Books published by Columbia Global Reports

What will a conservative Supreme Court do with its power? From 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, until the present, Congress enacted hardly any major legislation outside of the tax law President Trump signed in 2017. In the same period, the Supreme Court dismantled much of America's campaign finance law, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, permitted states to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, weakened laws protecting against age discimination and sexual and racial harassment, and held that every state must permit same-sex couples to marry. This powerful unelected body, now controlled by six very conservative Republicans, has and will become the locus of policymaking in the United States.Ian Millhiser, Vox's Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what those six justices are likely to do with their power. It is true that the right to abortion is in its final days, as is affirmative action. But Millhiser shows that it is in the most arcane decisions that the Court will fundamentally reshape America, transforming it into something far less democratic, by attacking voting rights, dismantling and vetoing the federal administrative state, ignoring the separation of church and state, and putting corporations above the law. The Agenda exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right¿its agenda is to shape the very nature of America's government, redefining who gets to have legal rights, who is beyond the reach of the law, and who chooses the people who make our laws. "Ian Millhiser offers a perfect short read for a key moment in U.S. constitutional history." ¿The Guardian"A cogent, timely warning about the fragility of American democracy." ¿Kirkus Reviews

Most Americans think their right to give or withhold medical consent is protected by law. However, Harriet Washington, an acclaimed science writer and ethicist, shows that medical studies are often carried on without the patients' consent, particularly among African American communities and other ethnic groups. This is an especially urgent concern as the world races to find treatments and vaccines for Covid-19.

What happens inside our prisons?Whats Prison For? examines the incarceration part of mass incarceration. What happens inside prisons and jails, where nearly two million Americans are held? Bill Keller, one of Americas most accomplished journalists, has spent years immersed in the subject. He argues that the most important role of prisons is preparing incarcerated people to be good neighbors and good citizens when they return to society, as the overwhelming majority will.Keller takes us inside the walls of our prisons, where we meet men and women who have found purpose while in state custody; American corrections officials who have set out to learn from Europes state-of-the-art prison campuses; a rehab unit within a Pennsylvania prison, dubbed Little Scandinavia, where lifers serve as mentors; a college behind bars in San Quentin; a womens prison that helps imprisoned mothers bond with their children; and Kellers own classroom at Sing Sing.Surprising in its optimism, Whats Prison For? is an indispensable guide on how to improve our prison system, and a powerful argument that the status quo is a shameful waste of human potential.

Why some of the most interesting artists of our time committed themselves to some of the most devastating conflicts on EarthWhy are some of the most interesting artists of our time committed to engaging with conflict and exploitation around the world? Beautiful, Gruesome, and True tells the stories of three of them: Amar Kanwar makes riveting films about the destruction of rural India in the drive to extract natural resources. Teresa Margolles creates haunting installations from the traces of crime scenes and drug-related violence in Mexico. The anonymous collective Abounaddara has produced more than four hundred short films chronicling the uprising and civil war in Syria. Drawing on years of research and extensive reporting, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie vividly recounts how a group of political artists found ways to produce remarkable works of art that demand deliberate and methodical ways of thinkingworks that are contemplative, thoughtful, even redemptive.A gifted critic and a compelling journalist, Wilson-Goldie offers many important insights into the challenges these artists face in their confrontation with authority, repressive regimes, death, and violence. The story she tells could not be more timely.Glenn D. Lowry, David Rockefeller Director, Museum of Modern Art

How censorship turned a terrible disease into an assault on rightsAs COVID-19 spread around the world, so did government censorship. The Infodemic lays bare not just old-fashioned censorship, but also the mechanisms of a modern brand of “censorship through noise,â€? which moves beyond traditional means of state control‿such as the jailing of critics and restricting the flow of information‿to open the floodgates of misinformation, overwhelming the public with lies and half-truths. Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney, who have traveled the world for many years defending press freedom and journalists‿ rights as the directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, chart the onslaught of COVID censorship beginning in China, through Iran, Russia, India, Egypt, Brazil, and inside the Trump White House. Increased surveillance in the name of public health, the collapse of public trust in institutions, and the demise of local news reporting all contributed to help governments hijack the flow of information and usurp power. Full of vivid characters and behind the scenes accounts, The Infodemic shows how under the cover of a global pandemic, governments have undermined freedom and taken control‿this new political order may be the legacy of the disease.

This book is for readers who want to understand what it's like to live in China todayWalsh explores a whole world of literature that has exploded in China over the last 20 yearsProvides a comprehensive introduction to Chinese online fiction, which has become the largest publishing platform in the world

A celebrated revolution brought freedom to a group of enslaved people in northern India. Or did it?Millions of people today are still enslaved; nearly eight million of them live in India, more than anywhere else. This book is the story of a small group of enslaved villagers in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh who founded their own town of Azad NagarFreedomvilleafter staging a rebellion against their slaveholders. International organizations championed it as a non-violent silent revolution that inspired other villagers to fight for their own freedom. But Laura T. Murphy, a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery who spent years researching and teaching about Freedomville, found that there was something troubling about Azad Nagar's success.Murphy embarks on a Rashomon-like retellinga complex, constantly changing narrative of a murder that captures better than any sanitized account just why it is that slavery continues to exist in the twenty-first century. Freedomville's enormous struggle to gain and maintain liberty shows us how realistic it is to expect radical change without violent protestand how a global construction boom is deepening and broadening the alienation of impoverished people around the world.

A one-volume history of the most consequential political movements of our timepopulism, nationalism, socialismand how they are influencing the twenty-first centuryThe distinguished political analyst John Judis has brought out a book with Columbia Global Reports during each of the last three national political seasons: The Populist Explosion in 2016, The Nationalist Revival in 2018, and The Socialist Awakening in 2020. Together, these books chart the rise during the second decade of the twenty-first century of new and unexpected political movements in the United States and Europe that arose in the wake of the Great Recession, the conflict with al-Qaeda and ISIS, and encroaching climate change.Judis has revised and updated these three books, and written a new introductory essay that seeks to explain the tumultuous last decademost notably, Donald Trump's presidency and the response to a global pandemic and recession. This volume is an indispensable guide to understanding the deeply rooted disenchantment that gave rise to populist parties and politicians on the right and leftand to the global changes that have transformed the politics of our time.Essential reading. E.J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post

Local journalism is on the verge of extinction and this is bad for democracy. This book explains why.

Wasserstrom draws on his many visits to Hong Kong to comment on the political climate there, and predict the outcome of China imposing its model on the city.

A lively, inside look at how Bollywood, Turkish soap operas, and K-Pop are challenging America's cultural dominance around the world.

"e;Far and away the most incisive examination of the central development in contemporary politics: the rise of populism on both the right and the left. Superb."e; -- Thomas Edsall, New York Times columnistWhat's happening in global politics? As if overnight, many Democrats revolted and passionately backed a socialist named Bernie Sanders; the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union ; the vituperative billionaire Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of the Republican party; and a slew of rebellious parties continued to win elections in Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Austria, and Greece.John B. Judis, one of America's most respected political analysts, tells us why we need to learn about the populist movement that began in the United States in the 1890s, the politics of which have recurred on both sides of the Atlantic ever since. Populism, on both the right and the left, champions the people against an establishment, based on issues--globalization, free trade, immigration--on which there has been a strong elite consensus, but also a strong mass discontent that is now breaking out into the open.The Populist Explosion is essential reading for our times as we grapple to understand the political forces at work here and in Europe.

The cosmopolites are literally "e;citizens of the world,"e; from the Greek word kosmos, meaning "e;world,"e; and polites, or "e;citizen."e; Garry Davis, aka World Citizen No. 1, and creator of the World Passport, was a former Broadway actor and World War II bomber pilot who renounced his American citizenship in 1948 as a form of protest against nationalism, sovereign borders, and war. Today there are cosmopolites of all stripes, rich or poor, intentional or unwitting, from 1-percenters who own five passports thanks to tax-havens to the Bidoon, the stateless people of countries like the United Arab Emirates. Journalist Atossa Abrahamian, herself a cosmopolite, travels around the globe to meet the people who have come to embody an increasingly fluid, borderless world.Along the way you are introduced to a colorful cast of characters, including passport-burning atheist hackers, the new Knights of Malta, California libertarian "e;seasteaders,"e; who are residents of floating city-states, Bidoons, who have been forced to be citizens of the island nation Comoros, entrepreneurs in the business of buying and selling passports, cosmopolites who live on a luxury cruise ship called The World, and shady businessmen with ties to Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.

In a way, the situation is ironic: housing was at the root of the financial crisis, and six years after the meltdown, housing finance is still the greatest unsolved issue. The U.S. housing market is roughly $10 trillion, making it one of the largest segments of the bond market. Roughly 70 percent of the American population has a mortgage, and for most people, the mortgage is the most important financial instrument in their lives. But until the financial crisis, few people knew the essential role that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play in their mortgages. Given the $188 billion government bailout of the two firms the most expensive bailout in history the politics surrounding housing are worse than they've ever been, and the two gigantic firms sit in limbo. Best-selling investigative journalist Bethany McLean, the coauthor of The Smartest Guys in the Room and All the Devils Are Here, explains why the situation is dangerous and unsustainable, and proposes a few solutions from the perfect, but politically unfeasible to the doable, but ugly.