Social Science

*A Zibby's Most Anticipated Book of 2023* *A "Next Big Idea Club" Must-Read Book for January* *An Essence "Books by Black Authors to Read This Winter" Pick?* A piercing collection of essays on racial tension in America and the ongoing fight for visibility, change, and lasting hope “There are stories that must be told.” Acclaimed novelist and scholar Daniel Black has spent a career writing into the unspoken, fleshing out, through storytelling, pain that can’t be described. Now, in his debut essay collection, Black gives voice to the experiences of those who often find themselves on the margins. Tackling topics ranging from police brutality to the AIDS crisis to the role of HBCUs to queer representation in the black church, Black on Black celebrates the resilience, fortitude, and survival of black people in a land where their body is always on display. As Daniel Black reminds us, while hope may be slow in coming, it always arrives, and when it does, it delivers beyond the imagination. Propulsive, intimate, and achingly relevant, Black on Black is cultural criticism at its openhearted best.

This program includes an author's note read by the author. An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation—and the moral implications that affect us all. Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt. Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial audiobook, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo—because we are all implicated. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

The final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything. Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies—vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire. In graduate school, David Graeber conducted ethnographic field research in Madagascar for his doctoral thesis on the island’s politics and history of slavery and magic. During this time, he encountered the Zana-Malata, an ethnic group of mixed descendants of the many pirates who settled on the island at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, Graeber’s final posthumous book, is the outgrowth of this early research and the culmination of ideas that he developed in his classic, bestselling works Debt and The Dawn of Everything (written with the archaeologist David Wengrow). In this lively, incisive exploration, Graeber considers how the protodemocratic, even libertarian practices of the Zana-Malata came to shape the Enlightenment project defined for too long as distinctly European. He illuminates the non-European origins of what we consider to be “Western” thought and endeavors to recover forgotten forms of social and political order that gesture toward new, hopeful possibilities for the future. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

From the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace comes a timely, insightful, and groundbreaking look at the school-to-prison pipeline and life in the juvenile “justice” system. There has been very little written about juvenile detention and the path to justice. For many kids, a mistake made at age thirteen or fourteen—often resulting from external factors coupled with a biologically immature brain—can resonate through the rest of their lives, making high school difficult, college nearly impossible, and a middle-class life a mere fantasy. Here, in Children of the State, Jeff Hobbs challenges any preconceived perceptions about how the juvenile justice system works—and demonstrates in brilliant, piercing prose: No one so young should ever be considered irredeemable. Writing with great heart and sensitivity, Hobbs presents three different true stories that show the day-to-day life and the challenges faced by those living and working in juvenile programs: educators, counselors, and—most importantly—children. While serving a year-long detention in Wilmington, Delaware—one of the violent crime capitols of America—a bright young man considers both the benefits and the immense costs of striving for college acceptance while imprisoned. A career juvenile hall English Language Arts teacher struggles to align the small moments of wonder in her work alongside its statistical futility, all while the San Francisco city government considers a new juvenile system without cinderblocks—and possibly without teachers. A territorial fistfight in Paterson, New Jersey is called a hate crime by the media and the boy held accountable seeks redemption and friendship in a demanding Life & Professional Skills class in lower Manhattan. Through these stories, Hobbs creates intimate portraits of these individuals as they struggle to make good decisions amidst the challenges of overcoming their pasts, and also asks: What should society do with young people who have made terrible mistakes? Just as he did with The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, Jeff Hobbs has crafted a gorgeous, captivating, and transcendent work of journalism with tremendous emotional power. Intimate and profound, relevant and revelatory, Children of the State masterfully blends personal stories with larger questions about race, class, prison reform, justice, and even about the concept of “fate.”

Featuring an introduction written and narrated by Rachel Maddow, Pegasus: How a Spy in Our Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy is the story of the one of the most sophisticated and invasive surveillance weapons ever created, used by governments around the world Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud's Pegasus: How a Spy in Our Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy is the story of the one of the most sophisticated and invasive surveillance weapons ever created, used by governments around the world. Pegasus is widely regarded as the most effective and sought-after cyber-surveillance system on the market. The system’s creator, the NSO Group, a private corporation headquartered in Israel, is not shy about proclaiming its ability to thwart terrorists and criminals. “Thousands of people in Europe owe their lives to hundreds of our company employees,” NSO’s cofounder declared in 2019. This bold assertion may be true, at least in part, but it’s by no means the whole story. NSO’s Pegasus system has not been limited to catching bad guys. It’s also been used to spy on hundreds, and maybe thousands, of innocent people around the world: heads of state, diplomats, human rights defenders, political opponents, and journalists. This spyware is as insidious as it is invasive, capable of infecting a private cell phone without alerting the owner, and of doing its work in the background, in silence, virtually undetectable. Pegasus can track a person’s daily movement in real time, gain control of the device’s microphones and cameras at will, and capture all videos, photos, emails, texts, and passwords—encrypted or not. This data can be exfiltrated, stored on outside servers, and then leveraged to blackmail, intimidate, and silence the victims. Its full reach is not yet known. “If they’ve found a way to hack one iPhone,” says Edward Snowden, “they’ve found a way to hack all iPhones.” Pegasus is a look inside the monthslong worldwide investigation, triggered by a single spectacular leak of data, and a look at how an international consortium of reporters and editors revealed that cyber intrusion and cyber surveillance are happening with exponentially increasing frequency across the globe, at a scale that astounds. Meticulously reported and masterfully written, Pegasus shines a light on the lives that have been turned upside down by this unprecedented threat and exposes the chilling new ways authoritarian regimes are eroding key pillars of democracy: privacy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

How did rescue dogs become status symbols? Why are luxury brands losing their cachet? What’s made F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous observations obsolete? The answers are part of a new revolution that’s radically reorganizing the way we view ourselves and others, that “will be hard for pop-culture readers to put down” (Booklist). Status was once easy to identify—fast cars, fancy shoes, sprawling estates, elite brands. But in place of Louboutins and Lamborghinis, the relevance of the rich, famous, and gauche is waning and a riveting revolution is underfoot. Chuck Thompson—dubbed “savagely funny” by The New York Times and “wickedly entertaining” by the San Francisco Chronicle—sets out to determine what “status” means today and learns that what was once considered the low life has become the high life. In The Status Revolution, Thompson tours the new world of status from a small community in British Columbia where an indigenous artist uses wood carving to restore communal status; to a Washington, DC, meeting of the “Patriotic Millionaires,” a club of high-earners who are begging the government to tax them; to a luxury auto factory in the south of Italy where making beautiful cars is as much about bringing dignity to a low-earning region than it is about flash and indulgence; to a London lab where the neural secrets of status are being unlocked. “Chock-full of fascinating revelations” (In Touch Weekly) and with his signature wit and irreverence, Thompson explains why everything we know about status is changing, upends centuries of conventional wisdom, and shows how the new status revolution reflects our place in contemporary society.

“One of the nation’s most prominent civil rights leaders” (Washington Post), a New York Times bestselling author, community organizer, investigative journalist, Ivy League professor, and former head of the NAACP, Ben Jealous draws from a life lived on America’s racial fault line to deliver a series of gripping and lively parables that call on each of us to reconcile, heal, and work fearlessly to make America one nation. Never Forget Our People Were Always Free illuminates for each of us how the path to healing America’s broken heart starts with each of us having the courage to heal our own.The son of parents who had to leave Maryland because their cross-racial marriage was illegal, Ben Jealous’ lively, courageous and empathetic storytelling calls on every American to look past deeply-cut divisions and recognize we are all in the same boat now. Along the way Jealous grapples with hidden American mysteries, including: Why do white men die from suicide more often than black men die from murder?How did racial profiling kill an American president?What happens when a Ku Klux Klansman wrestles with what Jesus actually said? How did Dave Chappelle know the DC Snipers were Black? Why shouldn't the civil rights movement give up on rednecks?When is what we have collectively forgotten about race more important than what we actually know?What do the most indecipherable things our elders say tell us about ourselves?  Told as a series of parables, Never Forget Our People Were Always Free features intimate glimpses of political, and faith leaders as different as Jack Kemp, Stacey Abrams, and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu and heroes as unlikely as a retired constable, a female pirate from Madagascar, a long lost Irishman, a death row inmate, and a man with a confederate flag over his heart. More than anything, Never Forget Our People Were Always Free offers readers hope America’s oldest wounds can heal and her oldest divisions be overcome. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

A moving and deeply personal excavation of Indigenous beauty and passion in a suffering world In prose that is evocative and sensual, unabashedly queer and visceral, raw and autobiographical, Joshua Whitehead writes of an Indigenous body in pain, coping with trauma. Deeply rooted within, he reaches across the anguish to create a new form of storytelling he calls "biostory"—beyond genre, and entirely sovereign. Through this narrative perspective, Making Love with the Land recasts mental health struggles and our complex emotional landscapes from a nefarious parasite on his (and our) well-being to kin, even a relation, no matter what difficulties they present to us. Whitehead ruminates on loss and pain without shame or ridicule but rather highlights waypoints for personal transformation. Written in the aftermath of heartbreak, before and during the pandemic, Making Love with the Land illuminates this present moment in which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are rediscovering old ways and creating new ones about connection with and responsibility toward each other and the land. Intellectually audacious and emotionally compelling, Whitehead shares his devotion to the world in which we live and brilliantly—even joyfully—maps his experience on the land that has shaped stories, histories, and bodies from time immemorial.

A poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender—and toward a brighter future—from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down. In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black woman are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to diagnosis with heart failure at age twenty-nine, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image. Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women: At the doctor’s office, where any health ailment is treated with a directive to lose weight. On dating sites, where larger bodies are rejected or fetishized. On TV, where fat characters are asexual comedic relief. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love. An unmissable portrait of a woman on a journey toward understanding our society and herself, Weightless holds up a mirror to the world we live in and asks us to imagine the future we deserve.

In this timely and necessary book, New York Times opinion writer Jessica Grose dismantles two hundred years of unrealistic parenting expectations and empowers today’s mothers to make choices that actually serve themselves, their children, and their communities Close your eyes and picture the perfect mother. She is usually blonde and thin. Her roots are never showing and she installed that gleaming kitchen backsplash herself (watch her TikTok for DIY tips). She seamlessly melds work, wellness and home; and during the depths of the pandemic, she also ran remote school and woke up at 5 a.m. to meditate. You may read this and think it’s bananas; you have probably internalized much of it. Journalist Jessica Grose sure had. After she failed to meet every one of her own expectations for her first pregnancy, she devoted her career to revealing how morally bankrupt so many of these ideas and pressures are. Now, in Screaming on the Inside, Grose weaves together her personal journey with scientific, historical, and contemporary reporting to be the voice for American parents she wishes she’d had a decade ago. The truth is that parenting cannot follow a recipe; there’s no foolproof set of rules that will result in a perfectly adjusted child. Every parent has different values, and we will have different ideas about how to pass those values along to our children. What successful parenting has in common, regardless of culture or community, is close observation of the kind of unique humans our children are. In thoughtful and revelatory chapters about pregnancy, identity, work, social media, and the crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grose explains how we got to this moment, why the current state of expectations on mothers is wholly unsustainable, and how we can move towards something better. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

An adoptee reconnects with the Lakota family and culture she was born into—and nurtures a new tradition that helps others to do the same. In the 1950s, when Sandy White Hawk was a toddler, she was taken from her Lakota family on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Her adoption papers identify her as "a child of the Indian race," and her adoptive mother never let her forget it. This memoir of her removal from and return to her extended Lakota family is also the story of her life work: helping other adoptees and tribal communities to reconcile the enormous harms that widespread removals have caused. Many people believe that adoption is needed to protect "unwanted children" from "unfit mothers," to offer a child a "better chance at life." White Hawk shows that this is a myth; that adoption, particularly transracial adoption, is layered in complexities that adoptees are left to navigate in emotional isolation, without a language to speak about what is happening to them. White Hawk founded First Nation Repatriation Institute, which addresses the post-adoption issues of Native American individuals, families, and communities. Incorporating the testimony of adoptees, formerly fostered individuals, and birth relatives, she argues that those who experienced child protection need to inform the policies for child removal and placement—and that everyone involved in the issue must focus on family preservation.

Cliff Evans attended a storied New England prep school and an Ivy League university, and when he finished, he turned to … professional counterfeiting. He and his team sought ways to make money illegally – by photocopying it. Why would someone with all the opportunities in the world turn to a life of crime?   In the Scribd Original, The Ivy League Counterfeiter, author and TV host Touré dives into how Evans built his operation and how it all fell apart. Touré and Evans were not just classmates – they were also friends. This true, gripping story goes deep inside Evans’s roller coaster life. It’s built on court documents and interviews with Evans, his mother, and his friends, who reveal that Evans was enamored with the street life – partly because he looked up to his older brother, a serial bank robber. His brother taught him the code of the street, but did he help bring down Evans? The Ivy League Counterfeiter is a harrowing, heart-thumping journey that takes us from the streets of Chicago to the hallowed halls of Columbia University, and into the criminal underworld. This provocative, unforgettable story encompasses the wild, chaotic ride of someone who just couldn’t stay away from the street life. 

“Winning, cheeky, and illuminating….What appears initially as a folly with a look-at-this cover and title becomes, thanks to Radke’s intelligence and curiosity, something much meatier, entertaining, and wise.” –The Washington Post “Lively and thorough, Butts is the best kind of nonfiction.” —Esquire, Best Books of 2022 So Far A “carefully researched and reported work of cultural history” (The New York Times) that explores how one body part has come to mean so much—now one of the most anticipated books of 2022. Whether we love them or hate them, think they’re sexy, think they’re strange, consider them too big, too small, or anywhere in between, humans have a complicated relationship with butts. It is a body part unique to humans, critical to our evolution and survival, and yet it has come to signify so much more: sex, desire, comedy, shame. A woman’s butt, in particular, is forever being assessed, criticized, and objectified, from anxious self-examinations trying on jeans in department store dressing rooms to enduring crass remarks while walking down a street or high school hallways. But why? In Butts: A Backstory, reporter, essayist, and RadioLab contributing editor Heather Radke is determined to find out. Spanning nearly two centuries, this “whip-smart” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) cultural history takes us from the performance halls of 19th-century London to the aerobics studios of the 1980s, the music video set of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” and the mountains of Arizona, where every year humans and horses race in a feat of gluteal endurance. Along the way, she meets evolutionary biologists who study how butts first developed; models whose measurements have defined jean sizing for millions of women; and the fitness gurus who created fads like “Buns of Steel.” She also examines the central importance of race through figures like Sarah Bartmann, once known as the “Venus Hottentot,” Josephine Baker, Jennifer Lopez, and other women of color whose butts have been idolized, envied, and despised. Part deep dive reportage, part personal journey, part cabinet of curiosities, Butts is an entertaining, illuminating, and thoughtful examination of why certain silhouettes come in and out of fashion—and how larger ideas about race, control, liberation, and power affect our most private feelings about ourselves and others.

Not so long ago, conspiracy theorists were relegated to the cultural fringes. They were the oddballs in the tinfoil hats, raging to one another about who really shot JFK and whether or not an astronaut walked on the moon. In recent years, however, as everything from stolen-election claims to vaccine disinformation to QAnon has made daily headlines, conspiracists have moved, if not front and center, then awfully close. As the American right wing retreats further into its political bunker and war rages in Ukraine, two particularly bizarre theories are gaining traction in the United States and Russia. They seem laughably far-fetched, but behind the absurdity lurk radical ideas that are becoming alarmingly commonplace. These ludicrous beliefs offer a road map of where we might be headed and also highlight the lunacy that’s already here. In Land of Delusion, cultural historian Colin Dickey, author of the acclaimed The Unidentified and Ghostland, introduces us to Tartaria, a great empire that sprang from Russia and spread across the globe, only to be destroyed by evil schemers who erased it from the history books. We also meet the New Chronologists, who claim that history began just eight hundred years ago and that the world was originally dominated by blond, blue-eyed Slavs. Crackpot theories to be sure, but they’re fueled by troubling beliefs that are all too real: that superior societies have been overrun by “others,” that we’ve been corrupted by fake news, and that power and lost glory must be restored. The far-reaching influence of Fox News, Alex Jones, lies generated by the Kremlin are enough to tell us that not only are these beliefs potent, they might soon become dominant. By turns entertaining and grimly serious, Land of Delusion takes us inside the warped logic of conspiracy theorists and connects the dots between crazy ideas and real-time events. Weird is one thing—weird and dangerous demands our full attention.

Funny Stories About White Privilege and Black Identity from a Black Nerd’s Perspective Author and Ebony Magazine podcaster Ron Dawson lends his wit and comical social commentary to tell the story of how one of the “whitest” and nerdiest of black men finally woke up, found his blackness, and lost all inhibitions at dropping the f-bomb. A coming-of-age story of black identity. In the suburbs of Atlanta, Ron was a black nerd (aka “blerd”) living very comfortably in his white world. He loved his white wife, worked well with his white workmates, and worshiped at a white church. On November 8, 2016, everything changed when Trump became POTUS. Ron began a journey of self-discovery that made him question everything—from faith to friendships. Part social commentary and part fantastical narrative. This book goes where no blerd has gone before. In a psychedelic way, Ron is guided by a guardian “angel” in the guise of Samuel L. Jackson’s character from Pulp Fiction. Sam is there to help Ron, well, be more black. Ron confronts his black “sins” and wrestles with black identity, systemic racism, and what it means to be “black” in America. Throughout this book, you’ll learn lessons from a man who deconstructs his faith and confronts personal demons of racial identity. Gain new perspectives through these funny stories that will reshape your current views on black identity.  

This program is read by the author, Isaac Wright Jr. An empowering memoir of courage and hope in the face of injustice—and the basis for the ABC television show, For Life—Marked for Life is the true story of Isaac Wright Jr.’s battle to win his freedom after being wrongfully imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit, and a critical indictment of America’s judicial system. “If I waited around for someone to save me, I’d be waiting my whole life. Unless I took the reins of this thing myself, I was going to die in prison. If that was my destiny, then I was going to die fighting. The desperation of that equation kept me up most nights. I would never find a gladiator. So I had to become him.” In the summer of 1989, Isaac Wright Jr. was a 28-year-old independent music producer, who’d struck out on his own and became one of hip hop’s early success stories. With his dance crew Uptown Express, Wright won recognition on Star Search, toured with Run-DMC, and transitioned into management, co-founding his wife Sunshine’s music group, The Cover Girls. They’d settled in the New Jersey suburbs to raise their six-year-old daughter, never imagining that Wright would fall victim to gross police misconduct and a corrupt district attorney. Accused of being a drug “kingpin” and incarcerated in Somerset County while the prosecutor and police built their case of lies against him, Wright realized he would get no help from any defense attorneys—white men uninterested in uncovering the truth or in proving the innocence of a black man. Pressured to take a plea deal offer of 20 years behind bars, Wright chose to take the law into his own hands by educating himself in the legal system so he could represent himself in court. Studying statutes and cases in the jail’s law library, Wright became an adept legal mind. But despite acquiring knowledge that he put to use in defending his fellow inmates, he lost his trial and was sentenced to Trenton State Prison for life, plus 70 years in 1991. For the next five years, Wright would continue learning law, become a paralegal with the prison’s Inmate Legal Association, and appeal his case. Threatened by corrupt correction officers and convicts, his family falling apart, Wright fought for his life with every legal means at his disposal, eventually uncovering the smoking gun that unraveled the conspiracy perpetrated by law enforcement officials against him. Marked for Life is not just the story of how Isaac Wright Jr. won his freedom. It is the story of how he found his true calling as a gladiator fighting on behalf of the oppressed and marginalized communities victimized by an unjust system of law. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

A stunning counternarrative of the legendary abolitionist Grimke sisters that finally reclaims the forgotten Black members of their family. The Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, have been highly revered figures in American history, lauded for leaving behind their lives as elite, slave-owning women on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand abolitionists in the North. Yet the focus on their story has obscured the experiences of their Black relatives, the progeny of their brother, Henry, and one of the enslaved people he owned, a woman named Nancy Weston. In The Grimkes, award-winning historian Kerri K. Greenidge recovers the larger Grimke clan, demonstrating that the Black Grimke women—including Angelina Weld Grimke and Charlotte Forten—created a vast network of friends, kin, and lovers as they reimagined Blackness and womanhood in terms far more radical than their white relatives would have allowed. A stunning counternarrative, The Grimkes shows that, just as the Hemingses and Jeffersons personified the racial myths of America’s founding generation, the Grimkes embodied the legacy—both traumatic and generative—of those myths.

With journalistic skill, heart, and hope, Requiem for the Massacre reckons with the tension in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one hundred years after the most infamous act of racial violence in American history More than one hundred years ago, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, perpetrated a massacre against its Black residents. For generations, the true story was ignored, covered up, and diminished by those in power and in a position to preserve the status quo. Blending memoir and immersive journalism, RJ Young shows how, today, Tulsa combats its racist past while remaining all too tolerant of racial injustice. Requiem for the Massacre is a cultural excavation of Tulsa one hundred years after one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. Young focuses on unearthing the narrative surrounding previously all-Black Greenwood District while challenging an apocryphal narrative that includes so-called Black Wall Street, Booker T. Washington, and Black exceptionalism. Young provides a firsthand account of the centennial events commemorating Tulsa’s darkest day as the city attempts to reckon with its self-image, commercialization of its atrocity, and the aftermath of the massacre that shows how things have changed and how they have stayed woefully the same. As Tulsa and the United States head into the next one hundred years, Young’s own reflections thread together the stories of a community and a nation trying to heal and trying to hope.

An explosive and deeply reported look at the systemic racism inside the American financial services industry, from acclaimed New York Times finance reporter Emily Flitter. In 2018, Emily Flitter received a tip that Morgan Stanley had fired a Black employee without cause. Flitter had been searching for a way to investigate the deep-rooted racism in the American financial industry, and that one tip lit the sparkplug for a three-year journey through the shocking yet normalized corruption in our financial institutions. Examining local insurance agencies and corporate titans like JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Wells Fargo, The White Wall reveals the practices that have kept the racial wealth gap practically as wide as it was during the Jim Crow era. Flitter exposes hiring and layoff policies designed to keep Black employees from advancing to high levels; racial profiling of customers in internal emails between bank tellers; major insurers refusing to pay Black policyholders’ claims; and the systematic denial of funding to Black entrepreneurs. She also gives a voice to victims, from single mothers to professional athletes to employees themselves: people who were scammed, lied to, and defrauded by the systems they trusted with their money, and silenced when they attempted to speak out and seek reform. Flitter connects the dots between data, history, legal scholarship, and powerful personal stories to provide an assiduously reported, eye-opening look at what it means to bank while Black. As America continues to confront systemic racism and pave a path forward, The White Wall is an essential examination of one of its most caustic contributors.

A journalist and folklorist explores the truths that underlie the stories we imagine—and reveals the magic in the everyday. “I’ve always felt that the term fairy tale doesn’t quite capture the essence of these stories,” writes Emily Urquhart. “I prefer the term wonder tale, which is Irish in origin, for its suggestion of awe coupled with narrative. In a way, this is most of our stories.” In this startlingly original essay collection, Urquhart reveals the truths that underlie our imaginings: what we see in our heads when we read, how the sight of a ghost can heal, how the entrance to the underworld can be glimpsed in an oil painting or a winter storm—or the onset of a loved one’s dementia. In essays on death and dying, pregnancy and prenatal genetics, radioactivity, chimeras, cottagers, and plague, Ordinary Wonder Tales reveals the essential truth: if you let yourself look closely, there is magic in the everyday.

A real-life technological thriller about a band of eccentric misfits taking on the biggest cybersecurity threats of our time. "What Michael Lewis did for baseball in Moneyball, Dudley and Golden do brilliantly for the world of ransomware and hackers. Cinematic, big in scope, and meticulously reported, this book is impossible to put down." —Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author of In Harm’s Way and Horse Soldiers Scattered across the world, an elite team of code crackers is working tirelessly to thwart the defining cyber scourge of our time. You’ve probably never heard of them. But if you work for a school, a business, a hospital, or a municipal government, or simply cherish your digital data, you may be painfully familiar with the team’s sworn enemy: ransomware. Again and again, an unlikely band of misfits, mostly self-taught and often struggling to make ends meet, have outwitted the underworld of hackers who lock computer networks and demand huge payments in return for the keys. The Ransomware Hunting Team traces the adventures of these unassuming heroes and how they have used their skills to save millions of ransomware victims from paying billions of dollars to criminals. Working tirelessly from bedrooms and back offices, and refusing payment, they’ve rescued those whom the often hapless FBI has been unwilling or unable to help. Foremost among them is Michael Gillespie, a cancer survivor and cat lover who got his start cracking ransomware while working at a Nerds on Call store in the town of Normal, Illinois. Other teammates include the brilliant, reclusive Fabian Wosar, a high school dropout from Germany who enjoys bantering with the attackers he foils, and his protégé, the British computer science prodigy Sarah White. Together, they have established themselves as the most effective force against an escalating global threat. This book follows them as they put their health, personal relationships, and financial security on the line to navigate the technological and moral challenges of combating digital hostage taking. Urgent, uplifting, and entertaining, Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden’s The Ransomware Hunting Team is a real-life technological thriller that illuminates a dangerous new era of cybercrime. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

A New Statesman ‘most anticipated title of the year’ 2022 ‘Compelling.’ David Lammy MP A powerful intervention roundly debunking the myth of progress in racial equality — particularly in the workplace — and offering a blueprint for the future. Have you ever wondered why, as Britain becomes more diverse, so many of our leaders come from the same narrow pool? Can it be acceptable in 2023 that there are no ethnic minority chief constables, only one CEO in the top 50 NHS Trusts and no permanent secretaries in the civil service? Nazir Afzal knows what it’s like to break the glass ceiling, challenge prejudice and shake up predominantly white institutions. Born in Birmingham to first generation Pakistani immigrants, he was the first Muslim to be appointed as a Chief Crown Prosecutor and the most senior Muslim lawyer in the Crown Prosecution Service. His insights into the UK’s relationship with race and power have driven him to demand answers to an age old question around Britain’s diversity failings: why does ethnic minority talent continue to be side-lined? Deploying bristling polemic and presenting an ambitious blueprint to unlock Britain’s hidden potential, this book hears from high-profile ethnic minority leaders to discover the hurdles they had to overcome and what changes are needed to make a difference. Containing interviews with leaders across all sectors, Nazir provides the most detailed examination to date of the prejudice holding our leading institutions and industries back. In doing so it forcefully confronts stale leadership orthodoxies and argues that power in Britain does not have to look exactly the same as it always has done. It’s time to welcome the new wave of diverse leadership talent that Britain is crying out for

One in five Americans suffers from chronic loneliness. How did we become so alienated? Why is our sense of belonging so undermined? What if there were a set of science-backed techniques for navigating modern social life that could help us overcome our differences, create empathy, and forge lasting connections even across divides? In Belonging, Stanford University professor Geoffrey L. Cohen applies his and others' groundbreaking research to the myriad problems of communal existence and offers concrete solutions for improving daily life. We all feel a deep need to belong, but most of us don't fully appreciate that need in others. Often inadvertently, we behave in ways that threaten others' sense of belonging. Yet small acts that establish connection, brief activities such as reflecting on our core values, and a slew of practices that Cohen defines as "situation-crafting" have been shown to lessen political polarization, improve motivation and performance in school and work, combat racism in our communities, enhance health and well-being, and unleash the potential in ourselves and in our relationships. Belonging is essential for managers, educators, parents, administrators, caregivers, and everyone who wants those around them to thrive.

"Lisa Flanagan narrates journalist Margaret Sullivan's memoir/manifesto authoritatively....and gives this important audiobook the seriousness it merits." - AudioFile Magazine Prologue read by the author Over her four decades of working in newsrooms big and small, Margaret Sullivan has become a trusted champion and critic of the American news media. In this bracing memoir, Sullivan traces her life in journalism and how trust in the mainstream press has steadily eroded. Sullivan began her career at the Buffalo News, where she rose from summer intern to editor in chief. In Newsroom Confidential she chronicles her years in the trenches battling sexism and throwing elbows in a highly competitive newsroom. In 2012, Sullivan was appointed the public editor of The New York Times, the first woman to hold that important role. She was in the unique position of acting on behalf of readers to weigh the actions and reporting of the paper's staff, parsing potential lapses in judgment, unethical practices, and thorny journalistic issues. Sullivan recounts how she navigated the paper’s controversies, from Hillary Clinton's emails to Elon Musk's accusations of unfairness to the need for greater diversity in the newsroom. In 2016, having served the longest tenure of any public editor, Sullivan left for the Washington Post, where she had a front-row seat to the rise of Donald Trump in American media and politics. With her celebrated mixture of charm, sharp-eyed observation, and nuanced criticism, Sullivan takes us behind the scenes of the nation's most influential news outlets to explore how Americans lost trust in the news and what it will take to regain it. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

A revolutionary, evidence-based guide for developing resilience and grit to confront our whitewashed history and build a better future—​in the vein of Think Again and Do Better. The racial fault lines of our country have been revealed in stark detail as our national news cycle is flooded with stories about the past. If you are just now learning about the massacre in Tulsa, the killing of Native American children in compulsory “residential schools” designed to destroy their culture, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans, you are not alone. The seeds of today’s inequalities were sown in past events like these. The time to unlearn the whitewashed history we believed was true is now. If we close our eyes to our history, we cannot make the systemic changes needed to mend our country. Today’s challenges began centuries ago and have deepened and widened over time. To take the path to a more just future, we must not ignore the damage but see it through others’ eyes, bear witness to it, and uncover its origins. As historians share these truths, we will need psychologists to help us navigate the shame, guilt, disbelief, and resistance many of us feel. Dolly Chugh, award-winning professor of social psychology and author of the acclaimed The Person You Mean to Be, gives us the psychological tools we need to grapple with the truth of our country. Through heartrending personal histories and practical advice, Chugh invites us to dismantle the systems built by our forbearers and work toward a more just future.

In the vein of You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) and Black Nerd Problems, this witty, incisive essay collection from New York Times critic at large Maya Phillips explores race, religion, sexuality, and more through the lens of her favorite pop culture fandoms. From the moment Maya Phillips saw the opening scroll of Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, her life changed forever. Her formative years were spent loving not just the Star Wars saga, but superhero cartoons, anime, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Tolkien, and Doctor Who—to name just a few. As a critic at large at The New York Times, Phillips has written extensively on theater, poetry, and the latest blockbusters—with her love of some of the most popular and nerdy fandoms informing her career. Now, she analyzes the mark these beloved intellectual properties leave on young and adult minds, and what they teach us about race, gender expression, religion, and more. Spanning from the nineties through to today, Nerd is a collection of cultural criticism essays through the lens of fandom for everyone from the casual Marvel movie watcher to the hardcore Star Wars expanded universe connoisseur. “In the same way that the fandoms Phillips addresses often provide community and a sense of connection, the experience of reading Nerd feels like making a new friend” (Karen Han, cultural critic and screenwriter).

"A cogent memoir and commentary that challenges the American racial binary."- Kirkus Reviews Brown Enough, Christopher Rivas's first book, is a literary memoir about what it truly means to be Brown in America. Holding the weight of being a Latino man, Christopher wonders where he falls on the color line, widened through his experience as an ethnically am­biguous actor of color in Holly­wood and the man!) dangers and pitfalls that come from owning one's Brownness. Told through the lens of his personal stories and in a unique and literal voice, Christopher examines the deep history of his Dominican and Colombian heritage. Brown Enough is a breakthrough literary masterpiece that begs the question of what it means to be Brown in 21st century America, caught between cultures, and yet knowing that color lines are always starker than they appear.

This program is read by the authors. Hosts of the podcast Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know, Ben Bowlin, Matthew Frederick, & Noel Brown discern conspiracy fact from fiction regarding "stuff" the government doesn’t want you to know. Conspiracies didn’t always seem so clear and present. It used to be that people with tin-foil hats who were convinced of secret messages coming through the radio were easily disregarded as kooks and looney tunes. But these days, conspiracies feel alive and well. From internet rumors to lying politicians to the tinderbox that is social media, it’s become remarkably clear that a vast swath of people believe really bonkers things. Why is that? How did these theories proliferate? Is there a kernel of truth to it or are they fully fiction? Ben Bowlin, Matt Frederick, and Noel Brown are the hosts of the popular iHeart podcast that seeks to answer these questions. With cool heads and extensive research, they regularly break down the wildest conspiracy theories: from chemtrails and biological testing to the secrets of lobbying and why the Kennedy assassination is of perennial interest. Written in smart, witty, and conversational style, Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know is a vital audiobook in helping to understand the unexplainable and use truth as a powerful weapon against ignorance, misinformation, and lies. A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.

“Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an eminent Dean of American journalism, a vital voice whose work chronicled the civil rights movement and so much of what has transpired since then. My People is the definitive collection of her reportage and commentary. Spanning datelines in the American South, South Africa and points scattered in between, her work constitutes a history of our time as rendered by the pen of a singular and indispensable black woman journalist.”-Jelani Cobb From the legendary Emmy Award-winning journalist, a collection of ground-breaking reportage from across five decades which vividly chronicles the experience of Black life in America today. At just eighteen years old,Charlayne Hunter-Gault made national news when she mounted a successful legal challenge that culminated in her admission to the University of Georgia in January 1961—making her one of the first two Black students to integrate the institution. As an adult, Charlayne switched from being the subject of news to covering it, becoming one of its most recognized and acclaimed interpreters. Over more than five decades, this dedicated reporter charted a course through some of the world’s most respected journalistic institutions, including The New Yorker and the New York Times, where she was often the only Black woman in the newsroom. Throughout her storied career, Charlayne has chronicled the lives of Black people in America—shining a light on their experiences and giving a glimpse into their community as never before. Though she has covered numerous topics and events, observed as a whole, her work reveals the evolving issues at the forefront of Black Americans lives and how many of the same issues continue to persist today. My People showcases Charlayne’s lifelong commitment to reporting on Black people in their totality, “in ways that are recognizable to themselves.” Spanning from the Civil Rights Movement through the election and inauguration of America’s first Black president and beyond, this invaluable collection shows the breadth and nuance of the Black experience through trials, tragedies, and triumphs of everyday lives.

After a century of racist whitewashing, country music is finally reckoning with its relationship to Black people. In this timely work—the first book on Black country music by a Black writer—Francesca Royster uncovers the Black performers and fans, including herself, who are exploring the pleasures and possibilities of the genre. Informed by queer theory and Black feminist scholarship, Royster’s book elucidates the roots of the current moment found in records like Tina Turner’s first solo album, Tina Turns the Country On! She reckons with Black “bros” Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, then chases ghosts into the future with Valerie June. Indeed, it is the imagination of Royster and her artists that make this music so exciting for a genre that has long been obsessed with the past. The futures conjured by June and others can be melancholy, and are not free of racism, but by centering Black folk Royster begins to understand what her daughter hears in the banjo music of Our Native Daughters and the trap beat of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.” A Black person claiming country music may still feel a bit like a queer person coming out, but, collectively, Black artists and fans are changing what country music looks and sounds like—and who gets to love it.