National Network for Equitable Library Service

A Mother Jones "Best Book of 2009," A Bomb in Every Issue uncovers the largely untold story of Ramparts magazine, the spectacular San Francisco muckraker that captured the zeitgeist of the '60s and repeatedly scooped the New York Times, changing American journalism forever.

Appealing to both comics fans and Asian Americans seeking to claim their place in American culture, Secret Identities makes brilliant use of the conventions of the superhero comic book to expose the real face of the Asian American experience.

Based on extensive archival work, Stormtrooper Families combines stormtrooper personnel records, Nazi Party autobiographies, published and unpublished memoirs, personal letters, court records, and police-surveillance records to paint a picture of the stormtrooper movement as an organic product of its local community, its web of interpersonal relationships, and its intensely emotional internal struggles.

Philosophy and anthropology have long debated questions of difference: rationality versus irrationality, abstraction versus concreteness, modern versus premodern.

Missionaries of the left, saviors are people of privilege who believe they have all the answers. They want to help, but don't want to listen; they lead but never follow. From post-Katrina New Orleans, to anti-sex-traficking work, to do-gooder journalists, Flaherty's book reveals saviors' misdeeds but also shows how activists can build new, stronger movements.

"A book of rare power and beauty, majestic in its structure, filled with the truth of imagination and the truth of actuality, emphatic in its declarations and noble in its reach."-Bayard Boyesen, Mother Earth. "No other book discusses so frankly the criminal ways of the closed prison society."-Kenneth Rexroth In 1892, Alexander Berkman tried to assassinate Henry Clay Frick for the latter's role in violently suppressing the Homestead Steel Strike. Berkman's attempt was unsuccessful. Berkman spent the next fourteen years in Pennsylvania's Western Penitentiary.

Decades of military oppression in Burma have led to the systematic destruction of thousands of ethnic minority villages, a standing army with one of the world's highest number of child soldiers, and the displacement of millions of people. Nowhere to Be Home is an eye-opening collection of oral histories exposing the realities of life under military rule. In their own words, men and women from Burma describe their lives in the country that Human Rights Watch has called "the textbook example of a police state."

Underground America tells the stories of men and women who have come to the United States seeking a better life for their families, only to be subjected to dehumanizing working conditions. Supporting myriad industries, these workers form an essential part of our economy'often by working the least desirable jobs without the most basic legal protections. Underground America allows this largely ignored part of our country to finally share its experiences.

In the wake of the phenomenal success of such shows as CSI, forensic science has never been so popular. The obsessive attention to detail that Grissom and his crew afford seemingly insignificant details like particles of dirt in a bullet wound have had audiences eager to know more. Siegel's study investigates the many types of evidence, how they occur in crimes, how they are collected and analyzed by scientists, and how the results are presented in court.

There are 27 million slaves alive today - more than at any point in history. Written by the world's leading experts, this shocking examination combines original research with first-hand stories from the slaves themselves to provide a reliable account of one of the worst humanitarian crises facing us today. Looking to the future, the authors offer hope with a global blueprint that proposes to end slavery in our lifetime. Kevin Bales is president of Free the Slaves. He lives in Takoma Park, MD.