Politics

KGB Man

by Cecil Kuhne; read by Mike Chamberlain

A thin, balding, and reclusive middle-aged Russian by the name of Rudolf Ivanovich Abel was one of the Soviet Union's most renowned spies during the Cold War of the 1950s . . . . until his cover was blown by an incompetent colleague who wanted to defect to the United States. This is the full account of Abel's espionage work, his dramatic apprehension, his eventual conviction and its affirmation by the United States Supreme Court, and finally, his surprising release back to Russia. Learn More

How Data Happened

by Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones; read by Eric Jason Martin

A sweeping history of data and its technical, political, and ethical impact on our world. Learn More

The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover

by Lerone A. Martin; read by Langston Darby

The shocking untold story of how the FBI partnered with white evangelicals to champion a vision of America as a white Christian nation. Learn More

Cold Peace

by Michael W. Doyle; read by Paul Heitsch

An urgent examination of the world barreling toward a new Cold War. Learn More

Spying on the Reich

by R. T. Howard; read by Julian Elfer

Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished British, French, German, Danish, and Czech archival sources, Spying on the Reich tells the story of Germany and its rearmament in the 1920s and 1930s; its relations with foreign governments and their intelligence services; and the relations and rivalries between Western governments, seen through the prism of the cooperation, or lack of it, between their spy agencies. Learn More

Confronting Saddam Hussein

by Melvyn P. Leffler; read by Christopher P. Brown

A vivid portrayal of what drove George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003—an outcome that was in no way predetermined. Learn More

At the Frontier of God's Empire

by Ji Li; read by Kathleen Li

At the Frontier of God's Empire: A Missionary Odyssey in Modern China tells the remarkable story of Alfred Marie Caubrière (1876–1948). Learn More

A Legacy of Discrimination

by Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone; read by Malcolm Hillgartner

A timely defense of affirmative action policies that offers a more nuanced understanding of how centuries of invidious racism, discrimination, and segregation in the United States led to and justifies such policies from both a moral and constitutional perspective. Learn More

Democracy

by Jason Brennan; read by Jonathan Todd Ross

Democracy: A Guided Tour gives listeners a crash course on the evolution of the idea of democracy, how it has been and is currently practiced, and how we might think about it as we head into a new chapter in its story. Learn More

Buried Treasures

by Jack Zipes; read by Stephen Bowlby

Fascinating profiles of modern writers and artists who tapped the political potential of fairy tales. Learn More

The Point of No Return

by Thomas Byrne Edsall; read by Mike Chamberlain

After Donald Trump's rise to power, after the 2020 presidential election, after January 6, is American politics past the point of no return? New York Times columnist and political reporter Thomas Byrne Edsall fears that the country may be headed over a cliff, arguing that the election of Donald Trump was the most serious threat to the American political system since the Civil War. Learn More

Four Battlegrounds

by Paul Scharre; read by Steve Marvel

Next Big Idea Club's Must-Read Books

An award-winning defense expert tells the story of today’s great power rivalry―the struggle to control artificial intelligence. Learn More

To Walk the Earth Again

by Christopher Trigg; read by Mike Cooper

The Protestant conviction that believers would rise again, in bodily form, after death, shaped their attitudes towards personal and religious identity, community, empire, progress, race, and the environment. In To Walk the Earth Again Christopher Trigg explores the political dimension of Anglo-American Protestant writing about the future resurrection of the dead, examining texts written between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Learn More

Against the World

by Tara Zahra; read by Natasha Soudek

A brilliant, eye-opening work of history that speaks volumes about today's battles over international trade, immigration, public health, and global inequality. Learn More

The Making of Black Lives Matter

by Christopher J. Lebron; read by Diontae Black

A condensed and accessible intellectual history that traces the genesis of the ideas that have built into the #BlackLivesMatter movement in a bid to help us make sense of the emotions, demands, and arguments of present-day activists and public thinkers. Learn More