National Network for Equitable Library Service

What can we do to avert catastrophe and avoid extinction? The political class won't save us. According to Roger Hallam, real change comes from ordinary people breaking the law. In Common Sense for the 21st Century, Hallam explains why mass disruption, mass arrests, and mass sacrifice are necessary and details how to carry out acts of civil disobedience effectively, respectfully and non-violently. He bypasses contemporary political theory and takes his inspiration from Thomas Paine, the pragmatic 18th century revolutionary whose pamphlet Common Sense sparked the American Revolution.

A powerfully empathetic and impeccably researched look at abortion clinic escorting Abortion has been legal for nearly fifty years in the United States, but with a new conservative majority on the Supreme Court and an emboldened opposition in the street, the threat to its existence has never been more pressing. Clinic escorts-everyday volunteers-are prepared to stand up and protect abortion access, as they have for decades, even in the face of terrorism and violence. They have lived, and sometimes died, to ensure that abortion remains not only accessible but also a basic human right.

Roughly 2,500 years ago, the elite classes of Athens gradually ceded power to the inexperienced masses, thus establishing a radical democracy in which power derived from the votes of everyday citizens. The sequence of events that led to this development is astonishing, and the society that flourished under Athenian democracy is one of the greatest-even if greatly flawed-achievements in world history. Today, when the foundations of our own democracy are under greater and greater scrutiny, the Athenian experiment in citizen rule offers a powerful object lesson in national politics.

Climate change is real but it's not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world's last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today's Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions.

A leading ecologist argues that if humankind is to survive on a fragile planet, we must understand and obey its iron lawsOur species has amassed unprecedented knowledge of nature, which we have tried to use to seize control of life and bend the planet to our will. In A Natural History of the Future, biologist Rob Dunn argues that such efforts are futile. We may see ourselves as life's overlords, but we are instead at its mercy.

"De tous les carrefours importants, le visage à la moustache noire vous fixait du regard. BIG BROTHER VOUS REGARDE, répétait la légende, tandis que le regard des yeux noirs pénétrait les yeux de Winston ... Au loin, un hélicoptère glissa entre les toits, plana un moment, telle une mouche bleue, puis repartit comme une flèche, dans un vol courbe. C'était une patrouille qui venait mettre le nez aux fenêtres des gens. Mais les patrouilles n'avaient pas d'importance.

Traditional leadership is a factor that has long been overlooked in evaluations of rural local government in much of contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa. Grassroots Governance, an interdisciplinary and intercontinental collection, addresses this gap in African scholarship and brings new perspectives on the integration, or reconciliation, of traditional leadership with democratic systems of local government.

The Canadian government's 1983 decision to allow U.S. cruise missile testing in this country resulted in intense political fallout. The controversial program was kept quiet for as long as possible, but when key secrets were leaked, the powers that be faced harsh criticism from activists, opposition parties, Washington, and the Canadian public.

It has been said that education in post-colonial Africa is in a state of crisis. Policies and practices from Eurocentric colonial regimes have carried over, intertwining with challenges inherent in the new political and economic climate. Leaders have done little to remedy the malfunctioning education system, and even where attempts have been made, they have overwhelmingly been shaped by commercial and capitalist interests.

From the colonial era of waterborne transport, through nineteenth-century changes in transportation and communication, to globalization, the history of the Great Lakes Basin has been shaped by the people, goods, and capital crossing and recrossing the U.S.-Canadian border. During the past three centuries, the region has been buffeted by efforts to benefit from or defeat economic and political integration and by the politics of imposing, tightening, or relaxing the bisecting international border.