A Million Quiet Revolutions

Robin Gow's A Million Quiet Revolutions is a modern love story, told in verse, about two teenaged trans boys who name themselves after two Revolutionary War soldiers. A lyrical, aching young adult romance perfect for fans of The Poet X, Darius the Great is Not Okay, and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Universe. For as long as they can remember, Aaron and Oliver have only ever had each other. In a small town with few queer teenagers, let alone young trans men, they’ve shared milestones like coming out as trans, buying the right binders—and falling for each other. But just as their relationship has started to blossom, Aaron moves away. Feeling adrift, separated from the one person who understands them, they seek solace in digging deep into the annals of America’s past. When they discover the story of two Revolutionary War soldiers who they believe to have been trans man in love, they’re inspired to pay tribute to these soldiers by adopting their names—Aaron and Oliver. As they learn, they delve further into unwritten queer stories, and they discover the transformative power of reclaiming one’s place in history. Further reading on trans history is included in backmatter.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • An “elegantly argued and exuberantly narrated” (The New York Times Book Review) look at the building of social movements—from the 1600s to the present—and how current technology is undermining them “A bravura work of scholarship and reporting, featuring amazing individuals and dramatic events from seventeenth-century France to Rome, Moscow, Cairo, and contemporary Minneapolis.”—Louis Menand, author of The Free World We tend to think of revolutions as loud: frustrations and demands shouted in the streets. But the ideas fueling them have traditionally been conceived in much quieter spaces, in the small, secluded corners where a vanguard can whisper among themselves, imagine alternate realities, and deliberate about how to achieve their goals. This extraordinary book is a search for those spaces, over centuries and across continents, and a warning that—in a world dominated by social media—they might soon go extinct. Gal Beckerman, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, takes us back to the seventeenth century, to the correspondence that jump-started the scientific revolution, and then forward through time to examine engines of social change: the petitions that secured the right to vote in 1830s Britain, the zines that gave voice to women’s rage in the early 1990s, and even the messaging apps used by epidemiologists fighting the pandemic in the shadow of an inept administration. In each case, Beckerman shows that our most defining social movements—from decolonization to feminism—were formed in quiet, closed networks that allowed a small group to incubate their ideas before broadcasting them widely. But Facebook and Twitter are replacing these productive, private spaces, to the detriment of activists around the world. Why did the Arab Spring fall apart? Why did Occupy Wall Street never gain traction? Has Black Lives Matter lived up to its full potential? Beckerman reveals what this new social media ecosystem lacks—everything from patience to focus—and offers a recipe for growing radical ideas again. Lyrical and profound, The Quiet Before looks to the past to help us imagine a different future.

By the critically praised author of A Million Quiet Revolutions, this YA contemporary sapphic romance told in verse is about a bisexual teen girl who falls in and out of love over the course of one fateful summer. It’s a few months before senior year and Claire Kemp, a closeted bisexual, is finally starting to admit she might be falling in love with her best friend, Sophia, who she’s known since they were four. Trying to pay off the fine from the crash that totals Lars, her beloved car, Claire takes a job at the local nursing home up the street from her house. There she meets Lena, an eighty-eight-year-old lesbian woman who tells her stories about what it was like growing up gay in the 1950s and ’60s. As Claire spends more time with Lena and grows more confident of her identity, another girl, Pen, comes into the picture, and Claire is caught between two loves–one familiar and well-worn, the other new and untested.

This book prescribes rapid revolution in principal sectors of this African economy through radical paradigm changes. And the resultant comprehensive transformation will guarantee significantly higher productivities and double digit annual economic growth. Included in this paradigm shift is the joint reindustrialization of the African economy and the US ailing industries via a new Strategic trans-Atlantic Alliance modeled on the balanced Euro-US cooperation after World War II. But it first takes readers through a thorough evaluation of the familiar subject - corruption - which haunts Nigeria, the principal economy in the continent. The fundamental difference with other texts on the subject is that this book identifies the most debilitating variant of that corruption. That variant causes massive capital flight from a post-colonial "soft economy" that is neither capitalist nor socialist. The Nigerian corruption thrives on the native Philosophy of Commission hardened by intractable "tribalism" that coagulated and ossified with the imports substitution pattern preferred by European firms since independence. The book then proceeds to earn its priced revolutionary credential by inventing very novel scientific methods that will skillfully turn this insidious source of structural rigidity and arrested development into a force for economic growth. A new apex political leadership culture is recommended and to be fortified with a unifying lingua franca. An inter-ethnic marriage melting-pot is advised for intensified nigerianization of Nigerian youths at birth. Spiritual diversity is envisaged to significantly diminish religious intolerance and sectarian violence. Modern bureaucracy and inward-looking tourism are reformulated to reduce effervescent insecurity and minimize capital flight. The resultant economic stability will enlarge domestic/foreign investment inflow; and will reverse the current dis-industrialization, and massive job loss, and the conditions of under-full employment. Technological Functionalism, Economic pan-Africanism, and the Alternative Policy of Inputs Substitution are among the several brand new blueprints that this book offers for the extensive transformation of Africa's economy into the robust emerging economy that will rival its counterparts in India and China in the immediate future.

How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.

The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that capture history in the making, written by an author who was witness to some of the most remarkable moments that marked the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Timothy Garton Ash was there in Warsaw, on 4 June, when the communist government was humiliated by Solidarity in the first semi-free elections since the Second World War. He was there in Budapest, twelve days later, when Imre Nagy - thirty-one years after his execution - was finally given his proper funeral. He was there in Berlin, as the Wall opened. And most remarkable of all, he was there in Prague, in the back rooms of the Magic Lantern theatre, with Václav Havel and the members of Civic Forum, as they made their 'Velvet Revolution'.