Showing results for "The Media" in Politics & Activism

He was a dreamer. Che dreamt big, he dreamt of the impossible, the incredible, as incredible as the chapters of his life.

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

An eye–opening portrait of Lincoln behind the scenes: Here is the career–long party politician whose brilliant coalition–building during the Civil War set the political foundation for emancipation and Union victory. We know Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central to his character and leadership: Lincoln was a master of party politics.

In the first multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln to be published in decades, Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame offers a fresh look at the life of one of America's greatest presidents. Incorporating the field notes of earlier biographers along with decades of research in multiple manuscript archives and long-neglected newspapers, this remarkable work will both alter and reinforce our current understanding of America's 16th president.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was one of the few men in history to fight simultaneously on moral, religious, political, social, economic, and cultural fronts. During his time as a lawyer in South Africa he developed his strategy of non-violence: the idea of opposing unjust laws by non-violent protest. He led the Indian National Congress party in three major campaigns against British rule, each culminating in his arrest.

In this engaging life of the 20th century's most self-consciously learned dictator, Geoffrey Roberts explores the books Stalin read, how he read them, and what they taught him. Stalin firmly believed in the transformative potential of words and his voracious appetite for reading guided him throughout his years. A biography as well as an intellectual portrait, this book explores all aspects of Stalin's tumultuous life and politics.

A life of Matilda - empress, skilled military leader, and one of the greatest figures of the English Middle Ages.

Written by a prize-winning NPR veteran who spent years covering Latin America, this blend of biography, history, and political reporting details the events that lead to the American invasion of Panama.

Harvey Milk - eloquent, charismatic, and a smart-aleck - was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, but he had not even served a full year in office when he was shot by a homophobic fellow supervisor. Milk's assassination at the age of 48 made him the most famous gay man in modern history; 20 years later, Time magazine included him on its list of the hundred most influential individuals of the 20th century.

Lincoln struggles to form a new party to take the place of the defunct Whig party. He has strong doubts that a peaceful end to slavery is possible. Joining with anti-slavery, anti-nativist forces, Lincoln launches the Republican Party of Illinois and the first Republican convention takes place. When the Dred Scott case is decided, Lincoln publicly denounces the court decision.

Discover the extraordinary life of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph of Islam whose leadership transformed the early Muslim world. From his dramatic conversion to Islam to his decade of revolutionary rule, this definitive biography explores how Umar expanded the Islamic empire, established groundbreaking administrative systems, and lived with legendary justice and humility.

When the bodies of two Black men were found sitting with a crackpipe in a parked car in a rundown section of town in 1994, it seemed just another day in Kansas City, Kansas. The swift arrest and conviction of a seventeen-year-old Black kid from a broken home raised no eyebrows either. And yet, thirty years later, Lamonte McIntyre would prove to be the David that took down the Goliath of corruption that had long controlled the city’s power structure and enveloped the city’s justice system.

''Te amo como el canto del cisne'', fueron las últimas palabras con las que mi papá, el expresidente de México, Adolfo López Mateos, se despidió por última vez de mi mamá, Angelina Gutiérrez Sadurni, la jovencita de la cual se enamoró catastróficamente, con la cual se casó por la iglesia y tuvieron dos hijos, mi hermano Adolfo y yo.

The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. DuBois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually in 1920 in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. Reflecting the author's ideas as a politician, historian, and artist, this volume has long moved and inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reform. It is essential reading for all students of African American history.

Thomas Paine was one of the greatest political propagandists in history. The Rights of Man, first published in 1791, is the key to his reputation. Inspired by his outrage at Edmund Burke's attack on the uprising of the French people, Paine's text is a passionate defense of the rights of man. Paine argued against monarchy and outlined the elements of a successful republic, including public education, pensions, and relief of the poor and unemployed, all financed by income tax.

In an extraordinary career David Fenton has learned firsthand what to do—and not to do—to propel progressive causes into the public eye and create real, impactful, lasting change.

The Finnish Front Line is a historical biography of Urho Kekkonen, the eighth and longest-serving president of Finland. Gordon F. Sander focuses on Kekkonen's pivotal first term as president, which was bracketed by two crises that together formed the template for both Finland's relationship with the Soviet Union from 1956 through the fall of the USSR, and Kekkonen's own "special" relationship with Moscow: the Night Frost crisis of 1957, which derived from the Kremlin's desire to exert greater influence on Finnish politics.

Vladimir Lenin lies in a tomb in Moscow's Red Square. History has not been kind to this Russian leader, his teachings reviled by modern mainstream politics. But in today's capitalist society, riven by class inequality and imperialist wars, perhaps it is worth returning to this communist icon's demand for "Peace, Land and Bread", and his radical understanding of democracy.

When Hu Yaobang died in April 1989, throngs of mourners converged on the Martyrs' Monument in Tiananmen Square to pay their respects. Chinese propaganda officials had sought to tarnish his reputation and dim his memory, yet his death galvanized the nascent pro-democracy student movement, setting off the dramatic demonstrations that culminated in the Tiananmen massacre.

Avoiding both sycophantic flattery and outright condemnation, this new biography by Stefan Aust and Adrian Geiges gets inside the head of one of the world's most mysterious leaders. Skillfully unraveling the hidden story of Xi Jinping's life and career, from his early childhood to his rise to the pinnacles of the Party and the State, they flesh out his views and uncover how he became the most powerful man in the world.