Freedom & Security

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial. How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.

Tiffany Jenkins’s groundbreaking book traces the emergence of private sanctuaries from authority and public opinion to show that private life is a very recent – and hard-won – achievement. Strangers and Intimates is animated by dramatic human confrontations: from the political struggles in the seventeenth century that led to Edmund Coke’s rallying cry that ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’; to the first modern privacy panic in 1844, when the British government opened private letters sent to the exiled Italian republican Giuseppe Mazzini; and more.

Shannon Monaghan follows a core group of Western volunteers in Ukraine, fighting together from the early battle for Kyiv through to the last stands at Severodonetsk and Bakhmut. They arrived alone, but became a family—back when nobody bothered to learn names, because they all expected to die. These men knew they'd be fighting without the NATO support they were used to. They knew the danger they faced, and how they might be criticized for fighting someone else's war. But they also knew it was the right thing to do. This is their story.

This timely book explores the alarming rise of ransomware: malicious software blocking users from their systems or data until they've paid money to regain access or to prevent the release of sensitive information. High-profile British examples of the twenty-first century have targeted national libraries and healthcare organizations; in the US, hackers of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley Health Network held patient data hostage—when their demands went unmet, they published topless photographs of women with breast cancer.

The American Constitution – The Ideas That Still Shape Your Rights is the guide you’ve been looking for: a clear, structured, and deeply human exploration of the documents that built a nation — and still shape your everyday freedoms. In an age of uncertainty and political noise, this book offers clarity and context. It doesn’t just give you the original texts — it helps you understand them, connect with them, and see why they still matter.

How do you cheer up a woman who has spent hours cleaning prison toilets with a broken mop? The secret is in a tres leches cake. In Iran’s prisons, women endure horrors: they are beaten, interrogated, and humiliated in a thousand ways. Even a whisper to a fellow inmate can be punished. Yet—in spite of anything and everything—they resist: they bake. They console each other, cry together, dance together. The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club is a call to stand up for Woman, Life, Freedom by a woman still fighting for a free Iran.

When Common Sense hit the streets in 1776, it ignited the American colonies like never before. With bold, plain-spoken language, Thomas Paine challenged the authority of the British monarchy and made the urgent case for American independence. More than just a political argument, this short but powerful work gave everyday people the words to demand freedom—and the courage to fight for it.

Investigative journalist Paul Palango’s 22 Murders examined in forensic detail the shooting spree committed in April 2020 by Gabriel Wortman that began in tiny Portapique Bay, Nova Scotia, and ended thirteen hours later when Wortman was shot dead by RCMP officers. The episode left numerous serious questions in its wake—most especially why was the killer able to evade police in such limited geography for an entire night and much of the following morning?

In late 1940 a group of five young Australian soldiers set out on a secret mission: one of the Second World War’s most daring operations and the first for Britain’s legendary Special Operations Executive. Leading a small force of Ethiopian freedom fighters on an epic trek across the harsh African bush from the Sudan, the small incursion force entered Italian-occupied Ethiopia and began waging a guerilla war against the 250,000-strong Italian army. One of these men, Ken Burke, was Duncan McNab's uncle.

Widely regarded as a classic on the Vietnam War, Decent Interval provides a scathing critique of the CIA's role in and final departure from that conflict. Still the most detailed and respected account of America's final days in Vietnam, the book was written at great risk and ultimately at great sacrifice by an author who believed in the CIA's cause but was disillusioned by the agency's treacherous withdrawal, leaving thousands of Vietnamese allies to the mercy of an angry enemy.

With impeccable research and original reporting, Mark Whitaker tells the story of Malcolm X’s far-reaching posthumous legacy. It stretches from founders of the Black Power Movement such as Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton to hip-hop pioneers such as Public Enemy and Tupac Shakur. Leaders of the Black Arts and Free Jazz movements from Amiri Baraka to Maya Angelou, August Wilson, and John Coltrane credited their political awakening to Malcolm, as did some of the most influential athletes of our time, from Muhammad Ali to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and beyond.

In Nazis in the New World, Aaron Gillette presents vivid narratives and personal accounts to reveal the unknown history of Nazi German exchange students sent to America in the 1930s. After receiving the Gestapo's stamp of approval, they were instructed to use their charm and charisma to promote the Third Reich. Some also served Hitler as covert operatives against the United States.

For many, it can feel like change takes too long, and it might seem that we have not moved very far. But political activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar believes that public protest is a vital part of affecting change, even if that change doesn’t come “right now.” In We All Want to Change the World, he examines the activism of people of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds that helped change America, documenting events from the Free Speech Movement through the movement for civil rights, the fight for women’s and LGBTQ rights, and, of course, the protests against the Vietnam War.

In 2007, three Muslim university students left the Canadian Prairies, seemingly without a trace. In the ensuing months, their disappearance raised fears that the men had become "radicalized," posing a grave threat to national security. From presidential briefings and targeted drone assassinations to a politically charged trial, the men's story sheds new light not only on the figure of the "radical," but also on the "moderate" Muslim, represented by a community forever changed by the men's departure.

Ground Combat reveals the gritty details of land warfare at the tactical level and challenges today's overly subjective and often inaccurate approaches to characterizing war. Ben Connable's motivation for writing the book is to offer an evidence-based approach to examining the future of war.

In late 2019, Dennis Oya's persistent cough was just the beginning of a harrowing tale of neglect and systemic failure in a Washington prison. Diagnosed eighteen months later with tuberculosis (TB), Oya's case sparked one of the largest prison TB outbreaks in decades, affecting over 3,000 contacts. This outbreak, and others like it, exposes the glaring weaknesses in prison healthcare systems. In Outbreak Behind Bars, Homer Venters reveals the grim realities of how communicable diseases thrive in the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions of correctional facilities.

In The Battle for the Black Mind, Dr. Karida Brown explores the struggle to define and control the education of African Americans amid shifting societal attitudes and forms of systemic exclusion. From the perspective of freed slaves seeking empowerment and liberation through education, to the white elites aiming to shape the future of the workforce and consolidate power, The Battle for the Black Mind explores the formation of segregated education systems and the influence of philanthropic organizations, religious institutions, and Black educators themselves.

Few have ever valued literacy as much as the enslaved Black people of the American South. For them, it was more than a means to a better life; it was a gateway to freedom and, in some instances, a tool for inspiring revolt. And few governments tried harder to suppress literacy than did those in the South. Everyone understood that knowledge was power: power to keep a person enslaved in mind and body, power to resist oppression. In the decades before the Civil War, Southern governments drove Black literacy underground, but it was too precious to be entirely stamped out.

Did you know about Eli Cohen, the legendary Mossad agent who infiltrated the highest ranks of the Syrian government? How about the shadowy State School 4 "Sparrow", rumored to train seductive operatives during the Cold War? Or the real-life spies whose daring exploits inspired the iconic James Bond 007 franchise?

In this empowering memoir "Strong and Soulful: Graced by Grief," Denise Olsen shares her transformative journey through the depths of devastating loss to a place of unexpected strength and profound self-discovery. After the heart-shattering loss of her husband, a firefighter in the World Trade Center attacks, Denise was enveloped in a grief so intense, it threatened to consume her. But within this dark chapter of her life, she found a surprising truth: grief, while altering us irrevocably, does not have to be our undoing.