Showing results by publisher "Simon & Schuster Audio" in Politics & Social Sciences

Anthony Kennedy did not take the usual path to a seat on the Supreme Court. Often, the phrase “constitutional lawyer” brings to mind graduates of fine universities engaged in philosophic discourse as they walk the halls of government. Although Kennedy attended Stanford and the London School of Economics and then Harvard Law School, he made his way as a lawyer with a wide-ranging small-town practice that included criminal and civil trials, advice in forming and managing corporations, estate planning, and tax advice.

The astonishing story of the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai, who became one of Hong Kong’s leading activists for democracy and is China’s most famous political prisoner.

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election shocked the world. Yet his defeat in 2020 may have been even more surprising: he received 12 million more votes in 2020 than 2016 and his unexpectedly diverse coalition included millions of nonwhite voters, a rarity for the modern Republican party. In 2020, Trump defied expectations and few journalists, strategists, or politicians could explain why Trump had nearly won reelection. Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and one of the country’s leading experts on political targeting, technology, and demography, has the answers.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The American Story and How to Lead and host of PBS’s History with David Rubenstein—David Rubenstein interviews living American presidents and top historians and journalists who reflect on the US presidency, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Maggie Haberman, Ron Chernow, and more.

Defiant Hope is his writings about the things he loved—humanity, God, his dog, and his boys. Essays feature the immensely complicated sadness when you drop your children off at college for the first time. Another is about his public battle of depression. He also includes chapters about men and women who formed this great procession of Christian Reformers—John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, William Wilberforce, and Olaudah Equiano—and the great causes to which they were devoted, from abolitionism to civil rights.

Brilliant and uncompromising, piercing and funny, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is essential listening. This new edition of award-winning author Kiese Laymon’s first work of nonfiction looks inward, drawing heavily on the author and his family’s experiences, while simultaneously examining the world—Mississippi, the South, the United States—that has shaped their lives. With subjects that range from an interview with his mother to reflections on Ole Miss football, Outkast, and the labor of Black women, these insightful essays highlight Laymon’s profound love of language.

For lovers of both Barbie and Gloria Steinem, The Movement is the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade, when women rejected thousands of years of custom and demanded the freedom to be who they wanted and needed to be.

Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Forty years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, our high-poverty cities and counties have run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take. In The Fight to Save the Town, urban law expert and author Michelle Wilde Anderson offers unsparing, humanistic portraits of the hardships left behind in four such places.

In How You Get Famous, journalist Nicole Pasulka raucously documents the rebirth of the New York drag scene, following a group of iconoclastic performers with undeniable charisma, talent, and a hell of a lot to prove. In the past decade, drag has become a place where edgy, competitive showoffs can find security in a callous and over priced city, a shot at real money, and a level of recognition queer people rarely achieve. But can drag keep its edge as it travels from the backroom to the main stage?

Discover how - and why - Black, Indigenous, and people of color in America experience societal, economic, and infrastructural inequality throughout history covering everything from Columbus’ arrival in 1492 to the War on Drugs to the Black Lives Matter movement.

In his landmark memoir The Road Taken, Patrick Leahy looks back on a life lived on the front lines of American politics. As the senior-most member and de facto dean of the chamber, Senator Leahy has been a key author of the American story. Leahy established himself as a moral leader and liberal pioneer over four decades spanning nine presidential administrations. American history comes alive in this gripping story of a master political leader and consummate legislator. Leahy takes you inside the room as pivotal moments in our nation’s history play out.

Popular narratives of American history conceal as much as they reveal. They present a national identity based on harvesting the treasures that lay in wait for European colonization. In Whose Ruins tells another story: Winding through the US landscape, from Native American earthworks in West Virginia to the Manhattan Project in New Mexico, this history is a tour of sites that were mined for an empire’s power. Showing the hidden costs of ruthless economic growth, particularly to Indigenous people, this book illuminates the myth-making intimately tied to place.

George H.W. Bush takes a special look back on the momentous global events of 1989-1992 - the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the liberation of Kuwait, to name a few - and reminisces about what it was like to be President through such unprecedented times. Choosing from among the hundreds of speeches he gave while in office, former President Bush selects the speeches that meant the most to him, and introduces each one with candid comments.

Throughout history, there have been numerous epidemics that have threatened mankind with destruction. Diseases have the ability to highlight our shared concerns across the ages, affecting every social divide from national boundaries, economic categories, racial divisions, and beyond. Whether looking at smallpox, HIV, Ebola, or COVID-19 outbreaks, we see the same conversations arising as society struggles with the all-encompassing question: What do we do now?

The sash. The tears. The glittering crown. And of course, that soaring song. For all of its pomp and kitsch, the Miss America pageant is indelibly written into the American story of the past century. From its giddy origins as a summer’s-end tourist draw in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, it blossomed into a televised extravaganza that drew tens of millions of viewers in its heyday and was once considered the highest honor that a young woman could achieve.

Imagine a better tomorrow with interstellar essays and art - drawing on the aspirational futurism that fuels Star Trek, The Martian, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, renowned contemporary artist Camomile Hixon reminds us that by reaching for the stars, we can chase our full potential beyond Earth, while also transforming ourselves and our understanding of the Pale Blue Dot we call home.

Thaddeus Stevens was among the first to see the Civil War as an opportunity for a second American revolution - a chance to remake the country as a genuine multiracial democracy. As one of the foremost abolitionists in Congress in the years leading up to the war, he was a leader of the young Republican Party’s radical wing, fighting for anti-slavery and anti-racist policies long before party colleagues like Abraham Lincoln endorsed them. These policies - including welcoming black men into the Union’s armies - would prove crucial to the Union war effort.

The first rule of perpetual war is to never stop, a fact which former NBC News analyst William M. Arkin knows better than anyone, having served in the Army and having covered all of America’s wars over the past three decades. He has spent his career investigating how the military throws around the word “war” to justify everything, from physical combat to today’s globe-straddling cyber and intelligence network. In The Generals Have No Clothes, Arkin traces how we got where we are—all without Congressional approval or public knowledge.

What used to be shocking has somehow become the new normal. Sexual predators stalk interns at work. Parents try to buy a place for their kids in college. Leaders compromise morals for political advantage. It happens so frequently that we can no longer dismiss these cases as a few bad apples. Something in the system is rotten. How can someone get ahead and be successful in our modern culture without compromising their morality? What makes a good man or woman in this era of scandal? Respected cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken has the answer: a return to the ancient idea of honor.

Philip Moeller has written a reliable, concise guide to health care and health insurance basics. He provides tools that patients need before, during, and after they get medical care. He describes the care we need, the care we don’t, and how to deal with doctors, hospitals, and other health-care providers. Moeller explains telemedicine and health-care apps that have become so important during the coronavirus epidemic. The book shares the stories of disruptive health innovators who have given us access to true health costs, cheaper prescription drugs, and low-cost care.