Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow helped to reveal to the West the true and staggering human cost of the Soviet regime in its deliberate starvation of millions of peasants and remains one of the most important works of Soviet history ever written. More deaths resulted from the actions described in this book than from the whole of the First World War. Epic in scope and rich in detail, The Harvest of Sorrow describes how millions of peasants in the USSR were dispossessed and deported as a result of the abolition of private property, and how millions in the newly established 'collective' farms of the Ukraine and other regions were then deliberately starved to death through impossibly high quotas, the removal of all other sources of food and their isolation from outside help. With the publication of this and his earlier book, The Great Terror, which revealed the truth about Stalin's political purges, Robert Conquest revealed to the West the staggering human cost of the Soviet regime.

South Africa achieved notoriety for its apartheid policies and practices both in the country and in Namibia. Today Israel stands accused of applying apartheid in the Palestinian territories it has occupied since 1967. Confronting Apartheid examines the regimes of these three societies from the perspective of the author’s experiences as a human rights lawyer in South Africa and Namibia and as a UN human rights envoy in occupied Palestine.

Most personal histories of apartheid in Southern Africa tell the story of the armed struggle. This book is about opposition to apartheid within the law and through the law. The successes and failures of civil society and lawyers in this endeavour are described in the context of the discriminatory and oppressive regime of apartheid. The author’s own experiences in Namibia and South Africa serve to illustrate the injustices of the regime and the avenues left to lawyers to advance human rights within the law. The end of apartheid and the transition to democracy are also described through the experiences of the author.

The book concludes with an account of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank and the author’s work as human rights investigator and reporter for the United Nations. This involves the examination of issues such as the construction of Jewish settlements, the demolition of Palestinian homes, the restrictions on freedom of movement and the attacks on the life and liberty of Palestinians which the author argues constitute an oppressive regime falling within the definition of apartheid under international law. A separate chapter is devoted to the situation in Gaza which was closely monitored by the author for nearly a decade. Namibia, South Africa and Palestine are dealt with separately with introductions designed to ensure that the reader is provided with the necessary historical, political and legal background material.

Genocide represents one of the deadliest scourges of the human experience. Communication practices provide the key missing ingredient toward preventing and ending this intensely symbolic activity. The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text reveals how strategic communication silences make this tragedy probable, and how a greater social ethic for communication openness repels and ends this great evil. Careful analysis of practical historical figures, such as the great debater James Farmer Jr., along with empirical policy successes in places such as Liberia provide a communication-based template for ridding the world of genocide in the twenty-first century.

Under the legal and administrative system of Nazi Germany, people categorized as Fremdvolkische (literally, "foreign people") were subject to special laws that restricted their rights, limited their protection under the law, and exposed them to extraordinary legal sanctions and brutal, extralegal police actions. These special laws, one of the central constitutional principles of the Third Reich, applied to anyone perceived as different or racially inferior, whether German citizens or not.
""Non-Germans" under the Third Reich" traces the establishment and evolution of these laws from the beginnings of the Third Reich through the administration of annexed and occupied eastern territories during the war. Drawing extensively on German archival sources as well as on previously unexplored material from Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, the book shows with chilling detail how the National Socialist government maintained a superficial legal continuity with the Weimar Republic while expanding the legal definition of Fremdvolkische, to untimately give itself legal sanction for the actions undertaken in the Holocaust. Replete with revealing quotations from secret decrees, instructions, orders, and reports, this major work of scholarship offers a sobering assessment of the theory and practice of law in Nazi Germany.
Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The most dramatic, revealing and little-known story in Turkey's history - which illuminates the nation 'Through the spellbinding career of a single, ill-fated leader, Jeremy Seal illuminates a bitterly divided country' Colin Thubron 'Read this book if you're interested in Turkey. Read it if you're interested in power, hubris and redemption. Read it' Christopher de Bellaigue, author of The Islamic Enlightenment In the spring of 2016 travel writer Jeremy Seal went to Turkey to investigate perhaps the most dramatic, revealing and little-known episode in the country's history - the 'original' coup of 1960, which deposed the traditionalist Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. The story of Menderes - to his adoring supporters the country's founding democrat; to his sworn enemies its most infamous traitor - goes to the heart of the feud that continues to rage between the Western and secular ambitions of a minority elite and the religious and conservative instincts of the small-town majority. A Coup in Turkey is a thrilling account of the events leading up to the coup and the trials and executions that followed, a story of political subterfuge and score-settling, courtroom drama, state execution, authoritarian intolerance and ideological division. Seal travels through President Erdogan's Turkey, tracking down eye-witness accounts from survivors of the Menderes era in Istanbul, the historic metropolis, and the new capital at Ankara. As he expertly guides us through this extraordinary story, so the compelling parallels between past and present become strikingly clear, and he illuminates this troubled nation with a deep sympathy and love for the people and places he writes about. By focussing on one key event - one which many Turks regard with shame - this evocative, gripping portrait of Turkey recentres our understanding of the past and makes sense of one of Europe's most bewildering yet intriguing neighbours. 'A wonderful writer' Robert Macfarlane

The memoir of a young woman who, in 1951 at the age of 17, was arrested for her involvement with an underground organization demanding alternatives to Stalinist rule and, as a result, spent five years in the Soviet prison system&#46Tumanov belonged to group of young people who believed in freedom and equality, and were willing to stand up for their beliefs.

THE TIANANMEN PAPERS, which contains documents unearthed from the guarded core of the Chinese Politburo, is the most important book on China published in decades. It reveals the highest-level processes of decision-making during the tumultuous events surrounding the terrible massacre in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.
Drawn from about 2,000 documents, THE TIANANMEN PAPERS have been compiled and edited as part of an extraordinary collaboration between America's most prominent China scholars and a handful of Chinese people who have risked their lives to obtain them.
The Chinese pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 were the longest lasting and most influential in the world. THE TIANANMEN PAPERS exposes the desperate conflict during the period among a few strong leaders, whose personalities emerge with unprecedented vividness. Its revelations of the most important event in modern Chinese history will have a profound impact not only in China, but in every country in the world that deals with China.
 

The Inspiration Behind The Golden Globe —Winning Film

"An engrossing and memorable tale."Jewish Book World

"The sheer emotion of telling the tale is palpable. The whole is moving, and strange beyond belief." —The Times (London)

International acclaim for Solomon Perel's Europa Europa

"The wrenching memoir of a young man who survived the Holocaust by concealing his Jewish identity and finding unexpected refuge as a member of the Hitler Youth.

"It is a Holocaust memoir that is moving, straightforward, and quite completely bizarre, unsettling in all kinds of assumptions about identity, responsibility, and guilt." —Glasgow Herald

"Perel bares his soul to readers in this fascinating, unusual personal narrative of the Holocaust." —Book Report

"Many of the experiences of Holocaust survivors are incredible. None is more incredible than the story of a Jewish boy, Solomon Perel, who escaped from Germany to Russia, served with the Wehrmacht in Russia, was adopted by his commanding officer, and transferred to an elite Hitler Youth school." —London Jewish News

"A most remarkable story . . . extraordinary." —The Australian

"This book will move human hearts." —Berliner Morgenpost

It was a time of house burnings, mob violence, kidnapping, mass imprisonment, torture, endless trials, summary executions and secret burials. This was Iran in the early 1980s, and everyday reality for the Baha'is, Iran's largest religious minority. Headlines across America screamed out the story, Congress passed motions, President Reagan appealed to Iran. This detailed, eye-witness account of the persecution of Iran's largest religious minority in the 1980s is the story of one woman's experiences at the hands of the Iranian Revolutionaries. Amid the escalating pogrom, Olya Roohizadegan witnessed friends, neighbours and relatives being imprisoned, tortured and executed. For months she visited the prisoners, comforted their relatives, found clothes and shelter for the homeless, and smuggled news and photographs out of Iran to the outside world. And then it was her turn. The book culminates in her dramatic escape from the hangman's rope in a hazardous overland journey to Pakistan and the West.

In 1964, the security police in Johannesburg detained Hugh Lewin. He was later tried and convicted on charges of sabotage. He spent seven years in prison, secretly recording his experiences, and those of his fellow inmates, on the pages of his Bible. On release, rather than submit to 24-hour arrest, he left South Africa on a one-way visa.

One of the finest ever examples of prison writing from South Africa, Bandiet was originally released during Hugh Lewin’s exile, and published by Random House in 1978. Selected poems and journalism interspersed with line-drawings by another of Pretoria’s inmates, Jock Strachan, appear alongside a freshly typeset version of the complete text of the original book.

Alan Paton called Bandiet “splendid” and commented on its lack of rancour and exaggeration. He spoke of its truthfulness and its quality, and called it a document of great historical value.

Dear Leader contains astonishing new insights about North Korea which could only be revealed by someone working high up in the regime. It is also the gripping story of how a member of the inner circle of this enigmatic country became its most courageous, outspoken critic.

Jang Jin-sung held one of the most senior ranks in North Korea's propaganda machine, helping tighten the regime's grip over its people. Among his tasks were developing the founding myth of North Korea, posing undercover as a South Korean intellectual and writing epic poems in support of the dictator, Kim Jong-il. Young and ambitious, his patriotic work secured him a bizarre audience with Kim Jong-il himself, thus granting him special status as one of the 'Admitted'. This meant special food provisions, a travel pass and immunity from prosecution and harm. He was privy to state secrets, including military and diplomatic policies, how the devastating 'Scrutiny' was effected, and the real position of one of the country's most powerful, elusive men, Im Tong-ok.

Because he was praised by the Dear Leader himself, he had every reason to feel satisfied with his lot and safe. Yet he could not ignore his conscience, or the disparity between his life and that of those he saw starving on the street. After breaking security rules, Jang Jin-sung, together with a close friend, was forced to flee for his life: away from lies and deceit, towards truth and freedom.

Through detailed exploration of events in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen, Sean Burns here breaks down the concept of professionalism within the armed forces into its component parts and demonstrates how variation in military structures determines their behaviour. In so doing, and by emphasising historical context and drawing on a wide range of political science theory, Burns sheds fresh light onto the ways in which military structure affects the potential for democratic transition or the course of civil war. With this book he presented a wide-ranging study of the Middle East which provides key tools to understanding the opportunities for democratisation, both during the Arab Spring and beyond, and which is therefore essential reading for anyone working on the Middle East, popular uprisings and the politics of repression.

Despite Cultures examines the strategies and realities of the Soviet state-building project in Tajikistan during the 1920s and 1930s. Based on extensive archival research, Botakoz Kassymbekova analyzes the tactics of Soviet officials at the center and periphery that produced, imitated, and improvised governance in this Soviet southern borderland and in Central Asia more generally. She shows how the tools of violence, intimidation, and coercion were employed by Muslim and European Soviet officials alike to implement Soviet versions of modernization and industrialization. In a region marked by ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity, the Soviet plan was to recognize these differences while subsuming them within the conglomerate of official Soviet culture. As Kassymbekova reveals, the local ruling system was built upon an intricate network of individuals, whose stated loyalty to communism was monitored through a chain of command that stretched from Moscow through Tashkent to Dushanbe/Stalinabad. The system was tenuously based on individual leaders who struggled to decipher the language of Bolshevism and maintain power through violent repression.

Acclaimed author Andrey Kurkov gives powerful insight into life in Kyiv following the 2013 protests and before the 2022 Russian invasion. -16 DegreesC, sunlight, silence. I drove the children to school, then went to see the revolution. I walked between the tents. Talked with rev olutionaries. They were weary today. The air was thick with the smell of old campfires. Ukraine Diaries is acclaimed writer Andrey Kurkov's first-hand account of the ongoing crisis in his country. From his flat in Kyiv, just five hundred yards from Independence Square, Kurkov can smell the burning barricades and hear the sounds of grenades and gunshot. Kurkov's diaries begin on the first day of the pro-European protests in November 2013, and describe the violent clashes in the Maidan, the impeachment of Yanukovych, Russia's annexation of Crimea and the separatist uprisings in the east of Ukraine. Going beyond the headlines, they give vivid insight into what it's like to live through - and try to make sense of - times of intense political unrest, on the path to the current crisis.

The arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the Yukos oil company, on 25 October 2003, was a key turning point in modern Russian history. At that time Khodorkovsky was one of the world's richest and most powerful men, while Yukos had been transformed into a vast and lucrative oil company that was set to go global. On all counts, this looked like a success story, but it was precisely at this moment that the Russian authorities struck. After two controversial trials, attracting widespread international condemnation, Khodorkovsky was sentenced to fourteen years in jail. In this book, Richard Sakwa examines the rise and fall of Yukos, and the development of the Russian oil industry more generally. Sakwa analyses Russia's emergence as an energy superpower, and considers the question of the 'natural resource curse' and the use of energy rents to bolster Russia as a great power and to maintain the autonomy of the regime. Crucially this book also examines the relationship between Putin's state and big business during Russia's traumatic shift from the Soviet planned economy to the market system.It is a detailed analysis of one of the most dramatic confrontations between economic and political power in our era, full of human drama and moral dilemmas. It is also a study of political economy, with the market and state coming into confrontation. Above all, the 'Yukos affair' continues to shape contemporary Russian politics, with a weakened judiciary and insecure property rights. It traces the struggles of the Putin era as two visions of society came into conflict. The attack on Khodorkovsky had - and continues to have - far-reaching political and economic consequences but it also raises fundamental questions about the quality of freedom in Putin's Russia as well as in the world at large.

This expose of the dark history of repressive police operations in American cities offers a detailed account of police misconduct and violations of protected freedoms over the past century. In an examination of undercover work in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadephia as well as Washington D.C., Detroit, New Haven, Baltimore, and Birmingham, Donner reveals the underside of American law enforcement.

_______ 'A history book that should be read by all' - Stylist. Set against the background of the campaign for women to win the vote, this is a story of the ordinary people effecting extraordinary change. 1913: the last long summer before the war. The country is gripped by suffragette fever. These impassioned crusaders have their admirers; some agree with their aims if not their forceful methods, while others are aghast at the thought of giving any female a vote. Meanwhile, hundreds of women are stepping out on to the streets of Britain. They are the suffragists: non-militant campaigners for the vote, on an astonishing six-week protest march they call the Great Pilgrimage. Rich and poor, young and old, they defy convention, risking jobs, family relationships and even their lives to persuade the country to listen to them. Fresh and original, full of vivid detail and moments of high drama, Hearts and Minds is both funny and incredibly moving, important and wonderfully entertaining.

The Soul City and Soul Buddyz series are memorable for the way in which they integrated health topics into compelling storylines on TV, radio and in print, creating stories so popular that they entertained and informed millions of people. And the Heartlines’ ‘What’s Your Story?’ programme and films such as Beyond the River, continue to provide witness to the transformative power of story.

As a young boy, Garth Japhet found his life radically shaped by the Jungle Doctor series of books. The stories so enthralled him that, against all advice, he set his heart on medicine. He could see his future – with a backdrop of savannas, golden sunsets, adventure and accolades – as a romantic figure, a healer, a hero.

This fantasy sustained Garth through the challenges of medical training, but finally he arrived. He was Dr Japhet, living the dream. Except the dream was a nightmare. The reality of medicine was not the life he had hoped for. There were times when he cursed the power of the story that had so completely messed up his life. Having struggled with anxiety most of his life, he was catapulted into a deep depression.

And then it happened. Garth stumbled upon the healing power of story – fictional, factual and his own. What magic was at work here? If stories had changed him, could he use story to change others? This question set him on the journey described in Like Water is for Fish; a journey that led to Garth co-founding Soul City and Heartlines, and to an understanding that story, in its multiple forms, is as essential for our lives as water is for fish.

When you share your story with others and they share theirs with you, barriers break down, hardened attitudes shift, and healing begins.

"If there is anything in this country to be prized, it's the propagation of the bill of rights, free speech, and freedom of the press. Yet how strange, with all the success and prosperity we have achieved throughout the world, how rarely dissent and protest seem to be practiced in this country. The heroes of this book are the real Americans. This is a must-read for all of us."--Edward Asner, actor/activist

"Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. government has targeted radicals and activists. "The Price of Dissent tells that story with unique and eloquent voices--and also documents some impressive and moving battles to expand our freedom."--Jon Wiener, author of "Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI File

""The Price of Dissent is an inspiring history that includes personal memories by well-chosen participants. They reveal their private awakenings and accomplishments, and they also discuss their repression--by narrow-minded fellows and, more frequently, at the hands of authorities, such as the FBI and COINTELPRO."--Dave Dellinger, author of "From Yale to Jail

"It is time we replaced the traditional heroes of our orthodox textbooks-the generals, the politicos, the industrialists-with those courageous people who fought for peace and justice, against great odds. This book goes a long way towards that goal, by letting us hear the voices of the great dissenters."--Howard Zinn, author of "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

""The Price of Dissent vividly chronicles the courage and impact of activists in the American labor, civil rights, and anti-Vietnam War movements. If this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, much credit goes to the freedom-fighting and braveryof the women and men featured in this inspiring book."--Nadine Strossen, President, American Civil Liberties Union; Professor of Law, New York Law School

"In this splendid collection of annotated testimonies by American citizens repressed before and during the first 'red scare' and those still victimized forty years after the second scare, the Schultzes remind us that only those willing to pay the price of dissent can hope to achieve a true understanding of the value of democracy."--David Levering Lewis, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning two-volume "W.E.B. Du Bois

"Vivid and revealing testimonies about the impact of political repression on American social justice movements. This fascinating book adds greatly to our understanding of a wide range of political movements."--Clayborne Carson, editor of "The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Gripping first-hand accounts provide human faces and engrossing details to what is often only an abstract and theoretical concern for human rights."--Robert Justin Goldstein, author of "Political Repression in Modern America

"These women and men risked life, limb and freedom to protect our precious rights, paying a great price so that we'd not have to. We owe them our thanks and owe thanks to the authors for bringing their stories to us."--Julian Bond, Chairman, "NAACP

From the author of "Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder," "Calamities of Exile" combines three gripping narratives that afford a sort of double CAT scan into the natures of both modern totalitarianism and timeless exile.
"Beautiful but harrowing chronicles of three exiles that probe the moral and personal risks of their encounters with totalitarianism. . . . Piercing and timely."--"Kirkus Reviews," starred review
"Weschler . . . combines a novelist's gift for drama with the objectivity and research skills of a journalist. . . . The result is three gripping profiles of very human but also extraordinary men."--"Publishers Weekly"
"[Weschler's] thorough accounting of the men's covert operations, assumed identities and strained relationships with fathers, wives, and colleagues creates a disturbing triptych of the perils of totalitarianism."--Lance Gould, "New York Times Book Review"
"Weschler tells these three tragic tales with an admirable combination of psychological penetration, intellectual thrust, concision and compassion."--Francis King, "Spectator"
"Endlessly absorbing. . . . Breathtaking."--Jeri Laber, "Los Angeles Times Book Review"

While homophobia is commonly characterized as individual and personal prejudice, this collection of essays instead explores homophobia as a transnational political phenomenon. Editors Meredith L. Weiss and Michael J. Bosia theorize homophobia as a distinct configuration of repressive state-sponsored policies and practices with their own causes, explanations, and effects on how sexualities are understood and experienced in a variety of national contexts. The essays cover a broad range of geographic cases, including France, Ecuador, Iran, Lebanon, Poland, Singapore, and the United States. Combining rich empirical analysis with theoretical synthesis, these studies examine how homophobia travels across complex and ambiguous transnational networks, how it achieves and exerts decisive power, and how it shapes the collective identities and strategies of those groups it targets. The first comparative volume to focus specifically on the global diffusion of homophobia and its implications for an emerging worldwide LGBT movement, Global Homophobia opens new avenues of debate and dialogue for scholars, students, and activists. Contributors are Mark Blasius, Michael J. Bosia, David K. Johnson, Kapya J. Kaoma, Christine (Cricket) Keating, Katarzyna Korycki, Amy Lind, Abouzar Nasirzadeh, Conor O'Dwyer, Meredith L. Weiss, and Sami Zeidan.

What is the relationship between anger and justice, especially when so much of our moral education has taught us to value the impartial spectator, the cold distance of reason? In Sing the Rage, Sonali Chakravarti wrestles with this question through a careful look at the emotionally charged South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which from 1996 to 1998 saw, day after day, individuals taking the stand to speak - to cry, scream, and wail - about the atrocities of apartheid. Uncomfortable and surprising, these public emotional displays, she argues, proved to be of immense value, vital to the success of transitional justice and future political possibilities. Chakravarti takes up the issue from Adam Smith and Hannah Arendt, who famously understood both the dangers of anger in politics and the costs of its exclusion. Building on their perspectives, she argues that the expression and reception of anger reveal truths otherwise unavailable to us about the emerging political order, the obstacles to full civic participation, and indeed the limits - the frontiers - of political life altogether. Most important, anger and the development of skills needed to truly listen to it foster trust among citizens and recognition of shared dignity and worth. An urgent work of political philosophy in an era of continued revolution, Sing the Rage offers a clear understanding of one of our most volatile - and important-political responses.

The diversity of Kurdish communities across the Middle East is now recognized as central to understanding both the challenges and opportunities for their representation and politics. Yet little scholarship has focused on the complexities within these different groups and the range of their experiences. This book diversifies the literature on Kurdish Studies by offering close analyses of subjects which have not been adequately researched, and in particular, by highlighting the Kurds' relationship to the Yazidis. Case studies include: the political ideas of Ehmede Xani, "the father of Kurdish nationalism"; Kurdish refugees in camps in Iraq; the perception of the Kurds by Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire and the Turks in modern Western Turkey; and the important connections and shared heritage of the Kurds and the Yazidis, especially in the aftermath of the 2014 ISIS attacks. The book comprises the leading voices in Kurdish Studies and combines in-depth empirical work with theoretical and conceptual discussions to take the debates in the field in new directions. The study is divided into three thematic sections to capture new insights into the heterogeneous aspects of Kurdish history and identity. In doing so, contributors explain why we need to pay close attention to the shifting identities and the diversity of the Kurds, and what implications this has for Middle East Studies and Minority Studies more generally.

Ethics and Insurrection articulates an ethical position that takes critical pragmatism and Harrisian insurrectionist philosophy seriously. It suggests that there are values and norms that create boundaries that confine, reduce and circumscribe the actions we allow ourselves to consider. McBride argues that an insurrectionist ethos is integral in the disavowing of norms and traditions that justify or perpetuate oppression and that we must throw our faith behind something, some set of values, if we want a chance at shaping a future. This book encourages us to (re)imagine and shape futures with less subjection, less degradation. It urges us to interrogate and deconstruct those intervening background assumptions that authorize and reinforce the subordination of stigmatized groups. It implores us to pursue new conceptions of personhood and humanity, conceptions that forefront reciprocity and solidarity-conceptions that do not cast groups of human beings as inherently subhuman or naturally bereft of honor. And finally Ethics and Insurrection beseeches us to form new coalitions and bonds of trust, to engage in those forms of collective action likely to shape a better future.