Political activism
Showing 1–16 of 18 results
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Hold everything dear
£11.99Hold everything dear
A powerful meditation on political resistance and the global search for justice
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I love Russia
£10.99I love Russia
‘I Love Russia’ is Elena Kostyuchenko’s fearless and unrelenting attempt to document Putin’s Russia as experienced by those whom it systematically and brutally erases: sex workers in Moscow, queer people in the outer provinces, patients and doctors at a Ukrainian maternity ward, and reporters like herself. In March 2022, as a reporter for Russia’s last free press, Novaya Gazeta, Kostyuchenko crossed the border into Ukraine to cover the war. It was her mission to ensure that Russians witnessed the horrors Putin was committing in their name. She filed her pieces knowing that should she return home, she would likely be prosecuted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Yet, driven by the conviction that the greatest form of love and patriotism is criticism, she continues to write, undaunted and with eyes wide open.
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Mother state
£30.00Mother state
Motherhood is a political state. Helen Charman makes a radical case for what liberated mothering could be, and tells the story of what motherhood has been, from the 1970s to the 2010s.When we talk about motherhood and politics together, we usually talk about isolated moments – the policing of breastfeeding, or the cost of childcare. But this is not enough: we need to understand motherhood itself as an inherently political state, one that has the potential to pose a serious challenge to the status quo. In ‘Mother State’, Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women’s Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers’ fights for an alternative future.
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On being unreasonable
£9.99On being unreasonable
Manners, order and respect – these are all ideals we subscribe to. In opposed positions, we ought to be able to ‘agree to disagree’. Today’s world is built from structures of standards and reason, but it is imperative to ask who constructed these norms, and why. We are more divided than ever before – along lines of race, gender, class, disability – and it’s time to question who benefits the most. What if our propensity to measure human behaviour against rules and reason is actually more problematic than it might seem? Kirsty Sedgman shows how power dynamics and the social biases involved have resulted in a wide acceptance of what people should and shouldn’t do, but they create discriminatory realities and amount to a societal façade that is dangerous for genuine social progress.
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Out of order
£22.00Out of order
Amidst a landscape of economic turmoil, eroding freedoms and deepening societal fractures, one thing is clear: Britain is in a mess. Instead of serving the common good, our politicians seem fixated on personal gain, while certain segments of the media only seek to divide us further. But who is responsible for this descent into chaos? And how can we hold these people to account? With her characteristic outspokenness and irrepressible sense of humour, Carol Vorderman here reveals the intricate web of influence responsible for our nation’s unravelling. Part diary, part political manifesto, this is the story of how an old bird with an iPhone exposed the incompetence and lies of the Tory establishment, and inspired countless others to find their voice and stand up for what they believe in.
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Recollections of my non-existence
£10.99Recollections of my non-existence
This is a memoir from the author of ‘Men Explain Things to Me’ that asks how a young writer finds her voice in a society that prefers women to be silent. From the era of punk, growing gay pride and West Coast activism through to the latter years of second-wave feminism and the present day, this is the foundational story of an emerging artist struggling against violence and oppression. It is an electric account of the pauses and gains in feminism over the past forty years.
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Resistance
£25.00Resistance
A landmark work charting how acts of resistance have shaped Britain and the powerful role of photography as a catalyst for change, across the twentieth century, curated by acclaimed artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen.
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Six conversations we’re scared to have
£20.00Six conversations we’re scared to have
This volume will face up to one of the biggest challenges in feminism right now – how we can have difficult conversations well, how we can disagree well, and how we can build bridges and change minds, including our own.
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Some people need killing
£20.00Some people need killing
‘My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.’ Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new democracy for the Philippines. Three decades later, a nation that once taught the world the meaning of nonviolent resistance discovers the fragility of its democratic principles under the regime of populist autocrat Rodrigo Duterte. ‘Some People Need Killing’ is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines’ ongoing drug war and Duterte’s assault on the country’s fledgling democracy.
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The climate book
£22.00The climate book
It seems like an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed that the world has never seen, in the face of vast and powerful forces – not just oil tycoons and governments, but the changing climate system itself. The odds are against us, and we are running out of time. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Around the world, geophysicists and mathematicians, oceanographers and meteorologists, engineers, economists, psychologists and philosophers have been using their expertise to develop a deep understanding of the crises we face. Greta Thunberg has created ‘The Climate Book’ in partnership with over one hundred of these experts in order to equip us all with this knowledge.
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The forgers
£25.00The forgers
Between 1940 and 1943, a group of Polish diplomats in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable – and until now, completely unknown – humanitarian operation. In concert with Jewish activists, they masterminded a systematic programme of forging passports and identity documents for Latin American countries, which were then smuggled into German-occupied Europe to save the lives of thousands of Jews facing extermination in the Holocaust. ‘The Forgers’ tells this extraordinary story.
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The impossible office?
£14.99The impossible office?
Why has the office of Prime Minister endured longer than any other democratic political office? Sir Anthony Seldon, historian of Number 10 Downing Street, explores the intimate details and experiences of our PMs – including the recent churn of Johnson, Truss and Sunak – discussing who has been most effective and why.
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The picnic
£22.00The picnic
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did the unthinkable: they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain – and held a picnic. Word had spread of what was going to happen. On wisps of rumour, thousands of East German ‘holiday-makers’ had made their way to the border between Hungary and Austria and packed the nearby camping sites, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The highest state authorities were choosing to turn a blind eye – but that could change at any moment. The stage was set for the greatest border breach in Cold War history: that day hundreds would cross from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union – the so-called end of history – all would flow from those dramatic hours.
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This is not America
£10.99This is not America
Across the West, racial injustice has become a matter of urgency. Terms like ‘critical race theory’ and ‘intersectionality’ are everywhere and, in the rush to get it right, Britain has followed the lead of the world’s dominant political power – America. But what if we’ve been looking in the wrong place? In ‘This is Not America’, Tomiwa Owolade argues that too much of the debate around racism in Britain is viewed through the prism of American ideas that don’t reflect the history, challenges, and achievements of Black communities at home. Humane, empirical, and passionate, this book promises to start a new conversation around race and, vitally, shed light on Black British life today.
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Trailblazer
£10.99Trailblazer
You have probably not heard of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon but you certainly should have done. Name any ‘modern’ human rights movement, and she was a pioneer: feminism, equal opportunities, diversity, inclusion, mental health awareness, Black Lives Matter. While her name has been omitted from too many history books, it was Barbara that opened the doors for more famous names to walk through. And her influence owed as much to who she was as to what she did: people loved her for her robust sense of humour, cheerfulness and indiscriminate acts of kindness. This is a celebration of the life of the founder of Britain’s suffrage movement: campaigner for equal opportunity in the workplace, the law, at home and beyond.
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With love, grief and fury
£16.99With love, grief and fury
‘With Love, Grief and Fury’ contains love poems, for people and the planet. Grief poems brimming with compassion, mourning what was and contemplating what could be. And poems of fire and fury that will kick some ass, tell the truth and inspire change and hope. Over thirty years after she first stormed the UK poetry scene, the trailblazing and award-winning writer Salena Godden has produced her most audacious and definitive collection to date.
£16.99