Making Trouble

Robert Manne has twice been voted Australia's leading public intellectual. This book will show you why. Making Trouble takes aim at the new Australian complacency. This is a book that will enlighten and challenge, as it traces the ideas and events that have recently changed the nation. It covers much ground - from Howard to Gillard by way of Rudd, from Victoria's bushfires to the Apology, from Wilfred Burchett to Julian Assange. Making Trouble also includes an exchange of letters with Tony Abbott, critical appraisals of the 'insider' Paul Kelly and the 'outsider' Mark Latham, an insightful discussion of the political and moral issues surrounding climate change, appreciations of W.E.H. Stanner and Primo Levi, a reflection on ways of remembering the Holocaust, and incisive and original essays about the question of reconciliation and the treatment of asylum seekers. As this eloquent and important book shows, no one in Australia makes a better argument than Robert Manne.

Making hacks into reality. It engages matter in ways that trespass the boundaries between the civic realm and the state-assigned laws. Even with primitive tools and skills, designing and making can break open and repurpose arrangements of power. The proof is that some crafts are so controversial-lock-picking, moonshining, shoplifting, smuggling, sabotage-that they need to be controlled or even outlawed. When designers and makers touch on these contested realms, they run into trouble. This highly original book explores how the material power of design and making can challenge arrangements of agency and domination. Unpacking a series of conflicting cases-from illegal making to the strategic and civic use of crafts to manifest radical alternatives to the current order-it shows how designers and makers can use even basic tools to work towards more.

What happens when angry young rebels become wary older women, ageing in a leaner, meaner time: a time which exalts only the 'new', in a ruling orthodoxy daily disparaging all it portrays as the 'old'? Delving into her own life and those of others who left their mark on it, Lynne Segal tracks through time to consider her generation of female dreamers, what formed them, how they left their mark on the world, where they are now in times when pessimism seems never far from what remains of public life. Searching for answers, she studies her family history, sexual awakening, ethnic belonging, as well as the peculiarities of the time and place that shaped her own political journeys, with all their urgency, significance, pleasures and absurdities.

Fair trade jewellery has been around for a while - but while those crafting it worked under Fair Trade principles, the gold, silver and precious stones they were using came from some very murky places. Small scale mining is the second biggest global employer, and many of those mines pay a pittance, forcing their workers to labour long hours in dirty and dangerous conditions - for a pittance. Informed by those in the jewellery trade that this would never change, Greg Valerio set out to prove them wrong. Fairly traded gold is now available in the UK, although the battle continues for other metals and products.

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices. The Chthulucene, Haraway explains, requires sym-poiesis, or making-with, rather than auto-poiesis, or self-making. Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures. Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF—string figures, science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, so far—Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway's reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time.

Power in the making -- State metaxu -- Making matters -- Making agency -- Doing and sitting -- Recursive matters -- Strategic objectiles -- Material counter-intelligence -- Brewing dissent -- Designing back -- Trouble making and counter-crafts -- Making it simple.

From Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood for more than a decade, daughter of the late Ann Richards, featured speaker at the Women’s March on Washington, and “the heroine of the resistance” (Vogue), comes “an enthralling memoir” (Booklist, starred review) filled with “practical advice and inspiration for aspiring leaders everywhere” (Hillary Rodham Clinton). Cecile Richards has been an activist since she was taken to the principal’s office in seventh grade for wearing an armband in protest of the Vietnam War. Richards had an extraordinary childhood in ultra-conservative Texas, where her civil rights attorney father and activist mother taught their kids to be troublemakers. She had a front-row seat to observe the rise of women in American politics and watched her mother, Ann, transform from a housewife to an electrifying force in the Democratic party. As a young woman, Richards worked as a labor organizer alongside women earning minimum wage, and learned that those in power don’t give it up without a fight. She experienced first-hand the misogyny, sexism, fake news, and the ever-looming threat of violence that constantly confront women who challenge authority. Now, after years of advocacy, resistance, and progressive leadership, she shares her “truly inspiring” (Redbook) story for the first time—from the joy and heartbreak of activism to the challenges of raising kids, having a life, and making change, all the while garnering a reputation as “the most badass feminist EVER” (Teen Vogue). In the “powerful and infinitely readable” (Gloria Steinem) Make Trouble, Richards reflects on the people and lessons that have gotten her through good times and bad, and encourages the rest of us to take risks, make mistakes, and make trouble along the way.

Want more free books like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. Make Trouble is the story of maverick and activist Cecile Richards, who lives by the mantra, “If you want to make change, you have to make trouble!” Her memoir explores the origins of this mantra, which originated in her childhood, and the struggles and triumphs which developed along the way as she put it into practice. Make Trouble also illustrates how Cecile’s success can be emulated by future activists seeking to making the world a better place and provides a comprehensive guide to Cecile’s tips for success.