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A powerfully moving book that "could make graspable why today's
prisons are contemporary slave plantations" (Alice Walker, author
of The Color Purple), giving voice to the poorest among us and
laying bare the cruelty of a penal system that too often defines
their lives. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has
taught courses in drama, literature, philosophy, and history since
2013 in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University at
East Jersey State Prison and other New Jersey prisons. In his first
class at East Jersey State Prison, where students read and
discussed plays by Amiri Baraka and August Wilson, among others,
his class set out to write a play of their own. In writing the
play, Caged, which would run for a month in 2018 to sold-out
audiences at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey, and later
be published, students gave words to the grief and suffering they
and their families have endured, as well as to their hopes and
dreams. The class's artistic and personal discovery, as well as
transformation, is chronicled in heartbreaking detail in Our Class.
This "magnificent" (Cornel West, author of Race Matters) book gives
a human face and a voice to those our society too often demonizes
and abandons. It exposes the terrible crucible and injustice of
America's penal system and the struggle by those trapped within its
embrace to live lives of dignity, meaning, and purpose.
Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and
televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a
Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was
hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such
language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very
real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In "American
Fascists, " Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the
National Book Award finalist "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,
" challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues
that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled
nationalism and a hatred for the open society.
Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where
his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as
someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to
the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned
between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most
influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs
that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government
to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between
church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do
not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped
into tens of millions of American homes through Christian
television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the
curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for
apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual
inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening
America.
"American Fascists, " which includes interviews and coverage of
events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion
techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving
motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues
that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements
in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often
masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were
willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power.
The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not
openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use
physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement
is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a
Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has
roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it
will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order
of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive
to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At
that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are --
the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned
warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the
dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the
intolerant.
Chris Hedges's profound and unsettling examination of America in
crisis is "an exceedingly...provocative book, certain to arouse
controversy, but offering a point of view that needs to be heard"
(Booklist), about how bitter hopelessness and malaise have resulted
in a culture of sadism and hate. America, says Pulitzer Prize
-winning reporter Chris Hedges, is convulsed by an array of
pathologies that have arisen out of profound hopelessness, a bitter
despair, and a civil society that has ceased to function. The
opioid crisis; the retreat into gambling to cope with economic
distress; the pornification of culture; the rise of magical
thinking; the celebration of sadism, hate, and plagues of suicides
are the physical manifestations of a society that is being ravaged
by corporate pillage and a failed democracy. As our society
unravels, we also face global upheaval caused by catastrophic
climate change. All these ills presage a frightening
reconfiguration of the nation and the planet. Donald Trump rode
this disenchantment to power. In his "forceful and direct"
(Publishers Weekly) America: The Farewell Tour, Hedges argues that
neither political party, now captured by corporate power, addresses
the systemic problem. Until our corporate coup d'etat is reversed
these diseases will grow and ravage the country. "With sharply
observed detail, Hedges writes a requiem for the American dream"
(Kirkus Reviews) and seeks to jolt us out of our complacency while
there is still time.
It is often said that war is hell. But for many of the people who
experience war first hand--civilians and soldiers alike--it is an
emotionally intense and even exhilarating experience. War is an
intoxicating and addictive elixir. It gives us purpose, resolve, a
cause. Chris Hedges, an award winning journalist for the New York
Times, illustrates the complex dichotomy of war in the paperback
reissue of the award-winning War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
One need look no further than America in the days following
September 11, 2001 to see the effects of war: how heightened our
senses were, how every event seemed momentous, and how full of
meaning our lives became. Such feelings, Hedges points out, are
characteristic of war in general--as soldiers and civilians come to
see themselves as part of a grand cause or nation, their lives take
on a new vividness and a new meaning. Sometimes this leads them to
do great things; sometimes it leads them to commit crimes. Based on
the literature of combat and his own experiences in the Balkans,
the Middle East, and Central America, Hedges challenges us to take
a look at the spiritual and emotional costs of war.
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is one of those rare books
that transcends matter to offer profound insights into the human
condition itself. Drawing on a lifetime's reading of literature and
philosophy from Homer to Shakespeare to Erich Maria Remarque and
Michael Herr, Hedges reflects on the impact of war on the ordinary
individuals--a topic with a continued urgency for America today.
Revolutions come in waves and cycles. We are again riding the crest
of a revolutionary epic, much like 1848 or 1917, from the Arab
Spring to movements against austerity in Greece to the Occupy
movement. In Wages of Rebellion , Chris Hedges- who has chronicled
the malaise and sickness of a society in terminal moral decline in
his books Empire of Illusion and Death of the Liberal Class -
investigates what social and psychological factors cause
revolution, rebellion, and resistance. Drawing on an ambitious
overview of prominent philosophers, historians, and literary
figures he shows not only the harbingers of a coming crisis but
also the nascent seeds of rebellion. Hedges' message is clear:
popular uprisings in the United States and around the world are
inevitable in the face of environmental destruction and wealth
polarization.Focusing on the stories of rebels from around the
world and throughout history, Hedges investigates what it takes to
be a rebel in modern times. Utilizing the work of Reinhold Niebuhr,
Hedges describes the motivation that guides the actions of rebels
as sublime madness" , the state of passion that causes the rebel to
engage in an unavailing fight against overwhelmingly powerful and
oppressive forces. For Hedges, resistance is carried out not for
its success, but as a moral imperative that affirms life. Those who
rise up against the odds will be those endowed with this sublime
madness."From South African activists who dedicated their lives to
ending apartheid, to contemporary anti-fracking protests in
Alberta, Canada, to whistleblowers in pursuit of transparency,
Wages of Rebellion shows the cost of a life committed to speaking
the truth and demanding justice. Hedges has penned an indispensable
guide to rebellion.
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Caged (Paperback)
Cooperative Theater Prison Jersey New; Introduction by Chris Hedges
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R264
R218
Discovery Miles 2 180
Save R46 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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This poignant play, written by current and formerly incarcerated
authors, uses gripping truths and soulful dialogue to reveal the
human cost of America's for-profit justice system. The story
follows Omar, pulled back into the prison system after trying to
lift his family out of poverty, who struggles to maintain a sense
of humanity while fighting to keep his loved ones close. According
to NJ.com, "From institutionalized racism to addiction to the
prison-industrial complex, this is a play about a great many large,
pressing social challenges, but at its core it is a play about one
family and its struggles to remain united as their world steadily
crumbles. Impactful, warm, and unrelenting, this play that began as
an experiment turns out to be an excellent examination of the human
cost of a harsh and inhospitable world." All profits from the book
will go to a prison re-entry fund run by The Second Presbyterian
Church of Elizabeth, New Jersey to help the playwrights secure
housing and continue their schooling upon release.
Doctors at War is a candid account of a trauma surgical team based,
for a tour of duty, at a field hospital in Helmand, Afghanistan.
Mark de Rond tells of the highs and lows of surgical life in
hard-hitting detail, bringing to life a morally ambiguous world in
which good people face impossible choices and in which routines
designed to normalize experience have the unintended effect of
highlighting war's absurdity. With stories that are at once comical
and tragic, de Rond captures the surreal experience of being a
doctor at war. He lifts the cover on a world rarely ever seen, let
alone written about, and provides a poignant counterpoint to the
archetypical, adrenaline-packed, macho tale of what it is like to
go to war.Here the crude and visceral coexist with the tender and
affectionate. The author tells of well-meaning soldiers at hospital
reception, there to deliver a pair of legs in the belief that these
can be reattached to their comrade, now in mid-surgery; of
midsummer Christmas parties and pancake breakfasts and late-night
sauna sessions; of interpersonal rivalries and banter; of caring
too little or too much; of tenderness and compassion fatigue; of
hell and redemption; of heroism and of playing God. While many good
firsthand accounts of war by frontline soldiers exist, this is one
of the first books ever to bring to life the experience of the
surgical teams tasked with mending what war destroys.
Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost
cliche. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In
Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable:
has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of
political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined
and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what
the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a
country where citizens are politically uninterested and
submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At
best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public
is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where
corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes
clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically
comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns
that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has
its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and
mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an
ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless
war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope
lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the
local level. Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying
diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is
sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come.
Now with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Chris Hedges, Democracy Incorporated remains an essential work for
understanding the state of democracy in America.
Acclaimed journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges is one
of the great moral voices of our age. He has the rare combination
of decades of experience reporting from conflict zones in Central
America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, and the
erudition one would expect from a student of Christian ethics and
the classics at Harvard University. He prizes the truth over news
and facts. And in the pursuit of truth he has risked his career;
even his life.
"I never sought to be objective," he writes. "How can you be
objective about death squads in El Salvador, massacres in Iraq, or
Serbian sniper fire that gunned down unarmed civilians including
children in Sarajevo? How can you be neutral about the masters and
profiteers of war who lie and dissemble to hide the crimes they
commit and the profits they make? How can you be objective about
human pain? And finally, how can you be objective about those who
are responsible for this suffering?"
"The World As It Is" is a collection of Hedges essays originally
published by Truthdig, the Webby Award-winning progressive news
website. Hedges lyrically and fearlessly dissects the most
controversial issues of the day: America's wars of self-destruction
in Iraq and Afghanistan, the decay of American empire (at home and
abroad), Israel's ghettoization of Palestinians in the West Bank
and Gaza, and the failure of American liberalism. His essays draw
on his extraordinary experiences as a journalist but also his
conviction that the centers of power in America have been seized
and hijacked by corporations, something the American media pays
deference to.
"Because the press is not concerned with distinguishing truth from
news, because it lacks a moral compass, it has become nothing more
than courtiers to the elite, shameless hedonists of power and
absurd court propagandists."
Chris Hedges insists that unless we begin to stand fast around
moral imperatives, ones we cannot abandon and must be willing to
fight the formal systems of power to advance, we will be complicit
in our self-annihilation.
Named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon.com and the Washington Post
Three years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges and
award-winning cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco set out to take a
look at the sacrifice zones, those areas in America that have been
offered up for exploitation in the name of profit, progress, and
technological advancement. They wanted to show in words and
drawings what life looks like in places where the marketplace rules
without constraints, where human beings and the natural world are
used and then discarded to maximize profit. Days of Destruction,
Days of Revolt is the searing account of their travels.
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Caged (Hardcover)
New Jersey Prison Theater Cooperative New Jersey Prison Theater Cooperative; Introduction by Chris Hedges, Boris Franklin
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R424
R350
Discovery Miles 3 500
Save R74 (17%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
This poignant play, written by current and formerly incarcerated
authors, uses gripping truths and soulful dialogue to reveal the
human cost of America's for-profit justice system. The story
follows Omar, pulled back into the prison system after trying to
lift his family out of poverty, who struggles to maintain a sense
of humanity while fighting to keep his loved ones close. According
to NJ.com, "From institutionalized racism to addiction to the
prison-industrial complex, this is a play about a great many large,
pressing social challenges, but at its core it is a play about one
family and its struggles to remain united as their world steadily
crumbles. Impactful, warm, and unrelenting, this play that began as
an experiment turns out to be an excellent examination of the human
cost of a harsh and inhospitable world." For every print copy of
Caged purchased from Haymarket Books through June 1, Haymarket will
donate a copy of the book to prisoners and their families working
with the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in
Prisons Consortium (NJ-STEP). All profits from the book will go to
a prison re-entry fund run by The Second Presbyterian Church of
Elizabeth, New Jersey to help the playwrights secure housing and
continue their schooling upon release.
We now live in two Americas. One,now the minority,functions in a
print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can
separate illusion from truth. The other,the majority,is retreating
from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic.
To this majority,which crosses social class lines, though the poor
are overwhelmingly affected,presidential debate and political
rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this other
America," serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and
books, are being pushed to the margins of society. In the tradition
of Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman's
Amusing Ourselves to Death , Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges
navigates this culture,attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News
Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies,to expose
an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "American Fascists"
and the NBCC finalist for "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning"
comes this timely and compelling work about new atheists: those who
attack religion to advance the worst of global capitalism,
intolerance and imperial projects.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity
School, has long been a courageous voice in a world where there are
too few. He observes that there are two radical, polarized and
dangerous sides to the debate on faith and religion in America: the
fundamentalists who see religious faith as their prerogative, and
the new atheists who brand all religious belief as irrational and
dangerous. Both sides use faith to promote a radical agenda, while
the religious majority, those with a commitment to tolerance and
compassion as well as to their faith, are caught in the middle.
The new atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and
Sam Harris, do not make moral arguments about religion. Rather,
they have created a new form of fundamentalism that attempts to
permeate society with ideas about our own moral superiority and the
omnipotence of human reason.
"I Don't Believe in Atheists" critiques the radical mindset that
rages against religion and faith. Hedges identifies the pillars of
the new atheist belief system, revealing that the stringent rules
and rigid traditions in place are as strict as those of any
religious practice.
Hedges claims that those who have placed blind faith in the
morally neutral disciplines of reason and science create idols in
their own image -- a sin for either side of the spectrum. He makes
an impassioned, intelligent case against religious and secular
fundamentalism, which seeks to divide the world into those worthy
of moral and intellectual consideration and those who should be
condemned, silenced and eradicated. Hedges shatters the new
atheists' assault against religion in America, and in doing so,
makes way for new, moderate voices to join the debate. This is a
book that must be read to understand the state of the battle about
faith.
In "Losing Moses on the Freeway," Chris Hedges, veteran war
correspondent and author of the bestselling "War Is a Force That
Gives Us Meaning," delivers an impassioned, eloquent call to heed
the wisdom of the 10 Commandments. Celebrated for his courageous
reporting on the crucial issues of our time, Hedges, who graduated
from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, explores the challenge of
living according to these moral precepts we have tried to follow,
often unsuccessfully, for the past 6,000 years. The commandments,
he writes, do not save us from evil. Instead they save us from
committing evil.
Inspired by unyielding faith, rigorous moral scrutiny, and a
fierce sense of social responsibility, Hedges offers a breathtaking
meditation on modern life. "Losing Moses on the Freeway"
illustrates how the commandments usually choose us -- and how we
are rarely able to choose them. We cannot protect ourselves from
theft, greed, adultery, or envy, nor from the impulses that lead us
to commit evil acts. In honoring the commandments, we free
ourselves from self-worship and are called back to the healing
solidarity of community. It is in the self-sacrifice championed by
the commandments that integrity, commitment, and, finally, love are
made possible.
Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and
televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a
Christian nation that would build a global Christian empire, it was
hard to take such hyperbolic rhetoric seriously. Today, such
language no longer sounds like hyperbole but poses, instead, a very
real threat to our freedom and our way of life. In "American
Fascists, " Chris Hedges, veteran journalist and author of the
National Book Award finalist "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,
" challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues
that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled
nationalism and a hatred for the open society.
Hedges, who grew up in rural parishes in upstate New York where
his father was a Presbyterian pastor, attacks the movement as
someone steeped in the Bible and Christian tradition. He points to
the hundreds of senators and members of Congress who have earned
between 80 and 100 percent approval ratings from the three most
influential Christian Right advocacy groups as one of many signs
that the movement is burrowing deep inside the American government
to subvert it. The movement's call to dismantle the wall between
church and state and the intolerance it preaches against all who do
not conform to its warped vision of a Christian America are pumped
into tens of millions of American homes through Christian
television and radio stations, as well as reinforced through the
curriculum in Christian schools. The movement's yearning for
apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual
inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.
"American Fascists, " which includes interviews and coverage of
events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion
techniques, examines the movement's origins, its driving
motivations and its dark ideological underpinnings. Hedges argues
that the movement currently resembles the young fascist movements
in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s, movements that often
masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were
willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power.
The Christian Right, like these early fascist movements, does not
openly call for dictatorship, nor does it use
physical violence to suppress opposition. In short, the movement
is not yet revolutionary. But the ideological architecture of a
Christian fascism is being cemented in place. The movement has
roused its followers to a fever pitch of despair and fury. All it
will take, Hedges writes, is one more national crisis on the order
of September 11 for the Christian Right to make a concerted drive
to destroy American democracy. The movement awaits a crisis. At
that moment they will reveal themselves for what they truly are --
the American heirs to fascism. Hedges issues a potent, impassioned
warning. We face an imminent threat. His book reminds us of the
dangers liberal, democratic societies face when they tolerate the
intolerant.
For decades the liberal class was a defense against the worst
excesses of power. But the pillars of the liberal class-- the
press, universities, the labor movement, the Democratic Party, and
liberal religious institutions--have collapsed. In its absence, the
poor, the working class, and even the middle class no longer have a
champion.
In this searing polemic Chris Hedges indicts liberal
institutions, including his former employer, the "New York Times,"
who have distorted their basic beliefs in order to support
unfettered capitalism, the national security state, globalization,
and staggering income inequalities. Hedges argues that the death of
the liberal class created a profound vacuum at the heart of
American political life. And now speculators, war profiteers, and
demagogues-- from militias to the Tea Party--are filling the
void.
Best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris
Hedges and journalist Laila Al-Arian spent the past year
interviewing over fifty veterans to expose the patterns of the
occupation in Iraq. The testimonies of these soldiers--many of who
remain deeply traumatized by their experiences--uncover how the
very conduct of the war and occupation have turned the American
forces into agents of terror for most Iraqis.
"Collateral Damage" is organized around key military
operations--Convoys, Checkpoints, Detentions, Raids, Suppressive
Fire, and "Hearts and Minds." Military convoys traveling at
tremendous speeds through towns have become trains of death.
Civilians are routinely run over or shot to death. Soldiers fire
upon Iraqi vehicles with impunity at checkpoints. Late-night
detentions based on shoddy intelligence terrify women, traumatize
children, and radicalize the young men caught in their dragnet.
These soldiers have found the moral courage to speak out about
the true nature of a war that has become one long, unchecked
atrocity, and has given rise to the instability, sectarian violence
and chaos that we witness today in Iraq.
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