An answer to the assault on voting rights—crucial reading in light of the 2024 presidential election The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is considered one of the most effective pieces of legislation the United States has ever passed. It enfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters, particularly in the American South, and drew attention to the problem of voter suppression. Yet in recent years there has been a continuous assault on access to the ballot box in the form of stricter voter ID requirements, meritless claims of rigged elections, and baseless accusations of voter fraud. In the past these efforts were aimed at eliminating African American voters from the rolls, and today, new laws seek to eliminate voters of color, the poor, and the elderly, groups that historically vote for the Democratic Party. Uncounted examines the phenomenon of disenfranchisement through the lens of history, race, law, and the democratic process. Gilda R. Daniels, who served as Deputy Chief in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and has more than two decades of voting rights experience, argues that voter suppression works in cycles, constantly adapting and finding new ways to hinder access for an exponentially growing minority population. She warns that a premeditated strategy of restrictive laws and deceptive practices has taken root and is eroding the very basis of American democracy—the right to vote!

In the global race to reach the end of AIDS, why is the world slipping off track? The answer has to do with stigma, money, and data. Global funding for AIDS response is declining. Tough choices must be made: some people will win and some will lose. Global aid agencies and governments use health data to make these choices. While aid agencies prioritize a shrinking list of countries, many governments deny that sex workers, men who have sex with men, drug users, and transgender people exist. Since no data is gathered about their needs, life-saving services are not funded, and the lack of data reinforces the denial. The Uncounted cracks open this and other data paradoxes through interviews with global health leaders and activists, ethnographic research, analysis of gaps in mathematical models, and the author's experience as an activist and senior official. It shows what is counted, what is not, and why empowering communities to gather their own data could be key to ending AIDS.

What we count matters - and in a world where policies and decisions are underpinned by numbers, statistics and data, if you’re not counted, you don’t count. Alex Cobham argues that systematic gaps in economic and demographic data not only lead us to understate a wide range of damaging inequalities, but also to actively exacerbate them. He shows how, in statistics ranging from electoral registers to household surveys and census data, people from disadvantaged groups, such as indigenous populations, women, and disabled people, are consistently underrepresented. This further marginalizes them, reducing everything from their political power to their weight in public spending decisions. Meanwhile, corporations and the ultra-rich seek ever greater complexity and opacity in their financial affairs - and when their wealth goes untallied, it means they can avoid regulation and taxation. This brilliantly researched book shows how what we do and don’t count is not a neutral or ‘technical’ question: the numbers that rule our world are skewed by raw politics. Cobham forensically lays bare how these issues strike at the heart of our democracy, entrenching inequality and injustice – and outlines what we can do about it.

Is the girl on the train beside you a free citizen, or is she enslaved by debt bondage? Human trafficking is the fastest growing industry run by organised crime. Detective Inspector Sean Fagan of SOCA investigates the Agency, a criminal fraternity trafficking illegal immigrants. When MI5 inform Fagan the Agency are contracting expendable people for use by an Islamic terror cell, the pressure mounts while the SIS manipulate dark and secret ways to fight their long-term wars. Trapped in a wretched world of modern slavery, abuse and barbaric killings, Jelena an illegal from Kosovo dreams of freedom but violent forces which shaped her adolescence still dominate her life. Jelena is given to the terrorists as a disposable chattel and finds herself locked in a flat with millions of virus contaminated bank notes. Death awaits until events reunite her with Gavrilo, the boy she had known and loved when both were adolescents. Now mentally disturbed but a successful car thief and solider for the Agency, Gavrilo seeks refuge from reality by busking with his violin while believing Jelena is an angel, a vision who he has always loved but believes is dead. As Fagan closes, a bomb containing enough anthrax to kill thousands is unwittingly carried by Gavrilo into Central London. With Jelena's help, MI5 and SOCA desperately search as the timing device ticks to detonation and the destruction of British democratic tolerance. The slave industry is alive and flourishing. Between 500,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked into the EU every year. The favoured destination is England. Tied by debt bondage women are forced into prostitution while men are used in organised crime or hired out to labour intensive employment where they receive little or no payment. The rebellious are frequently murdered. When beyond physical exploitation many are used for benefit fraud or sold on for organ transplant

This is the story of the other victims of German occupation in France, the story of my mother who was separated from her family and fled, and the torture that remained with her forever.These are the memoirs as told to me by my mother. I have attempted to tell her story as accurately as she presented them to me, piecing together her own written journals, along with various anecdotes that supplemented and peppered stories over my lifetime, without embellishing by interposing my own interpretations of events. This is not a suspense novel, although certainly the events recounted herein were suspenseful to those who experienced them. They certainly sounded suspenseful to me as I heard and read them. So as to avert embarrassment to anyone reading these words, I have on occasion chosen to use pseudonyms, while trying to keep the gist of the story true to form. My mother was French, and occasionally some French words and phrases appear throughout the text. I have included translations wherever appropriate. She also lived and studied in Italy before moving to Israel, and eventually to the United States. Again, where words and phrases are included in those languages, and I have included translations to the best of my ability.

Daughter of gold commissioner and later judge, Mary was the first woman to be educated at the University of Melbourne. She travelled widely and lived half her life in Europe, but wrote extensively about Australia, as well as travel books and many short stories and articles. Her works describe life in the goldfields, in the bush and in the squatter settlements of the colonies, particularly the lives of women. "The Uncounted Cost" is one of several works she wrote that reflected her travels and her view of cultures other than her own.

Despite being the original inhabitants of the equatorial forests of Africa’s Great Lakes region, Batwa are, in official terms, practically invisible. Facing ongoing discrimination resulting in poverty, unemployment and poor access to education and health care, their situation is compounded by a lack of acknowledgement of their struggles by their respective governments. It is extremely difficult, frequently impossible, to find statistics and data about the Batwa communities in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda; it is even harder to find gender-specific data about the situation of Batwa women and girls. Yet comprehensive and disaggregated data collection is vital to ensure that governments meet their obligations to protect minorities and indigenous peoples under international law, and that development programmes respond sufficiently and appropriately to the specific needs of Batwa. The requirement is particularly great in relation to Batwa girls and women who, as previously documented by Minority Rights Group International (MRG), suffer multiple forms of discrimination.

It humanizes high-level debates over indicators and data in development aid, showing how they are used to make life-or-death decisions.

Open Secrets contests the dominant influences of utilitarianism, expressive individualism, and imperatives to self-improvement by examining a series of texts in which "nothing happens" and arguing that these works, far from hiding from narrative demands, make an open secret of fulfilled experience and yield a revelation without insistence or rhetorical underscoring.