Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence tracks the case and explores why Trayvon’s name and George Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict symbolized all the grieving, the injustice, the profiling and free passes based on white privilege and police power: the long list of Trayvons known and unknown. With contributions from Robin D.G. Kelley, Rita Dove, Cornel West and Amy Goodman, Thandisizwe Chimurenga, Alexander Cockburn, Etan Thomas, Tara Skurtu, bell hooks and Quassan Castro, June Jordan, Jesse Jackson, Tim Wise, Patricia Williams, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Vijay Prashad, Jesmyn Ward and more, Killing Trayvons is an essential addition to the literature on race, violence and resistance.

Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence

Politics & Social Sciences

Gray, Kevin Alexander

Social Sciences

Counterpunch

The 1960s are remembered for radical politics, explorations of sexuality, drug experimentation and rock and roll. All of these elements composed the 60s counterculture. Then things changed. Richard Nixon got elected president, and together with Congress, made the war on drugs a cultural and political crusade replete with lots of cops, guns and constitutional violations. Youthful protesters were murdered by authorities in Berkeley, Kent State and Jackson State. Divisions over tactics and politics combined with police repression to splinter and dissipate the left political movement. The Vietnam war finally ended and Abbie Hoffman went underground after a cocaine bust. Meanwhile, in one of its most manipulative moments, corporate America was quickly figuring out how to put sex, drugs and rock and roll up for sale. Hippies became freaks; Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Pigpen died untimely deaths, but the rock show went on. The 1970s were the decade the Sixties spirit struggled to survive while becoming a shadow of its dreams. Daydream Sunset is the story Ron Jacobs tells in his colorful history of the 1970s. From the Fillmore East to Oakland Coliseum; from Berkeley's Telegraph Ave to the streets of Europe, this alternative history of this fraught time will make you feel like dancing in your seats and wondering what might have been. One part reminiscence and several parts cultural history, Jacobs has crafted a thrilling and intimate narrative that takes the reader on a trip through a crazy history some people don't remember and others want us to forget.

Daydream Sunset: The 60s Counterculture in the 70s

History

Jacobs, Ron

Americas

Zen Economics addresses the background philosophical issues around economics, science and technology to place them in context and then applies the results to work and labor, income and wealth distribution, environmental crisis and animal rights. Zen enters as absence, as radical humility toward what is knowable and what is known. This view derives from years spent with the base texts of existential philosophy, from correspondence between Martin Heidegger and D.T. Suzuki around the relationship between Heidegger’s ontology and Zen and from Buddhism as a practical, non-deistic, philosophy of life. The book ends with a political program that emerges from four decades of political activism.

Zen Economics

Business & Money

Urie, Rob

Economics

Stark is an endangered species. He's the last Jewish private detective in the south Bronx and his days may be numbered. It's the summer of 1965: the Yankees are making another pennant run, the war in Vietnam is heating up, hemlines are rising and the old neighborhood is changing. These days it's easier to stumble on a mugging than to find a good bagel. Stark is not a tough guy. In the trade, he's what's known as a peeper. His business is adultery and his weapon is a camera with a long lens not a snub-nose revolver. But Stark's life is beginning to unravel. His wife left him, his secretary hates him, his mother wants to mother him, he can't shake his shrink's voice from his head and he's got a strange pain in his chest. Then things go from bad to worse. He witnesses a shocking murder and suddenly Stark goes from being the hunter to the hunted, as he races through a decaying world of bookies, transvestites, loan sharks, slum lords and thugs for hire. "Stark in the Bronx" is the dazzling first novel by acclaimed historian Saul Landau. A kind of comic noir, Landau's atmospheric novel is both thrilling and hilarious: imagine the "Maltese Falcon" narrated by Woody Allen. Praise for Saul Landau and Stark: "Saul Landau, like the narrator of 'The Great Gatsby, marvels at how the rich so joyously make messes secure in the knowledge that others will clean up. But what if, one day, they don't?" -- Gore Vidal "You'll believe him, laugh with him, weep and get off your ass." -- John Berger, author "Ways of Seeing"

Stark in the Bronx: A Detective Novel

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Landau, Saul

Mystery

Inside MSNBC Barack Obama wasn't the only beneficiary of the calamitous Republican rule under George W. Bush in the 2000s. Something of an industry punchline since its formation in 1996, MSNBC suddenly gained a comprehensible voice during the era, while pinning its hopes upon the inspiring Senator from Illinois. Obama's presidential victory in 2008 spelled success for the network, which saw a sizable ratings increase, and began positioning itself as a viable alternative to the right-wing propaganda machine of Fox News. However, after a close examination of the station's programming, and an analysis of their celebrity talking heads, troubling questions about the state of the American media arise. In Medium Blue: the Politics of MSNBC, media analyst Michael Arria provides the first book-length investigation into the remaking of MSNBC as a cable network designed to advance the neoliberal ideology of the new Democratic Party. Arria depicts a network devoted to defending the Democratic Party's policies at all costs. His in-depth analysis provides new details on the firing of Phil Donahue, the termination of Keith Olberman and Cenk Uygur, the personal and professional interconnections between MSNBC producers and commentators to the DNC and the Obama White House. He shows how MSNBC has shilled for the Obama administration's wars, defended its illegal spying, tarred whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, backed Obama’s wars and failed to hold our broken political system accountable. Medium Blue serves as lucid guide to help you navigate through the nightly propaganda of America’s most popular liberal network.

Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistence

Science & Math

Hribal, Jason

Biological Sciences

Barack Obama wasn’t the only beneficiary of the calamitous Bush years. Something of an industry punchline since its formation in 1996, MSNBC suddenly gained a comprehensible voice during the era, while pinning its hopes upon the inspiring senator from Illinois. Obama’s victory spelled success for the network, which saw a sizable ratings increase and began positioning itself as a viable alternative to the right-wing propaganda of Fox News. However, a close inspection of the station’s programming and an analysis of their celebrity hosts generate troubling questions about the state of the American media. MSNBC has shilled for Obama’s wars, defended the administration’s illegal spying programs and failed to hold our broken political system accountable. Medium Blue serves as a primer to help navigate the ultimate futility of our distinguished liberal media.

Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC

Reference

Arria, Michael

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

United States wars are getting repetitive. Always the same old scenario. The mainstream media alert public opinion to the latest villain supposedly threatening to slaughter his own people . The U.S. does the job instead with its drones and missiles. The new villain is soon forgotten, but his country is left in a shambles, with competing fanatics vying to dominate the chaos. Something new is needed. How about a Woman War President? Hillary Rodham Clinton has painstakingly groomed herself for the role. Her record as Secretary of State shows that she is fully qualified to be the first woman to be known as the mother of all drones or even to launch World War III.

Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton

Diana Johnstone

Politics & Government

In An Orgy of Thieves, veteran investigative journalists Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn chart the rise of neoliberalism in the United States. The book details how the Democratic Party reinvented itself in the 1980s and 1990s as a more corporate-friendly party, jettisoning many of the economic and social policies the party had advanced since the days of FDR. From the passage of free trade pacts like NAFTA to the gutting welfare for poor mothers, Cockburn and St. Clair provide an unsparing how the New Democrats betrayed the aspirations of the party's base of minority voters, organized labor and environmentalists in order to appease the interest of Wall Street tycoons and K Street lobbyists. The authors emphasize that neoliberalism is more than just an economic theory but represents an entire theory of government defined by relaxed regulations, harsher crime laws and a more interventionist foreign policy abroad. An Orgy of Thieves captures the structural transformation of the country, as the billionaire class exploded and much of the rest of the country got left behind. Here are not rigorously researched accounts of the new policies but vivid profiles of the politicians who put them into practice: Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Stephen Breyer, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. An Orgy of Thieves sheds a dramatic new light on an era of profound change in America.

An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents

Cockburn, Alexander

St. Clair, Jeffrey

The ongoing battle for hearts and minds in Iraq and Afghanistan is a military strategy inspired originally by efforts at domestic social control and counterinsurgency in the United States. Weaponizing Anthropology documents how anthropological knowledge and ethnographic methods are harnessed by military and intelligence agencies in post-9/11 America to placate hostile foreign populations. David H. Price outlines the ethical implications of appropriating this traditional academic discourse for use by embedded, militarized research teams. Price's inquiry into past relationships between anthropologists and the CIA, FBI, and Pentagon provides the historical base for this expose of the current abuses of anthropology by military and intelligence agencies. Weaponizing Anthropology explores the ways that recent shifts in funding sources for university students threaten academic freedom, as new secretive CIA-linked fellowship programs rapidly infiltrate American university campuses. Price examines the specific uses of anthropological knowledge in military doctrine that have appeared in a new generation of counterinsurgency manuals and paramilitary social science units like the Human Terrain Teams.

Weaponizing Anthropology (Counterpunch)

PRICE, DAVID

Military

Paul Street is a historian, journalist, and political commentator in Chicago. He is the author of many books, including Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Routledge, 2008). The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Routledge, 2010), and They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Routledge, 2014). Street writes regularly for CounterPunch and Black Agenda Report.

Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump and the Politics of Appeasement

Street

PAUL

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