With her characteristic brilliance, grace, and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration," and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. When his specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish that he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation.

It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. Landlines fell to cell phones, the internet exploded, and pop culture accelerated without the aid of technology that remembered everything. It was the last era with a real mainstream to either identify with or oppose. The ’90s brought about a revolution in the human condition, and a shift in consciousness, that we’re still struggling to understand.

Tacky is about the power of pop culture - like any art - to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one's commitment to "good" taste. These 14 essays are a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation's obsession with irony, putting the aesthetics we hate to love - snakeskin pants, Sex and the City, Cheesecake Factory's gargantuan menu - into kinder and sharper perspective.

Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a 21-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”

In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy that resonates profoundly. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.

Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the listener on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.

Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs”. It went viral. After a million online views in 17 different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members - mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.

‘It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and bullets with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings’. The Communist Manifesto is, perhaps surprisingly, a most engaging and accessible work, containing even the odd shaft of humour in this translation by Samuel Moore for the 1888 English edition.

Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were "isolated incidents" in the Vietnam War, carried out by a few "bad apples." However, as award-winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this pioneering investigation, violence against Vietnamese civilians was not at all exceptional. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of official orders to "kill anything that moves."

From social psychologist Dr. Devon Price, a conversational, stirring call to “a better, more human way to live” (Cal Newport, New York Times best-selling author) that examines the “laziness lie” - which falsely tells us we are not working or learning hard enough.

What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join - and more importantly, stay in - extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has.

From the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing—and one of the most decorated journalists of our time—twelve enthralling stories of skulduggery and intrigue.

Most people think of themselves as “good", but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good” or “bad” - especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia, and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more, so we can sound cool at parties and become better people.

In this age of billion dollar athletic marketing campaigns, “feel good” philosophy with no connection to reality, and a Sports Media echo chamber that’s all too eager swallow whatever idiotic notion happens to be in vogue at the moment, it’s tough to find people who aren’t afraid to say what they’re really thinking.

No one knew it when their experiment began, but without any particular genius or acumen, the motley cast of billionaires and hucksters behind the modern Premier League struck gold. Pretty soon, everyone wanted to try their luck, from Russian oligarchs to Emirati sheikhs, American tycoons, and Asian Tiger titans. Some succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Some lost everything. Today, players are sold for tens of millions, clubs are valued in the billions, and games are beamed out to nearly 200 countries, all while the league struggles to preserve its English soul.

In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team's Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. By quantifying the game's intangibles, they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay an American League pennant. This is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

For fans of Michael Lewis, the astounding untold story of how professional sports transformed, in the span of a single generation, from a cottage industry into a massive global business. In the cash-soaked world of contemporary sports, where every season brings news of higher salaries, endorsement deals, and television contracts, it is mind-boggling to remember that as recently as the 1970s elite athletes earned so little money that many were forced to work second jobs in the off-season to make ends meet.

The National Football League's current dominance has obscured how professional football got its start. In The League, John Eisenberg reveals that Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell took an immense risk by investing in the professional game. At that time, the sport barely registered on the national scene. The five owners succeeded only because at critical junctures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the League.

In the spring of 2013, a study showed that despite huge economic problems, 27 states were awarding their highest salaries to college football coaches. College football has doubled in size in the last decade thanks to generous tax breaks, lavish TV deals, and corporate sponsors eager to slap their logos on everything from scoreboards to footballs and uniforms. In one recent year, the 10 biggest programs took in $800 million from football, with profit margins far surpassing those of Fortune 500 companies.

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says former New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, Black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built. Provocative and controversial, Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of Black athletes in the United States.

Here Edgeofsports.com sportswriter Dave Zirin shows how sports express the worst, as well as the most creative and exciting, features of American society. Zirin explores how Janet Jackson's Super Bowl flash-time show exposed more than a breast, why the labor movement has everything to learn from sports unions, and why a new generation of athletes is no longer content to "play one game at a time" and is starting to get political.

Today, sports arenas have been transformed into staging grounds for American patriotism and the hero worship of law enforcement. Teams wear camouflage jerseys to honor those who serve; police officers throw out first pitches; soldiers surprise their families with homecomings at halftime. Sports and politics are decidedly entwined. But as journalist Howard Bryant reveals, this has always been more complicated for black athletes, who from the start were committing a political act simply by being on the field.

Once upon a time football was run by modest local businessmen. Today it is the plaything of billionaire oligarchs, staggeringly wealthy from oil and gas, from royalty, or from murkier sources. But who are these new masters of the universe? Where did all their money come from? And what do they want with our beautiful game? In The Billionaires Club James Montague delves deeper than anyone else has dared, to tell this story for the first time.

The US Women’s National Soccer Team has won three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals, set record TV ratings, drawn massive crowds, earned huge revenues for FIFA and US Soccer, and helped to redefine the place of women in sports. But despite their dominance, and their rosters of superstar players, they’ve endured striking inequality: low pay, poor playing conditions, and limited opportunities to play in professional leagues.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has come under fire. Fans have begun to realize that the athletes involved in the two biggest college sports, men's basketball and football, are little more than indentured servants. Millions of teenagers accept scholarships to chase their dreams of fame and fortune - at the price of absolute submission to the whims of an organization that puts their interests dead last.

Endzone tells the story of how college football's most successful and respected program nearly lost it all in less than a decade and entirely of its own doing. It is a story of hubris, greed, and betrayal, a tale more suited to Wall Street than the world's top public university.

A New York Times best seller, David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game focuses on one grim season (1979-80) in the life of the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers, a team that only three years before had been NBA champions. The tactile authenticity of Halberstam's knowledge of the basketball world is unrivaled. Yet he is writing here about far more than just basketball. This is a story about a place in our society where power, money, and talent collide and sometimes corrupt, a place where both national obsessions and naked greed are exposed.

Ever since he joined the sports department of the Boston Globe in 1968, sports enthusiasts have been blessed with the writing and reporting of Bob Ryan. Tony Kornheiser calls him the "quintessential American sportswriter". For the past 25 years, he has also been a regular on various ESPN shows, especially The Sports Reporters, spreading his knowledge and enthusiasm for sports of all kinds.