in Obama's early life and even, ultimately, his presidency.Kengor charts with definitive accuracy the progression of Davis's communist ideas from Chicago to Hawaii. He explores how certain elements of the Obama administration's agenda reflect Davis's columns advocating wealth redistribution, government stimulus for "public works projects," taxpayer-funding of universal health care, and nationalizing General Motors. Davis's writings excoriated the "tentacles of big business," blasted Wall Street and "greedy" millionaires, lambasted GOP tax cuts that "spare the rich," attacked "excess profits" and oil companies, and perceived the Catholic Church as an obstacle to his vision for the state—all the while echoing Davis's often repeated mantra for transformational and fundamental "change."And yet, The Communist is not unsympathetic to Davis, revealing him as something of a victim, an African American who suffered devastating racial persecution in the Jim Crow era, steering this justly angered young man on a misguided political track. That Davis supported violent and heartless communist regimes over his own country is impossible to defend. That he was a source of inspiration to President Barack Obama is impossible to ignore.Is Obama working to fulfill the dreams of Frank Marshall Davis? That question has been impossible to answer, since Davis's writings and relationship with Obama have either been deliberately obscured or dismissed as irrelevant. With Kengor's The Communist, Americans can finally weigh the evidence and decide for themselves.

Product Description: How does a graduate student acquire the skills necessary to define a clear research agenda and write meaningful contributions to the scholarship in his or her field? Can the requirements of professional advancement in the ivory tower be reconciled with making a difference in the bare-knuckle world of policymaking? Can even a celebrated activist-scholar survive the seemingly relentless neoliberalization of higher education? Becoming a Footnote takes the reader on an inspirational journey through the experiences of researcher Sanford F...read more

Product Description: In On Western Terrorism Noam Chomsky, world-renowned dissident intellectual, discusses Western power and propaganda with filmmaker and investigative journalist Andre Vltchek. The discussion weaves historical narrative with the two men’s personal experiences, which have led them to a life of activism...read more

Product Description: Not long after the death of his father, whose heart gave out suddenly in November 1967, Charles Koch--then in his early thirties--discovered a letter his father had written when his four sons were small. "My dear boys," it began, "when you are twenty-one, you will receive what now seems to be a large sum of money...read more

Product Description: In times of trouble, Theodore Roosevelt once said, the country needs not critics or complainers, but the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood...who spends himself in a worthy cause. Richardson Dilworth was such a man...read more