Portside

Douglass refused to cede the Constitution to the slaveholders. He insisted the Constitution did not sanction slavery, that natural law and the Constitution assured liberty, and political action would be necessary to destroy slavery and secure freedom

This book shows how the country's anti-slavery sentiment based its views an abolitionist reading of the Constitution, and how that understanding influenced Lincoln's thinking.

The stories in Standing Up are linked thematically and appear in chronological order, beginning with 1970. For those of us who have similarly spent time as organizers, the book feels like an anthropological field trip into the past.

It is tempting to harness “Civilization and Its Discontents” as a guide to our contemporary political morass, but doing so may obscure its most valuable message.

“The Fifties,” by James R. Gaines, a former managing editor of Time, People and Life, reminds us that a trip in time to much of America then would resemble “The Handmaid’s Tale” more than “Ozzie and Harriet.”

The results of the 2020 Democratic primaries suggest the limits of a left strategy for power starting at, rather than building toward, the presidency.

Angela Davis sketches out her life since the original publication 50 years ago, then as an activist and academic, self-critically assesses the book’s limitations and, most important, links its long-ago events to the recent Black Lives Matter protest

A Native American rebuilds her life after a prison sentence in this powerfully topical novel from the Pulitzer winner.

Dr. Joachim Mwami, a retired professor of sociology at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, began translating Capital into Kiswahili, the language spoken by roughly 100 million people across East Africa.

This too-little-knows treatise by Martin Luther King Jr.'s favorite teacher was written in Germany, notes reviewer McManus, as the Nazis were transitioning "from a threatening political movement to a lethal political dictatorship."