NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of On Tyranny comes a stunning new chronicle of the rise of authoritarianism from Russia to Europe and America. “A brilliant analysis of our time.”—Karl Ove Knausgaard, The New Yorker With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Vladimir Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States. Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, based on vast research as well as personal reporting, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy and law. To understand the challenge is to see, and perhaps renew, the fundamental political virtues offered by tradition and demanded by the future. By revealing the stark choices before us--between equality or oligarchy, individuality or totality, truth and falsehood--Snyder restores our understanding of the basis of our way of life, offering a way forward in a time of terrible uncertainty.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 Reveals the lived experience of slaves in eighteenth-century Boston Instead of relying on the traditional dichotomy of slavery and freedom, Hardesty argues we should understand slavery in Boston as part of a continuum of unfreedom. In this context, African slavery existed alongside many other forms of oppression, including Native American slavery, indentured servitude, apprenticeship, and pauper apprenticeship. In this hierarchical and inherently unfree world, enslaved Bostonians were more concerned with their everyday treatment and honor than with emancipation, as they pushed for autonomy, protected their families and communities, and demanded a place in society. Drawing on exhaustive research in colonial legal records – including wills, court documents, and minutes of governmental bodies – as well as newspapers, church records, and other contemporaneous sources, Hardesty masterfully reconstructs an eighteenth-century Atlantic world of unfreedom that stretched from Europe to Africa to America. By reassessing the lives of enslaved Bostonians as part of a social order structured by ties of dependence, Hardesty not only demonstrates how African slaves were able to decode their new homeland and shape the terms of their enslavement, but also tells the story of how marginalized peoples engrained themselves in the very fabric of colonial American society.

Without the labor of the captives and slaves, the Ottoman empire could not have attained and maintained its strength in early modern times. With Anatolia as the geographic focus, Leslie Peirce searches for the voices of the unfree, drawing on archives, histories written at the time, and legal texts. Unfree persons comprised two general populations: slaves and captives. Mostly household workers, slaves lived in a variety of circumstances, from squalor to luxury. Their duties varied with the status of their owner. Slave status might not last a lifetime, as Islamic law and Ottoman practice endorsed freeing one’s slave. Captives were typically seized in raids, generally to disappear, their fates unknown. Victims rarely returned home, despite efforts of their families and neighbors to recover them. The reader learns what it was about the Ottoman environment of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that offered some captives the opportunity to improve the conditions of their bondage. The book describes imperial efforts to fight against the menace of captive-taking despite the widespread corruption among the state’s own officials, who had their own interest in captive labor. From the fortunes of captives and slaves the book moves to their representation in legend, historical literature, and law, where, fortunately, both captors and their prey are present.

Six-time New York Times bestselling author, FOX News star, and radio host Mark R. Levin “trounces the news media” (The Washington Times) in this timely and groundbreaking book demonstrating how the great tradition of American free press has degenerated into a standardless profession that has squandered the faith and trust of the public. Unfreedom of the Press is not just another book about the press. In “Levin’s finest work” (Breitbart), he shows how those entrusted with news reporting today are destroying freedom of the press from within—not through actions of government officials, but with its own abandonment of reportorial integrity and objective journalism. With the depth of historical background for which his books are renowned, Levin takes you on a journey through the early American patriot press, which proudly promoted the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This is followed by the early decades of the Republic during which newspapers around the young country were open and transparent about their fierce allegiance to one political party or another. It was only at the start of the Progressive Era and the 20th century that the supposed “objectivity of the press” first surfaced, leaving us where we are today: with a partisan party-press overwhelmingly aligned with a political ideology but hypocritically engaged in a massive untruth as to its real nature.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 Reveals the lived experience of slaves in eighteenth-century Boston Instead of relying on the traditional dichotomy of slavery and freedom, Hardesty argues we should understand slavery in Boston as part of a continuum of unfreedom. In this context, African slavery existed alongside many other forms of oppression, including Native American slavery, indentured servitude, apprenticeship, and pauper apprenticeship. In this hierarchical and inherently unfree world, enslaved Bostonians were more concerned with their everyday treatment and honor than with emancipation, as they pushed for autonomy, protected their families and communities, and demanded a place in society. Drawing on exhaustive research in colonial legal records – including wills, court documents, and minutes of governmental bodies – as well as newspapers, church records, and other contemporaneous sources, Hardesty masterfully reconstructs an eighteenth-century Atlantic world of unfreedom that stretched from Europe to Africa to America. By reassessing the lives of enslaved Bostonians as part of a social order structured by ties of dependence, Hardesty not only demonstrates how African slaves were able to decode their new homeland and shape the terms of their enslavement, but also tells the story of how marginalized peoples engrained themselves in the very fabric of colonial American society.

Who is made unfree by systematic injustices, like poverty, patriarchy, or race? Many think the answer is, "The victims." Who has duties to challenge these injustices? Many say, "The privileged." To both, this book offers a different answer: "Everyone." Everyone is made unfree by such injustices: victims, bystanders, and perpetrators alike. For such injustices try to suppress everyone's resistance to their workings, and that suppression counts as arbitrary power. Moreover, everyone has a duty to themselves to be free. Examining three major global injustices--gender, race, and poverty--this book thus offers a new defence of the doctrine of the global left, "No one is free while others are oppressed!"

Sofya Khagi’s Pelevin and Unfreedom: Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics is the first book-length English-language study of Victor Pelevin, one of the most significant and popular Russian authors of the post-Soviet era. The text explores Pelevin’s sustained Dostoevskian reflections on the philosophical question of freedom and his complex oeuvre and worldview, shaped by the idea that contemporary social conditions pervert that very notion. Khagi shows that Pelevin uses provocative and imaginative prose to model different systems of unfreedom, vividly illustrating how the present world deploys hyper-commodification and technological manipulation to promote human degradation and social deadlock. Rather than rehearse Cold War–era platitudes about totalitarianism, Pelevin holds up a mirror to show how social control (now covert, yet far more efficient) masquerades as freedom and how eagerly we accept, even welcome, control under the techno-consumer system. He reflects on how commonplace discursive markers of freedom (like the free market) are in fact misleading and disempowering. Under this comfortably self-occluding bondage, the subject loses all power of self-determination, free will, and ethical judgment. In his work, Pelevin highlights the unprecedented subversion of human society by the techno-consumer machine. Yet, Khagi argues, however circumscribed and ironically qualified, he holds onto the emancipatory potential of ethics and even an emancipatory humanism.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary and analysis of the book and not the original book. ZIP Reads is wholly responsible for this content and is not associated with the original author in any way. If you are the author, publisher, or representative of the original work, please contact [email protected] with any questions or concerns. If you'd like to purchase the original book, please paste this link in your browser: https://amzn.to/2LPXlbZ Author and political commentator Mark Levin pulls no punches as he tears into the partisan American media for their dastardly deeds against the nation. He dives deep into the history of American media to show us just how low the press has fallen, and why Americans can no longer trust what they see and hear on the news. What does this ZIP Reads Summary Include? - Synopsis of the original book - Key takeaways from each chapter - Examples of the intense liberal bias in the media - The history of biased media going back to the 18th century - Editorial Review - Background on Mark R. Levin About the Original Book: Americans no longer trust their media, and with good reason. The American press has turned on its own independent voices by pushing partisan agendas that are crippling the nation. This is the stinging diatribe that Mark Levin launches in his book, Unfreedom of the Press. He claims that the current media establishment is heavily involved with the Democratic Party in an attempt to unseat a sitting president. This so-called 'Democratic party-press' is busy tearing apart the nation’s founding principles by creating fake news and pseudo-events instead of providing fair and balanced news reporting. Ultimately, Levin’s goal is to trigger a dialogue among Americans on how to deal with the threat of a rogue, partisan media. DISCLAIMER: This book is intended as a companion to, not a replacement for, Unfreedom of the Press. ZIP Reads is wholly responsible for this content and is not associated with the original author in any way. Please follow this link: https://amzn.to/2LPXlbZ to purchase a copy of the original book.

In Unfreedom of the Press (2019), author and Fox News talk show host Mark R. Levin argues that despite differing claims from mainstream journalists, the government and its leaders do not pose a threat to freedom of the press. Instead, the media is undermining the First Amendment and the role of the Fourth Estate on its own, by publishing inaccurate stories and by substituting fact-based reporting with speculation, analysis, and endless partisan commentary... Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

Why do we choose specific modes of transport and what are the perceived rationalities for our choice? How are different theoretical concepts within mobility research actually perceived and lived in everyday life? At this book's core is a conceptual and empirical contribution to critical mobility research. It focuses on the tension between freedom and unfreedom, articulated through the dichotomy between individuality and community, as well as critical perspectives on the multitude of unintended consequences of mobility. In a range of everyday life narratives, this tension is analyzed through the concept of 'structural stories'. In teasing out the ambivalences of late modern everyday life, Malene Freudendal-Pedersen exposes how mobility both generates and helps to overcome and live with these ambivalences.