"After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of Red Pill arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches "Blue Lives"--a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life--and soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all. Wannsee is a place...

The danger is palpable as maverick activist Ye Haiyan (a.k.a Hooligan Sparrow) and her band of colleagues travel to Hainan Province in southern China to protest the case of six elementary school girls who were sexually abused by their principal. Marked as enemies of the state, the activists are under constant government surveillance and face interrogation, harassment, and imprisonment. Sparrow, who gained notoriety with her advocacy work for sex workers'...

How did a nation founded as a homeland for South Asian Muslims, most of whom follow a tolerant nonthreatening form of Islam, become a haven for Al Qaeda and a rogue's gallery of domestic jihadist and sectarian groups? In this groundbreaking history of Pakistan's involvement with radical Islam, John R. Schmidt, the senior U.S political analyst in Pakistan in the years before 9/11, places the blame squarely on the rulers of the country, who thought...

In the summer of 2009, shortly after Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress swept to power promising a new era of hope and change, a citizens protest movement emerged out of nowhere threatening to derail their agenda. Some said this uprising was the epitome of grassroots democracy. Others said it was a classic example of 'astroturfing' -- an elaborate corporate public relations effort designed to create the impression of a spontaneous uprising. Curious...

"A smart and surprising political inventory for how America can reunite and revitalize in a time of crisis. Written by an admired leader of the Republican party, RALLY POINT: Five Tasks to Unite the Country and Revitalize the American Dream looks past the2016 election, past the finger pointing and conventional political thinking, to focus on clear, primary principles that conservatives must debate and defend to protect the future of America. Raised...

"In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative...

Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the man make the times or do the times make the man? Goodwin draws upon four of the presidents she has studied most closely, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights), to show how they first recognized leadership qualities within themselves, and were recognized by others as leaders....

The author recounts how his exposure to the criminal underclass while serving time in a state-run confinement center opened his eyes to the ways in which the behavior and world view of those criminals resembled the politics of American liberalism.

Rev. Al Sharpton revisits the highlights of the Obama administration, the 2016 election, and Trump's subsequent hold on the GOP, and draws on his decades-long experience with other key players in politics and activism. He also amplifies the new voices and movements that have emerged in response to the Trump presidency. An examination of the American soul and a clarion call to action offers lessons for anyone who's stood at the crossroads of their...

"Racism. Sexism. Russian interference. A few thousand votes in key swing states. There are no shortage of explanations for the stunning 2016 election of Donald Trump. In How Trump Happened, political experts Steven Schier and Todd Eberly step back to trace the factors driving his election, arguing that Trump's victory was decades in the making. As Americans prepare once again to cast their presidential ballots, How Trump Happened will be indispensable...