Electrifying essays on the history, complexity, diversity of a continent, from the father of modern African literature. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Three leading Africa scholars investigate the social forces driving the democratic transformation of postcolonial states across southern Africa. Extensive research and interviews with civil society organizers in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and Swaziland inform this analysis of the challenges faced by non-governmental organizations in relating both to the attendant inequality of globalization and to grassroots struggles for social justice.

Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.

THE EXPLOSIVE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
With all-new excerpts from Richard Clarke's dramatic public testimony, and revealing corroboration from The 9/11 Commission Report
From the 9/11 Commission Report:
"On the day of the meeting [September 4, 2001], Clarke sent Rice an impassioned personal note. He criticized U.S. counterterrorism efforts past and present. The 'real question' before the principals, he wrote, was 'are we serious about dealing with the al Qida threat?...Is al Qida a big deal?...Decision makers should imagine themselves on a future day when the CSG has not succeeded in stopping al Qida attacks and hundreds of Americans lay dead in several countries, including the US,' Clarke wrote. 'What would those decision makers wish that they had done earlier? That future day could happen at any time.'"

Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

In this important collection of interviews with the acclaimed radio journalist David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky discusses U.S. foreign policy in the post-9/11 world. 

Barsamian has a unique rapport with Chomsky - having conducted more interviews and radio broadcasts with him than any other journalist - and here explores topics Chomsky has never before discussed: the 2004 presidential campaign and election; the future of Social Security; the increasing threat of global warming; and new dangers presented by the United States' ever-deepening entanglement in Iraq.

The result is an illuminating dialogue with one of the world's leading thinkers - and a startling picture of the turbulent world in which we live.

‘Intellectual Intifada’ traces the steps of the Prophetic model for the establishment of just governance—stepping round the misconceptions and misrepresentations of Islam, laying bare the collective responsibility of each believer to bring the Caliphate into being. Far from becoming an autocratic tyranny, Rashid shows that a concerted attempt—under the guidance of ijtihād and the ahl al-ḥall wa al-ʿaqd—to eliminate the unjust taxes, the punishment by inflation through usurious banking mechanisms, and the wastefulness of warmongering military budgets, may produce something close to the perfect example of society as established in Madinah. The intelligent way to change the disastrous state of affairs, or affairs of the state—Rashid never shies from calling a spade a spade—is to change oneself. To shake off the shackles of the monocultural consumer slavery that binds us requires—not in violent reaction—but an acute grasp of how things are.

In 1993 prisoners took control of the maximum-security prison in Lucasville, Ohio. Their 11-day ordeal started with a dispute between the warden and Muslim prisoners and ended with a negotiated settlement, but only after nine prisoners and one hostage had been killed. In the months that followed, leaders of the uprising were singled out by the state, tried, and sentenced to death despite compelling evidence of their innocence. Lucasville tells the inside story of the uprising, the subsequent trial and sentencing. Eminent historian and lawyer Staughton Lynd brings the full power of evidence to bear as he retells the Lucasville story. He argues compellingly that the five men sentenced to death have been unfairly convicted. In addition, he describes the uprising from the inside-how the prisoners worked together, black and white, even Muslims and members of the Aryan Brotherhood, for the improvement of conditions. The ease with which the state has been able to use its resources, and the court's, to bring the Lucasville 5 to the point of execution raises questions that will make readers want to rethink not only the justification for these convictions, but the legitimacy of the death penalty in any case.

Marcus Garvey is one of the great figures of the 20th century. He proved by his life's work the potency of the racial factor in contemporary politics. With little aid from the geneticists, sociologists, anthropoligists or historians Garvey asserted the principle of racial equality, especially of Negro and African equality while claiming due respect for the African past.