Archives de catégorie : Politics

RACE MATTERS de Cornel West

With a new introduction, the groundbreaking classic RACE MATTERS affirms its position as the bestselling, most influential, and most original articulation of the urgent issues in America’s ongoing racial debate.

RACE MATTERS
by Cornel West
Beacon Press, 2001

Cornel West is at the forefront of thinking about race. First published in 1993, on the one-year anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, RACE MATTERS became a national best seller that has gone on to sell more than half a million copies. West addresses a range of issues, from the crisis in black leadership and the myths surrounding black sexuality to affirmative action, the new black conservatism, and the strained relations between Jews and African Americans. He never hesitates to confront the prejudices of all his readers or wavers in his insistence that they share a common destiny. Bold in its thought and written with a redemptive passion grounded in the tradition of the African-American church, RACE MATTERS is a book that is at once challenging and deeply healing.

« [A] compelling blend of philosphy, sociology and political commentary…It directly takes on some of the most volatile issues facing American society today…One can only applaud the ferocious moral vision and astute intellect on display in these pages. »  ̶̶ The New York Times

Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in three years and obtained his MA and PhD in philosophy at Princeton University. He has taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Paris. He has written twenty books and edited thirteen, including including Keeping Faith, Prophetic Fragments, and, with bell hooks, Breaking Bread. He has been Professor of Religion and Director of Afro-American Studies at Princeton University since 1988, and was recently appointed Professor of Afro-American Studies and the Philosophy of Religion at Harvard University.

Un documentaire Netflix inspiré de l’autobiographie de Michelle Obama

Le documentaire Devenir (Becoming) réalisé par Nadia Hallgren, adapté de l’autobiographie de l’ancienne Première Dame des États-Unis, vient de sortir le 6 mai dernier sur Netflix. Il retrace « mon histoire, de mon enfance dans les quartiers sud de Chicago à ma vie aujourd’hui, et il célèbre aussi les histoires puissantes des gens que j’ai rencontrés en chemin » explique t-elle sur Twitter. « Les liens que j’ai tissés avec des gens de toute l’Amérique et du monde entier me rappellent que l’empathie peut vraiment être une bouée de sauvetage.  Et son pouvoir est pleinement mis en évidence dans le film de Nadia » a-t-elle ajouté en évoquant la tournée promotionnelle internationale de son autobiographie.

Devenir est paru chez Fayard en 2018, ainsi que Devenir, le journal, invitation à méditer et à découvrir ou redécouvrir notre histoire grâce à une série de questions accompagnées de citations tirées de ses Mémoires.

FIRE DRILL FRIDAYS de Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda’s next book focuses on the climate crisis and her Fire Drill Friday weekly demonstrations in Washington D.C.

FIRE DRILL FRIDAYS:
Bold Moves for a Burning Planet
by Jane Fonda
Penguin Press, July 2021

Since October 11th, Jane Fonda has been leading weekly Friday protests in Washington D.C. in her now iconic red coat, heeding the urgent call of young activists like Greta Thunberg to take fighting climate change to the streets. She and the Friday actions have gotten so much media attention, in part because of Jane’s unyielding commitment in the form of civil disobedience, in which other celebrities and growing crowds of activists have been inspired to participate.

In the book, she writes of her awakening from an environmentally responsible lifestyle to an urgent need to engage in global activism as she hikes in Big Sur. With urgency as well as her signature humanity and humor, Jane will take readers with her as she leaves her comfort zone, bonds with activists young and old, experiences each week’s actions, is arrested and spends time in jail. In addition, she will write about how she learns from experts before the events—activists and scientists—about everything from stopping fossil fuel production to the impact on health and women. As she says, so many of us feel overwhelmed; we need to connect the dots to better understand what needs to be done.

THE WHITE HOUSE PLUMBERS, une série sur le Watergate bientôt sur HBO

Une mini-série HBO en cinq épisodes, adaptée de l’autobiographie d’Egil Krogh sur l’affaire du Watergate, INTEGRITY, vient d’être officiellement annoncée !

Egil Krogh, ancien membre de l’administration Nixon, offre dans INTEGRITY le récit époustouflant de l’enquête secrète menée au sein de la Maison-Blanche par une équipe surnommée « The Plumbers » ayant pour but d’étouffer le scandale du Watergate. La série sera centrée sur deux figures majeures de l’affaire, E. Howard Hunt (interprété par Woody Harrelson) et G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), les organisateurs du cambriolage du Watergate qui a eu pour conséquence de faire tomber le président Richard Nixon au lieu de le protéger.

INTEGRITY est paru chez PublicAffairs / Perseus Books en août 2007. Une nouvelle édition tie-in paraîtra sous le titre THE WHITE HOUSE PLUMBERS au printemps 2021. Les droits de langue française sont toujours disponibles.

BLOWOUT de Rachel Maddow

Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy–Winner Take All

BLOWOUT:
Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth

by Rachel Maddow
Crown, October 2019

Rachel Maddow’s Blowout offers a dark, serpentine, riveting tour of the unimaginably lucrative and corrupt oil-and-gas industry. With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe–from Oklahoma City to Siberia to Equatorial Guinea–exposing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas. She shows how Russia’s rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia’s rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the United States, and the West’s most important alliances. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, but ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson emerge as two of the past century’s most consequential corporate villains. The oil-and-gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, « like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can’t really blame the lion. It’s in her nature. »
This book is a clarion call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest industry on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of predatory oil executives and their enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, « Democracy either wins this one or disappears. »

Rachel Maddow is host of the Emmy Award-winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, as well as the author of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, a #1 New York Times bestseller. Maddow received a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University and earned her doctorate in political science at Oxford University. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula.