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How we sold out our principled commitment to fairness and equality.

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How we sold out our principled commitment to fairness and equality.

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About the Author

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He spent nearly two decades as a correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, with fifteen years at the New York Times. He is the author of numerous bestselling books, including Empire of Illusion; Death of the Liberal Class; War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning; and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with Joe Sacco. He writes a weekly column for the online magazine Truthdig. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Learn more about this author

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For decades the liberal class was a defense against the worst excesses of power. But the pillars of the liberal class -- the press, universities, the labor ...

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Why it is so hard for us to get along and how we can learn to do better.

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Why it is so hard for us to get along and how we can learn to do better.

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“I Won’t Learn from You” - The New Press

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“I Won’t Learn From You,” Herb Kohl’s now-classic essay on “not learning,” or refusing to learn, is available for the first time in an affordable paperback edition along with four […]

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The "culture wars" are really the wedge issues that politicians deploy based on race.

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The "culture wars" are really the wedge issues that politicians deploy based on race.

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The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee: 9780525509585 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that…

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The reasons that their business model degrades the polity.

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The reasons that their business model degrades the polity.

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A tech insider who has been hailed by The New Yorker for her “forceful critique” of Big Tech describes what must be done to stop its erosion of democracy

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Niebuhr wrote the Serenity Prayer "God grant me the serenity to accept the things, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

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Niebuhr wrote the Serenity Prayer "God grant me the serenity to accept the things, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

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This text is the most insightful analysis of the paradoxes of a national American identity.

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“[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times“Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft. . . . The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction

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Danielle Allen takes on Hannah Arendt to argue for advocating for anti-racism in the public square. 

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Danielle Allen takes on Hannah Arendt to argue for advocating for anti-racism in the public square. 

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Everyone in a multicultural, multiracial, and multireligious democracy should learn the skills of talking to strangers (persons different than us in important respects.)

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“Don’t talk to strangers” is the advice long given to children by parents of all classes and races. Today it has blossomed into a fundamental precept of civic education, reflecting interracial distrust, personal and political alienation, and a profound suspicion of others. In this powerful and eloquent essay, Danielle Allen, a 2002 MacArthur Fellow, takes this maxim back to Little Rock, rooting out the seeds of distrust to replace them with “a citizenship of political friendship.” Returning to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 and to the famous photograph of Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, being cursed by fellow “citizen” Hazel Bryan, Allen argues that we have yet to complete the transition to political friendship that this moment offered. By combining brief readings of philosophers and political theorists with personal reflections on race politics in Chicago, Allen proposes strikingly practical techniques of citizenship. These tools of political friendship, Allen contends, can help us become more trustworthy to others and overcome the fossilized distrust among us. Sacrifice is the key concept that bridges citizenship and trust, according to Allen. She uncovers the ordinary, daily sacrifices citizens make to keep democracy working—and offers methods for recognizing and reciprocating those sacrifices. Trenchant, incisive, and ultimately hopeful, Talking to Strangers is nothing less than a manifesto for a revitalized democratic citizenry.