"American society is more polarized than ever before. We are strategically being pushed apart by disinformation--the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth--and it comes at us from all sides: opportunists on the far right, Russian misinformed social media influencers, among others. It's endangering our democracy and causing havoc in our electoral system, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and in our Capitol. Advances in technology including...

Gold, the enduring safe investment and symbol of wealth, comes at a high price. Mined in slave-like conditions, it has been linked to everything from funding civil wars in Africa to causing environmental disasters in Latin America. The market for gold is enormous with 70% of global production handled by just one country: Switzerland. The industry has been protected by the Swiss state for more than a century, and turning a blind eye here is standard...

Director Robert Stone ("Oswald's Ghost," "Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst") traces the origins of the modern environmental movement through the eyes of nine Americans who propelled the movement from its beginnings in the 1950s to its moment of triumph in 1970 with the original Earth Day and to its status as a major political force in America.

Gioia tells a 4,000-year history of music as a global source of power, change, and upheaval. He shows how social outcasts have repeatedly become trailblazers of musical expression.

"A vital account of how some of China's most important writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to challenge the Chinese Communist Party on its most sacred ground, its monopoly on history" -- "The tectonic plates that form China have left it a checkerboard of mountains and rivers and memories. From the south, the Indian plate pushes up into the Eurasian, creating the Himalayas and the vast Tibetan plateau that almost...

Most of us are well aware that there is something fundamentally broken about the way we vote, but not why. In One Person, No Vote, the author chronicles a timely, comprehensive, and powerful indictment of the history of brutal race-based vote suppression, and its many modern iterations- from voter ID requirements and voter purges to election fraud, and stolen elections. She also traces the related history of the rollbacks to African American participation...

Thirty-five years before Barack Obama was elected President, the question of race and the possibility of bridging racial and ethnic barriers was put to a test in an overlooked and untold story in American politics: The 1973 election of Tom Bradley, the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city with an overwhelmingly white majority. Tom Bradley’s extraordinary multi-racial coalition redefined Los Angeles, transformed the national dialogue...

"Fifteen families. Four hundred years. The complex saga of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite in America's history. For decades, writers from Cleveland Amory to Joseph Alsop to the editors of Politico have proclaimed the diminishment of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who for generations were the dominant socio-cultural-political force in America. While the WASP elite has, in the last half century, indeed drifted from American centrality to...

"Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away. Through the weaponization of social media, the internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, "Twitter wars"produce real-world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations....

Homo Sapiens 1900 is a stunning exploration of the history of eugenics, race hygiene and the quest to improve the human race.Emerging at the turn of the century, eugenic movements spawned government sanctioned research projects, whose stated goals were the improvement of the human species through biological means - including selective breeding, sterilization, and the elimination of all 'degenerate' members of society. Unearthing startling archival...