[Publication date: September 15, 2026]
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A defining and uncompromising memoir from Super Bowl quarterback and renowned civil rights activist, Colin Kaepernick.
“A candid, observant, generous chronicle of his development as an elite, suddenly dispensable NFL quarterback and also of the relentless, high-profile civil rights warrior he's become.”
―Booklist Starred Review
On September 1, 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during “The Star Spangled Banner,” but the world never fully understood the whole story. Not the “why” or the cost of his courage. That story begins in Turlock, California, where Kaepernick, a Black kid adopted into a white family, navigated constant resistance to His Blackness and sense of self. Sports became his refuge and his proving ground, where his talent could not be questioned. The extraordinary result? A quarterback whose arm and instincts would carry him to the Super Bowl and into history books. But with success came an education he hadn’t anticipated.In the fraught world of sports politics, he saw the hidden powerhouses pulling the strings. Steeled with the readings of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Huey P. Newton, and Angela Davis, he saw in the NFL, in Turlock, in the repeated, unpunished police killings of Black and Brown Americans, an undeniable truth revealed: this was not someone else’s fight. It was his. It is ours.When Kaepernick knelt, the NFL blackballed him. But in the ten years since, the questions his protest raise have not gone away. In The Perilous Fight, Kaepernick delivers his story with the same unflinching conviction that defined his most-watched moment, a single act of protest that changed American sports and culture forever. And ultimately, it is a story about the future we are all still fighting to build.
REVIEWS:
“A candid, observant, generous chronicle of his development as an elite, suddenly dispensable NFL quarterback and also of the relentless, high-profile civil rights warrior he’s become. Kaepernick’s painful truths―especially barbed about the racism he’s experienced within the NFL but also in the outside world―find their mark here.”―Booklist Starred Review
"An inspiring story of sticking to one’s values no matter the costs."―Publishers Weekly
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Colin Kaepernick is a Super Bowl quarterback who holds the all-time NFL record for most rushing yards in a game by a quarterback. He is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, and civil rights activist. He is the founder of the Know Your Rights Camp, Kaepernick Media (Formerly Ra Vision Media), and Kaepernick Publishing, and Lumi Story AI. He has been awarded Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award, the Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, the ACLU Ralph Ellison Award for Defenders of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the Arts, Business, Science, and Sports, the ACLU Eason Monroe Courageous Advocate Award, and numerous others for his work in athletics and advocacy. His show, Colin in Black and White, co-produced by Ava DuVernay, has won two NAACP Awards, his Nike "Dream Crazy" has won an Emmy, and he's been featured in GQ, Men's Health, TIME, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, New York Times, the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and many more.
Breaking ICE: Community Defense against State Terror and MAGA Fascism
by Sonali Kolhatka
Seven Stories Press, 2026
[Publication date: September 15, 2026]
A gripping, on-the-ground account of the growing movement against state violence, featuring interviews with those on the frontlines of the fight for immigrant justice and what it means to belong.
Features a foreword by Salvadoran American journalist and author Roberto Lovato.
A war is being waged on the streets of the United States of America: MAGA’s violent anti-immigration regime is being challenged by a growing national movement dedicated to protecting communities and reversing racist and authoritarian policies. In Breaking ICE, award-winning journalist Sonali Kolhatkar presents her conversations with over a dozen movement organizers, lawyers, artists, labor leaders, and scholars on the frontlines of the fight. Through their courageous stories, Kolhatkar documents the impact of ICE violence, workplace raids, mass surveillance, and intimidation tactics, and how communities from Maine to California are organizing for a better world. Our present actions will not only determine the nature of American demographics from here on out, but also whether the future of the United States will look like an open multiracial democracy or a fascist police state.
Features conversations with: Pablo Alvarado, Nikki Marín Baena, Eduardo Delgado, Adela de la Torre, Shannon Gibney, Ron Gochez, David Huerta, Ibram X. Kendi, Robin D. G. Kelley, Josefina Lopez, Leonardo Martinez, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Favianna Rodriguez, Luis Rodriguez, Ruben Torres, Richard Wallace, Yohuru Williams, and Kent Wong. Foreword by Roberto Lovato
REVIEWS:
“An uplifting collection of influential voices fighting for democracy.” —Publishers Weekly
“Breaking ICE provides us with much-needed lessons from activist warriors fighting against MAGA'S assault on immigrants. Each story serves as a powerful reminder of why building deep solidarity is our best weapon in the fight for justice. This book helps us transform our fears into collective resilience. I look forward to sharing Breaking ICE with my students, community members, and all those in the struggle today.” —Victor Narro, project director and professor of Labor Studies, UCLA Labor Center
“If you want to know what we mean by ‘Abolish ICE,’ read this book. Journalist Sonali Kolhatkar combines the real-world experiences of activists currently fighting state terror with the long-term vision of academics and historians who study movements. These uniquely curated voices are not just reflections of the foremost battle of our time, but inspire on-going action, solidarity, and a roadmap rooted in justice for immigrant families and people of color.” —Erika Andiola, political director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network
“Sonali Kolhatkar's Breaking ICE is a vital road map of the community defense efforts emerging across the country that the MAGA fascists, masked federal thugs, and techno-oligarchs don't want us to see. Essential reporting from the front lines of resistance.” —Maximillian Alvarez, editor-in-chief and co-executive director of The Real News Network
“In Breaking ICE, Sonali Kolhatkar spotlights the everyday heroes standing up to injustice, offering a clear roadmap for the rest of us. It is an essential reminder of what communities can achieve when they organize. This book will inspire you to turn your empathy into action.” —Reyna Grande, author of The Distance Between Us
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
SONALI KOLHATKAR is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the host of Rising Up With Sonali, a weekly television and radio program that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica Radio stations and affiliates around the United States. She is also the author of Talking About Abolition: A Police Free World Is Possible and Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice. She has won numerous awards, including Best TV Anchor and Best National Political Commentary from the LA Press Club, and has been nominated for Best Radio Anchor four years in a row.
The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn
by Dave Zirin
Dutton, 2026
[Publication date: August 4, 2026]
A biography of iconic radical historian Howard Zinn, examining his life and work as a progressive icon and thought leader through the story of the times that shaped him as well as the United States of America.
From The Nation magazine columnist and New York Times bestselling author Dave Zirin, The People's Historian is a deeply researched biography of Howard Zinn, the beloved author of the classic national bestseller with more than four million copies sold, A People's History of the United States.
The People’s Historian shows Zinn’s presence on the great canvases of the 20th century: from the Depression to World War II to the Civil Rights Movement to the war in Vietnam all the way until his death in 2010. With intimately researched stories from Zinn’s life and career, such as the way Atlanta's small Spelman College, where Zinn taught as a young professor, helped launch the Civil Rights Movement, Zinn's work traveling to Hanoi to engineer the release of POWs, and his continuing influence in the emerging Democratic Socialist movement, The People’s Historian explores Zinn’s past while also demonstrating how his 75 years of political engagement with the social struggles of his time informs our perilous present.
With input from family and access to Zinn's personal papers, The People's Historian paints a picture of the man behind A People's History, examining his work and legacy in the broader context of the United States.
REVIEWS:
"In 'The People’s Historian,' Zirin, who knew and worked with Zinn in his last years, does a lively job of portraying the historian’s deeply engaged life." —The New York Times
"[An] inspirational manual for contemporary endurance" —Los Angeles Review of Books
"This is a lovely and inspiring biography about a lovely and inspiring man. Zinn and Zirin belong together, so it’s fitting that they’ll be rubbing shoulders on so many alphabetized bookshelves for years to come." —The Progressive
"The life of the hugely influential ‘people’s historian’ is explored in a wide-ranging new book that brings in everything from wars to civil rights to Matt Damon." —The Guardian
"Zirin’s lively biography of this activist should remind everyone that history isn’t just about facts and figures but also context and compassion." —Los Angeles Times
"The People’s Historian is an absorbing, detailed, and warm remembrance of a controversial scholar who believed in “the potential for ordinary people to do extraordinary things.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books
"Passionate, inspiring and textured, The People’s Historian contains riches on every page."
—BookPage (Starred review)
"Dave Zirin, with the cooperation of Zinn's family, will for the first time reveal the fascinating life of the man behind one of the most impactful history books ever written, who endeavored to change the narrative of who holds the power, and how people can reclaim it." —Amazon Book Review (Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2026)
"A wonderful portrait of a historian who reshaped America’s understanding of its potential for change." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Zirin enriches the narrative with interviews and anecdotes from people close to Zinn while also providing the historical context that shaped his beliefs and actions....The People’s Historian demonstrates that activism is ongoing." —Booklist
"A welcome exploration of the man behind a classic book, one who never minded irking the opposition." —Kirkus
“Dave Zirin’s biography of Howard Zinn, the great people’s intellectual, is a triumph…a measured, finely tuned narrative of an undeniably sweet but complicated scholar who transformed how we Americans see ourselves” —Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of American Prometheus
“David Zirin - our premier sports historian and cultural critic - has written a brilliant and heartfelt book on the great Howard Zinn - our premier peoples’ historian and social critic! In these grim and dim times, we so badly need Zinn’s genuine witness of deep humanity and prophetic voice of hope and compassion!” —Dr. Cornel West, New York Times bestselling author of Democracy Matters
“In this compelling portrait of the indomitable Howard Zinn, Dave Zirin offers a definitive account of the nation’s most influential radical historian… Arriving at an urgent moment, this book reminds us that Howard Zinn still has much to teach about resisting the latest threats to American democracy." —Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of #From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation
“Dave Zirin always comes on time because he never stops writing beautiful prose pointed at injustice. The People's Historian shook free an understanding of Zinn I'd never felt, and made me know that we are so, so prepared to live and fight in 2026.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir
“The People’s Historian is a rousing, defiant portrait of an unapologetic progressive, his battles, and adversaries written in the quintessential Zinn spirit, Zirin standing up while others are checking out.” —Howard Bryant, author of Kings and Pawns, Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America
"There are rare moments when the right biographer tells the story of an epic figure. This is one of them. Dave Zirin’s masterful recounting of the life of Howard Zinn is rich in political detail and ideological insight, yet delightfully warm and compelling in its storytelling. Zirin has given us an exceptional biography of the people’s historian. —John Nichols, New York Times bestselling author of It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism
“Howard Zinn spoke truth to power… In Dave Zirin, Zinn now has the right biographer: Zirin has given us a book that is clear-eyed and thoughtful and personal and full of levity. A clarion call we have never needed more than in the present moment.” —Jonathan Coleman, author of Long Way to Go: Black and White in America
"At a time when the teaching of history has become a flashpoint — with books banned, educators targeted, and honest accounts of power and resistance under attack — The People’s Historian offers a timely and deeply human portrait of a scholar who understood that making sense of the past was inseparable from the struggle to build a more just future." —Media Education Foundation
"[A] remarkable book." —Portside
"Dave Zirin... recounts Howard Zinn’s life (1922 to 2010) with vigor and sympathy in his new biography, The People’s Historian." —Jewish Book Council
"Zirin provides a heavily researched and carefully composed life story of a legendary historian whose scholarship remains relevant in this time of historical erasure." —The Emancipator
"Dave Zirin, everyone’s favorite lefty sports writer, is the perfect choice to present a life of everyone’s favorite lefty historian, the late, great Howard Zinn." —Lithub
"The People’s Historian is not a biography of a great man who made history; it’s a biography of a man who encouraged the people to make history... Zirin, in his always erudite and always conversational fashion, brings that life alive, not just to bear witness, but to remind today’s readers and the readers of tomorrow that it’s people like them who make the history Howard Zinn wrote about." —CounterPunch
"In The People’s Historian, Zirin moves beyond the public figure to give readers a fuller, more intimate picture of Zinn as a historian, teacher, activist, and public intellectual. Drawing on extensive research, Zinn’s personal papers, and the cooperation of Zinn’s family, he follows Zinn’s life across some of the defining conflicts and movements of modern U.S. history, from the Depression and World War II to the Black freedom struggle, the Vietnam era, and the decades of activism and debate that followed."
—Media Education Foundation
"This is biography as intellectual history: the story of a man who changed not merely what Americans knew, but the position from which they looked." —Dandelion ChandelierABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation magazine, their first sports editor in 160 years of existence. The author of eleven books on the politics of sports, including most recently The Kaepernick Effect and the NAACP Image Award nominated The John Carlos Story, Zirin has also worked as an advisor for filmmakers and documentarians such as Ang Lee and Ken Burns. Named one of UTNE Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Zirin has been a frequent guest on ESPN, MSNBC, and CNN. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
"A Jungle of Terrible Odors"
The Brooklyn of Howard Zinn's youth was a place of hardscrabble poverty, crowded tenements, rats, and roaches. Zinn was never nostalgic about being raised poor. With a faraway look, his trademark smile falling, he once said, "The roaches. Never absent, where we lived. We'd come home and they'd be all over the kitchen table and scatter when we turned on the light. I never got used to them." The poverty of his youth was always there in the back of his mind, especially when he was confronted with narratives about how just "working harder" would have solved all the problems his family faced. He once wrote, "I always feel some rage when I hear the voice of the arrogant and affluent: we have a wonderful system; if you work hard, you will make it. How hard my parents worked. How brave they were just to keep four sons alive in the cold-water tenements of Brooklyn."
Watercolored memories were also difficult to conjure because the Brooklyn of Zinn's 1922 birth was in a state of dirty, cacophonous, rapidly changing industrialization. By the early 1920s, it had recently transformed into one of the top manufacturing hubs in the country. Brooklyn's largest industry, sugar refining, produced more than half the sugar consumed in the United States. In addition, the borough had shipyards, slaughterhouses, and an archipelago of sweatshops. For countless waves of Jewish and Eastern European immigrants, this made Brooklyn a place where they could speak the language and be brought in by people from their villages or shtetls. The growth of jobs and absence of an explicitly legal Jim Crow also made it a stop on the Great Migration north by Black laborers and an early destination for the people of Puerto Rico ready to leave an indelible imprint on the city. Almost half of the people in Brooklyn had not in fact been born there. The work available in Brooklyn might have been arduous, but there was at this time, until the 1929 Great Depression, ample work to be found.
Then, when Zinn was two years old, a law was passed that would have kept his parents from even entering the United States, the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act. This bill was lobbied for by an increasingly vocal and visible Ku Klux Klan, and when President Coolidge signed it, he used a widely known Klan phrase, "America for Americans." It was passed with more than 80 percent of Congress fulsomely voting in the affirmative. The foundations of today's barbaric immigration system, from ICE raids to the label "illegal alien," come from this bill. The bill was also supported by the segregated American Federation of Labor making common cause with the Klan. It was most of all a naked attack on the people of Asian descent already in the United States who had for decades played a critical role in constructing the nation's infrastructure, often paying with their lives (think of the racist phrase "not a Chinaman's chance," which originated in the idea that their high rates of deaths while building the railroads was a mockable inevitability). Not only was their path to citizenship stymied, but the bill invoked a total barring of Chinese immigration. It also dramatically prioritized Western and Northern European Christian immigrants, shutting out the Jews of Southern and Eastern Europe, along with people from Italy. The Jews turned away after 1924 either entered the country illegally or were sent back. In the Jewish community, this law was applied most infamously in 1939 when a boatload of Jewish political refugees on the SS St. Louis was turned away and returned home, where they were killed in Nazi concentration camps. They were described by one congressman as "hordes of inferior stock." Jews were "filthy, un-American, and often dangerous in their habits." Today's rhetoric of immigrants "poisoning our blood" and the way that white Afrikaners have been welcomed to emigrate while non-white immigrants have been criminalized have roots in the law and rhetoric of 1920s America.
The Zinns were part of a massive wave of those early Jewish immigrants who were able to enter legally before 1924. The family on his mother's side, like so many Eastern European Jewish families came over in stages. In 1909 at the age of fifteen, Zinn's mother, Jenny Rabinowitz, traveled from the Siberian shtetl of Irkutsk to join her father and grandmother. They lived in the back of a barbershop in what was then the decidedly untrendy land of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Jenny couldn't go to school because she had to support her family by working as a seamstress, sewing eleven hours a day and six days a week before she met Eddie Zinn and they started a family. Even with four sons, she never stopped working. It was a hard life, but both Jenny and Eddie made Brooklyn their new home, claiming the mantle of "American" from a country that did not want them there.
Quickly, that Dutch word "Brooklyn" and Jews became practically synonymous. By 1920, almost one-third of New York City was Jewish, the majority calling Brooklyn home. The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 had made the area a magnet for immigrants who could live in Brooklyn tenements, but-if employment was scarce in the sugar factories and sweatshops-find work in Manhattan. In 1920, the establishment of a new Brooklyn-Manhattan subway line made the borough even more attractive. Brooklyn became less the new-world shtetl and more a jumping-off point to the wonders of "the city." Howard Zinn's family fit this narrative: arriving with next to nothing, working hard, and, if nothing else, relieved that there was work to be done and an unleaking roof over their heads.
Fittingly, as Brooklyn immigrant labor, Eddie Zinn and Jenny Rabinowitz met while working at the same factory and married, creating a life that had them hopping from cramped apartment to apartment, one step ahead of angry landlords and bill collectors. As Zinn remembered. "I lived in all of Brooklyn's best slums." When the Depression hit, Eddie, a long way from the Austria-Hungary of his youth, worked as a ditchdigger and window cleaner. Jenny, never looking backward after a childhood in Siberia, took odd jobs and did piecework whenever possible. Later, Eddie Zinn found more stability in the waiters' union, working banquets, weddings, and Bar Mitzvahs. Sometimes he'd bring his impossibly tall eldest son to take some shifts with him, although finding a uniform that could make it to his ankles and wrists was never an easy task. "I hated every moment of it," recalled Zinn. "The ill-fitting waiters' tuxedo borrowed from my father on my lanky body; the sleeves absurdly short. My father was five-foot-five and I was already a six footer."
Howard held an early interest in reading despite growing up without books. It started when he saw a torn volume littering the street like trash and officially started the Zinn family library. It was Tarzan and the Jewels of Opal. "There were no books in our house," Zinn recalled. "[My parents] knew little about politics, except that Franklin Roosevelt was a good man because he helped the poor."
Jenny and Eddie, however, seeing that thirst for learning, aimed to quench it. Although they had never heard of Charles Dickens, the Zinns would mail a coupon with a dime each month to the New York Post so their son could read one of what would ultimately be twenty volumes of Dickens' complete works. The family library required an expansion. Reading Dickens, particularly his writings on social class, connected with the young Howard Zinn. Even with the London settings, he saw in Dickens' politics a way to understand the world. He quickly moved on to other socially conscious writings like The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, a book he would return to and teach throughout his life. When The Jungle is remembered today, it is for its influence in inspiring federal legislation over the country's slaughterhouses. Descriptions in The Jungle of the killing floor brought even the stouthearted to nausea. The response to Sinclair's book is why we have the Food and Drug Administration. But from The Jungle's publication in 1905 and its revival in popularity during the Great Depression, readers were engaging in text more radical than just a treatise on food preparation.
In The Jungle Zinn avidly read lines like "Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars."
It is not difficult to imagine this having a profound effect on the young teen known to all as "Howie." In particular, the line in The Jungle where Sinclair writes, "The great corporation which employed you lied to you and lied to the whole country-from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie." This sounds extremely similar to Zinn's maxim about power: "Governments lie all the time. . . . If they told people the truth they wouldn't last very long."
This novel was followed by Richard Wright's short stories and books about racism and class, like Uncle Tom's Children and Native Son, which caused the young Zinn to see from an early age "race and class oppression as intertwined." These writings also pushed Zinn to think about the Black people who now lived in Brooklyn in "their own" neighborhoods. "Black people lived under the Myrtle Avenue El," he recalled. . . . "They lived in darkness all the time. Then they left their living place during the day to go to work as janitors or whatever menial jobs in the white neighborhoods. It was very much like Johannesburg, South Africa. Which many, many years later I visited, and you could see the blacks lived in their little black shanty towns and come into Johannesburg to work during the day and then go back to their little black townships at night. And that's the way it was in Brooklyn."
Between World War I and the 1930s, thousands of Southern Black individuals and families filtered into Brooklyn's neighborhoods. They were among the hundreds of thousands who moved to Northern cities during the aforementioned Great Migration, and by 1930, more than 60 percent of the African Americans in Brooklyn had been born outside the borough. When the A train was extended from Harlem to Brooklyn in 1936, thousands of African Americans left Harlem in search of better lives and less expensive housing.
At Thomas Jefferson High School, Zinn joined a creative writing program, and his intelligence caught the eye of the school's principal, Elias Lieberman. In addition to being an esteemed educator, Lieberman was a Jewish immigrant who had come to this country at the age of seven from St. Petersburg, Russia. He was also an esteemed poet-nicknamed the Poet Principal-and the author of the 1916 poem "I Am an American." There is certainly irony in Lieberman heading Zinn's high school and penning a patriotic opus, with verses like:
"See," said my father, pointing to the flag that fluttered near,
"That flag of stars and stripes is yours;
It is the emblem of the promised land.
It means, my son, the hope of humanity.
Live for it-die for it!"
One of Zinn's favorite poems that he referenced often was Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again," which can be read as a critique of Lieberman's work with lines like:
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!
Zinn then moved to what would become his lifetime love: the use of history as a guide to action. He read about fascism in Europe, particularly journalist George Seldes' Sawdust Caesar and The Brown Book of Hitler Terror. These books and the intensifying Brooklyn poverty of the Great Depression pushed Zinn toward activism and sent him on a journey looking for answers as to why poverty, racism, and fascism had to exist at all. He began engaging in debates with the young communists he would see "among the basketball players and street talkers" selling newspapers and organizing Depression-era campaigns like the "unemployed councils" of New York City. Tall for his times, Zinn played basketball with a sweet set shot (according to him), so the interaction was regular. While never a member of the Communist Party (despite the fervent wishes of his detractors), Zinn sought their members out to better understand the world and find ways to be part of what appeared to him to be an increasingly growing revolt against Depression-era poverty.
He was invited to attend a demonstration in Union Square, a peaceful gathering against fascism and war. Those aims were dashed when mounted police charged the crowd. A bewildered and frozen Zinn took a hit on the side of the head and was concussed, losing consciousness. This was a major turning point. He later spoke about the experience, saying,
"Exactly at 10:00, banners unfurled, people started chanting. It was fantastic. So my friend and I relieved two women holding a banner and then we heard sirens. And before I knew it, cops with clubs began beating the demonstrators. I was spun around and got hit on the side of my head. I was out. I woke up in a doorway. The demonstration was being scattered. And it was an absolute shocking experience because I had no idea the police would react like this to an innocent demonstration. That an innocent group of people could be perceived as that menacing. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country-not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black and brown people, but something rotten at the root. Since then, I've come to understand, we need not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society-cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dave ZirinDave Zirin was named one of the "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World" by The Utne Magazine. He writes about the politics of sports for the Nation magazine, and is their first sports writer in 150 years of existence as well as the Progressive, and a regular op-ed writer for the Los Angeles Times. . Zirin is also the host of the "Edge of Sports Podcast," and "The Collision with Etan Thomas and Dave Zirin" on WPFW in DC.53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy
Timothy W. Ryback
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2026[Publication date: September 1, 2026]
From internationally acclaimed historian Timothy W. Ryback, the chilling chronicle of how Adolf Hitler overturned a constitutional democracy in less than eight weeks
On September 25, 1930, Adolf Hitler appeared before Germany’s Supreme Court and outlined his plans to destroy the Weimar Republic through democratic means. The judge asked, “So, only through constitutional means?” Hitler replied, “Jawohl!”
Barely two years later, on January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed the fifteenth chancellor of the Weimar Republic. Within 53 days of that date, he had effected one of the most astonishing transformations in modern democracy, using the provisions of the Constitution to turn a democratic republic into an authoritarian state. Drawing from his 800-page political playbook, Mein Kampf, Hitler banned or neutered the print press and radio; purged the civil service and installed party loyalists; suspended civil liberties; compromised the courts; imposed Reich government control over the country’s seventeen federated states; slapped draconian tariffs on trading partners; co-opted, imprisoned, or drove political opponents into exile; assumed control over the central bank; and then compelled the Reichstag, the country’s legislative body, to pass an Enabling Act granting Hitler dictatorial power.
Charting the key events of those dramatic days in taut and compelling prose, Timothy W. Ryback evokes the raw political power and increasing inevitability of Hitler’s state capture, amid heroic efforts by journalists and social democrats to save the republic, underscoring the alarming observation in the introduction to Joseph Goebbels’ collected essays: “The big joke on democracy is that it provides its mortal enemies with the means to its own destruction.”
REVIEWS:
Praise for 53 Days:
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2026
“Historian Timothy W. Ryback shows how the Nazis used democratic means to destroy German democracy . . . To a remarkable degree, Ryback’s brisk narrative titrates the exact proportion of detail and context to enliven these moments and never dawdles over any single standoff; the book, which is a short 244 pages, really moves . . . He summons and summarizes details from the Nazi past that unmistakably rhyme with the present, leaving it to his discerning readers to make the connection.”—The New York Times
“In 53 Days, his brilliantly absorbing book about Hitler’s early weeks as chancellor, Timothy W. Ryback minutely examines his dismantlement of Weimar.”—The National Interest
“A straightforward narrative of the period . . . Ryback’s 53 Days makes no reference to contemporary politics. And yet certain echoes of the 1930s resonate so loudly that it is impossible not to hear them.”—The Atlantic
“In meticulous and telling detail, Ryback takes the reader through Hitler’s methods . . . It is foolish not to study and learn from the ways a person with the soul of a dictator can fracture a democracy. 53 Days is the essential blueprint in understanding how that can happen.”—Air Mail
“Essential reading for WWII history buffs . . . and anyone interested in the contemporary parallels.”—The Media Tourist
“Profoundly dizzying . . . Chilling . . . 53 Days teaches us, forcefully, that democracy is never anything we can take for granted.”—Washington Monthly
“Ryback’s narrative possesses an eerie verisimilitude in parallel with developments in the 21st century U.S. and reads like a warning of how democracy can provide the means for its own destruction . . . 53 Days is a breathless, cogent, and timely analysis of Hitler’s ascent to dictator.”—Shelf Awareness
“Incisive . . . a trenchant depiction of democracy as most vulnerable when its stewards are insufficiently committed.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Step by step, the book recounts the process by which Hitler used the powers of his office to destroy German democracy. Ryback deftly manages what could have been an unwieldy narrative, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions about the book's relevance to current events.”—Booklist (starred review)
“A fluid account . . . A sobering study of how democracies can become dictatorships overnight.”—Kirkus Reviews
“This book offers a powerfully written, blow-by-blow account of how German democracy was dismantled from within. It is a chilling reminder of democracy’s fragility—and how easily we can lose it at the hands of our elected leaders.”—Steven Levitsky, New York Times bestselling coauthor of How Democracies Die and Tyranny of the Minority
“Timothy Ryback’s 53 Days is an utterly gripping and suspenseful account of how elected leaders can make use of a democracy to destroy a democracy. The vivid, eyewitness observations here are chilling: they reveal how astonished people can continue to be at their country’s authoritarian take-over, even as they try, with increasing desperation, to sound the alarm about it.”—Margaret Talbot, staff writer, The New Yorker
“The speed with which Hitler dismantled the structures of German democracy remains an astonishing, terrifying and instructive tale. Timothy Ryback’s riveting account, at once careful and brisk, dramatically reminds today’s friends of democracy how fragile self rule can become—and why defending it should be the first priority of all who believe in freedom, equality, and justice.”—E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Our Divided Political Heart
“The definitive anatomy of democratic collapse and a timely warning. Having watched Viktor Orbán methodically use the machinery of law to hollow out the rule of law in Hungary, I found Ryback's account viscerally familiar. 53 Days proves that our democracies are most endangered when constitutions, courts, and institutions are turned against the very freedoms they were designed to protect.”—David Koranyi, President of Action for Democracy and former National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Hungary
Praise for Takeover:
“Timothy W. Ryback’s choice to make his new book, Takeover . . . a specific chronicle of a single year, 1932, seems a wise, even an inspired one. Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election . . . Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in bright midafternoon light.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
“If you ever thought that history is only moved by big, sweeping forces, whether of economics or creed or nature itself, think again. In this riveting, intimate account of the final months in Hitler's rise to power, Tim Ryback makes it plain that simple luck, bald ambition and fallible human hearts can be drivers of earth-changing events.”—Max Rodenbeck, Berlin bureau chief, The Economist
“Ryback admirably capture[s] the shifting moods, political stances, and risk-taking as well as the speculations, uncertainties, and confusion of the political figures who did not know how the story he narrates would end . . . Ryback’s narrative and his portraits of major figures are riveting.”—New York Review of Books
“How does a flawed republic become something entirely different? We know how the Nazi regime ended, but think too little about how it began. This admirable account shows us how fragile and avoidable were those beginnings, and helps us to reflect upon our own predicaments.”—Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny
“An expert account of the dizzying months when Hitler solidified his power in Germany... A masterfully narrated story of how a democracy committed suicide, with lessons for today.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“[A] riveting blow-by-blow account of the six months leading up to Adolf Hitler’s January 1933 appointment as Germany’s chancellor . . . A dire and remarkably astute depiction of how fickle and contingent the forces of history can be.”—Publisher's Weekly, starred review
“That history is not as inevitable as most might believe forms an unsettling undertone throughout the book . . . Takeover is startlingly relevant history, well-wrought and splendidly researched, that reveals how democracies can die democratically.”—Shelf Awareness
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Timothy W. Ryback is director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. He has written on the legacies of national socialism for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. His books on Hitler, most recently Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power, have been translated into more than 20 languages. He and his wife live in Europe.
Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control
by Kelly Lytle Hernández
W. W. Norton & Company, 2026
[Publication date: September 22, 2026]
A revolutionary new history that exposes the "whites-only" roots of the American immigration regime.
In Racist by Design, award-winning historian Kelly Lytle Hernández reveals how generations of lawmakers and law enforcers built the American immigration system to encourage white immigrants while targeting nonwhite migrants for exclusion, punishment, and removal. The goal, often explicitly stated by the system’s architects, was to create a permanent caste of undocumented and criminalized workers to provide cheap labor for the American economy.
Many Americans’ understanding of the immigration system begins with the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late nineteenth century. Lytle Hernández expands that history by a full century, showing how the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s inspired not only America’s first immigration bans (to prevent news of a free Black republic from reaching our shores) but also its first refugee resettlement program (to welcome and support Haiti’s evicted enslavers.) She explains how Chinese Exclusion led the Supreme Court to disconnect immigration laws from the constitution. She reveals how eugenicists and Jim Crow segregationists built much of our current immigration regime as expressly "whites-only," and shows how during the Civil Rights Movement, Congress amended this system but never abolished it, leaving many of the regime’s racist rules and rituals intact today.
Lytle Hernández calls Racist by Design "an act of sabotage," a book that will expose the blueprints of the system, so it can be dismantled. A nuanced, concise, and brilliant work that will outrage and inflame readers, Racist by Design is a major work by one of our most important historians.
REVIEWS:
"It is tempting to see this enormous crackdown as a distortion of immigration enforcement, a system bent to authoritarian purposes by a president unusually willing to test its limits. UCLA historian Kelly Lytle Hernández’s new book, Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control, offers a more disturbing explanation: Trump did not have to build this apparatus. America built it for him."― Jimmy So, The New Republic
"In her latest, MacArthur genius Kelly Lytle Hernández does her part to sabotage the machine of immigration and the white nationalism and racial capitalism intentionally baked into its components. Expertly researched and accessibly written, Racist By Design is a book for our times. It’s this month’s #RequiredReading."― Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine
"[A] landmark examination of the racist roots of the American immigration system... a definitive and forceful call for reform."― Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Lytle Hernández’s narrative bursts with relevance… A disguised and convoluted history made decipherable and urgent."― Kirkus Reviews
"You can’t demolish something unless you know how it’s built. Kelly Lytle Hernández’s brilliant new book lays out a scathing blueprint to help us understand the key roles that racism and white supremacy have always played in our immigration system. As usual, Lytle Hernández gives us a history lesson that lives, breathes, and most importantly, fights back."― Jason De León, author of Soldiers and Kings
"At a moment when the punditry and politics of immigration so distresses the United States, award-winning historian Kelly Lytle Hernández makes it make sense. Racist by Design is a courageous call to conscience that encourages us to resist the forces of history and replace them with possibilities born of struggle."― Martha S. Jones, author of Birthright Citizens
"Based on original research and thinking, Kelly Lytle Hernández explains how America’s immigration law was founded on the racist premise that the country should be for white people. Black, Asian, and Latinx migrants and communities fought for the right to be in the U.S. and persisted in winning some reforms; but the hard truth is that the edifice remains. Lytle Hernández builds on a generation of immigration scholarship and takes it to another level. Important, accessible, and urgent."― Mae Ngai, author of The Chinese Question
"In Racist by Design, Kelly Lytle Hernández brings the same fire she has brought to her scholarship for twenty years, showing how white supremacy has shaped our immigration system. She details how that regime was built, brick by brick, law by law, decision by decision, through precedents, rules, enforcement, and operational protocols. But like anything built, this system can be unbuilt, and Lytle Hernandez gives us the blueprints."― Natalia Molina, author of The Other Immigrant Story
"Kelly Lytle Hernández is unparalleled at unearthing hidden histories of immigrant exclusion in the United States. Racist by Design reveals the depths of white supremacist policymaking and the creative resistance efforts that have challenged it. This illuminating and damning intervention in today’s immigration crisis narratives gives weight to the argument that there can be no migrant justice without racial justice."― Silky Shah, author of Unbuild Walls
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kelly Lytle Hernández is the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History at UCLA. She is a MacArthur "genius grant" recipient and the author of Racist by Design, Bad Mexicans, and several other award-winning books about race, immigration, policing, and the carceral state. She lives in Los Angeles.
The Steal: Four Right-Wing Hard-Liners, One Republican Presidency, and the Raid on America's Courts
by Alex Wagner
Flatiron Books, 2026
[Publication date: September 15, 2026]
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From celebrated news anchor, journalist, and host of Crooked Media's "Runaway Country," Alex Wagner, the wild and true story of how a group of right-wing raiders changed the American judiciary forever.
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was a sharp right turn for American governance. After decades on the fringes, the conservative right had risen to power, finally poised to fashion some of the country's most pressing issues in its image. Tax cuts, aggressive foreign policy, and law and order would soon become the cornerstones of Reagan's agenda. But, behind the scenes, a select group of administration officials and ideological allies had their eyes set on something much more valuable: an institution with the power to shape the country's legal, cultural and existential identity, long after any presidential term ended.
Ed Meese, a native Californian, former DA, and aide to Reagan from his days as governor, knew exactly what he had to do to seize the Supreme Court: get as many judges on the bench as possible, and make sure they were as conservative as he was on issues like abortion rights, taxes, and criminal justice. Working in parallel to achieve the same goal were a band of fellow true-believers: Paul Weyrich, the firebrand organizer; Joe Coors, the beer magnate whose fortune funded many of Weyrich’s efforts; and Robert Bork, the towering legal intellect of the right, and an important mentor to a few young law students starting a new organization called The Federalist Society. By the end of the decade, these men would change the face of the American judiciary forever. Told with a pitch-perfect blend of journalistic rigor and propulsive storytelling, The Steal takes readers into the closed-door meetings, public nomination hearings, and back rooms of American political power to reveal the true story behind one of the most significant moments in American history, and how it affects us to this day.
REVIEWS:
“This fascinating history will help readers better understand how history is reflected in current judicial decisions.” –Library Journal
“A penetrating look at how a political fringe makes itself mainstream through force of law.” –Kirkus Reviews
"The Steal answers the question that haunts American politics right now: How did we get here? Alex Wagner has written the origin story of the decades-long plot to capture the courts―from Berkeley in the sixties to the fall of Roe―and makes you understand it not as an inevitability, but as a choice, made by a small group of men, that most of us never saw coming. Riveting, meticulous, and infuriating in equal measure, The Steal is a book that everyone should read." ―Jon Favreau, New York Times bestselling author of Democracy or Else and co-founder of Crooked Media
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Alex Wagner is the host of the podcast Runaway Country, a contributor to Pod Save America (both on Crooked Media), a Senior Political Analyst at MS NOW, and the author of “How the Hell… with Alex Wagner” on Substack. She was previously a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, an Executive Producer and Co-host of “The Circus” on Showtime, and a special correspondent with CBS News. Her critically acclaimed memoir, Futureface, was published in 2018.
The definitive photographic celebration of John Coltrane's life and music, featuring exclusive contributions written by Ravi Coltrane, Wayne Coyne, Dev Hynes, Phil Lesh, Julie Mehretu, Carlos Santana, and Patti Smith.John Coltrane's impact on music and culture endures far beyond his prolific career and untimely death in 1967 at age forty. His masterful saxophone style and groundbreaking jazz compositions had a profound effect on the evolution of music through the decades, and it continues to resonate across styles and genres to this day.This beautiful photography book offers an intimate and in-depth look at his life with over one hundred expertly curated images taken by renowned photographers such as Chuck Stewart and Francis Wolff. The selection includes outtakes from the album cover photoshoot for Ascension, in-studio candid shots taken during the recording of Blue Train, a glimpse backstage with Alice Coltrane before their first performance together, and more. Coltrane is a visual celebration of John Coltrane's musical legacy, complete with an introduction by his son and fellow musician Ravi Coltrane, along with personal stories from other musicians, artists, and writers who have been moved by his work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ravi Coltrane is a critically acclaimed Grammy-nominated saxophonist, bandleader, and composer. Born on Long Island, the second son of John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane, Ravi was named after Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar. He was raised in Los Angeles, where his family moved after his father's death in 1967. Ravi maintains a fast-paced touring, recording, composing, and performance schedule. He leads the effort to restore the John Coltrane Home in Dix Hills, Long Island, and presides over important reissues of his parents' recordings.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
John Coltrane's Music Spoke My Words
by Kareen Abdul-Jabbar
When I was about fourteen years old living in New York City, I used to tune into WJZ (later WABC) and listen to “the dean of jazz radio,” Symphony Sid, a Jewish DJ who was responsible for introducing and promoting some of the greatest jazz musicians, including Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughn, Charlie Parker, and Billie Eckstine. Symphony Sid, whose real name was Sid Torin, had such an infectious passion for jazz that he is credited with popularizing bebop through his show, which reached thirty states.
I didn’t know about any of that. I tuned in to hear John Coltrane’s album My Favorite Things, which Symphony Sid played every night. And every night I eagerly tuned the radio dial to eighty so I could be transported by the edgy energy of Coltrane’s sassy saxophone.
This was not my first exposure to jazz. My father was a jazz musician who had graduated from Juilliard. And even though he was an imposing transit cop by day, he was still a swinging musician by night, playing with the likes of Sonny Rollins and Bill Lee (director Spike Lee’s father). Sometimes he took me with him to a gig and introduced me to his fellow musicians, including Tito Puente, Kenny Durham, and Ernie Henry. Ordinarily, my father was a quiet man, miserly with words as if each one cost him money. But when he played his music, he was speaking all the words he’d stored in his emotional vault. And the notes he bent and blasted spoke in a way that words could never quite equal. I heard what he had to say.
I, too, was a quiet person. My attempts at being a musician didn’t bear any sweet fruit, just some sour notes. If I couldn’t speak through music, listening to jazz was like hearing all my inner thoughts and feelings being spoken aloud. And no one spoke the mystical language of young Kareem better than John Coltrane.
I don’t think I was aware at the time that the title song from that album, My Favorite Things, originated in the 1959 Broadway musical. So when I first heard Julie Andrews’s chipper version, which has become a perennial Christmas hit, it was nothing like my experience with Coltrane’s version. Andrews’s song was whimsical and childlike (as befits lyrics about “whiskers on kittens”), while Coltrane blared a much more mature song that conveyed both longing and celebration. When Andrews’s version ended, the musical experience was over. But when Coltrane’s ended, the listener was still riding the aftermath as it lingered in their minds and bodies.
I finally met Coltrane when I was a freshman at UCLA at the famous It Club on West Washington Boulevard. I’d already heard of the It Club from Thelonious Monk’s 1964 album Live at the It Club. And I knew Miles Davis, another of my favorites, played there. There were also rumors that the owner, John McClain, had been friends with gangster “Bugsy” Siegel. For a college freshman, that just made it hipper.
After their set, I approached the band because the drummer, Elvin Jones, was friends with my uncle Steve. Elvin was happy to see me and introduced me to the boys in the band, including John Coltrane, who was as gracious as I could have hoped for. Jimmy Garrison, the bass player, even gave me an impromptu bass lesson, which, for white kids my age, would be akin to having Paul McCartney pull you onstage for a bass lesson.
That was the only time I saw him in person, though I did see his band several times again. A year and a half later, on July 17, 1967, John Coltrane died of liver cancer. He was only forty years old.
For me, fifty-four years have passed since I saw him, yet he still has the same power over me that he had when I was fourteen and tuning in nightly to Symphony Sid. In those five and a half decades, I’ve had time to reflect on why Coltrane had such an enduring effect on me and on his many fans.
To me, the essence of Coltrane is that he elevated every song he covered to a richer, more complex level. He took songs that were merely entertaining and made them inspiring. And his own compositions had that same innovative DNA that left the listener feeling like they’d descended deeper into a song than was possible and yet came out uplifted and invigorated. Those feelings are what inspired me to name my autobiography after one of his iconic compositions, “Giant Steps.”
Of course, today I recognize the irony that, while I’d used the title to poke fun at my height as well as my progress through life, it was really Coltrane who was taking giant steps and that with each massive stride forward, he was taking jazz and Black culture with him. He had been my voice when I was growing up, but he was also the voice of jazz as it too grew up from post–World War II to the modern era. His influence wasn’t just from his solo compositions and performances but also from his collaborations with other greats like Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis who produced the famous “sheets of sound” rush of notes.
John Coltrane’s music is the soundtrack to the Black experience in America. In his “Song of the Underground Railroad,” one can hear the sense of triumph, the elation of survival, and even the insistent chuffing of the drums urging us forward. The lively riffs in “Afro Blue” link the past with the present for African Americans. As I mention specific songs, I feel a rush of all his work filling me up with pride in who I am, and joy in being part of a larger, richer culture. I am fourteen, I am forty-five, I am seventy-two—all at the same time—and I am hearing my innermost thoughts and feelings floating through the air on the clouds of notes of John Coltrane.
Part of the Story: Writings from Half a Century
by Margaret Busby
Hamish Hamilton UK, 2026
[Publication date: September 29, 2026]
'This fascinating and simply fantastic book is a comprehensive record of Margaret Busby's exceptional life story . . . A true trailblazer, we all walk in the deep imprints of her footsteps' Bernardine Evaristo
This rare self-portrait from pioneering publisher, writer and cultural activist Margaret Busby underscores her powerful legacy and celebrates some of the people and places that have shaped her exceptional life
Margaret Busby has been at the heart of cultural life in the UK for over 50 years. From becoming Britain's youngest and first Black woman publisher when she founded publishing house Allison & Busby, to editing the ground-breaking international anthologies Daughters of Africa and New Daughters of Africa, her many achievements are testament to her dedication to championing the lives and stories of others, particularly those throughout the world who have been marginalised by the mainstream.
With little attention previously given to her own skills as a writer, Part of the Story is a unique opportunity to enjoy her own remarkable literary output. It brings together her writings on people, places, politics and publishing, and provides a rich insight into the many elements that have contributed to shaping her life, from her childhood in Ghana to the Black writers, intellectuals, artists and activists she has worked with, befriended, supported and championed for over half a century.
REVIEW:
'Margaret has been a cheerleader, instigator, organiser, defender and celebrator of black arts for the past 50 years . . . She helped change the landscape of both UK publishing and arts coverage and so many Black British artists owe her a debt. I know I do' –Zadie Smith
Land of Our Own: Malcolm X and the Evolution of Black Nationalism
by Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar
Polity, 2026
[Publication date: September 8, 2026]
Black nationalist ideas have been debated over centuries, and have shaped black religious, cultural, economic, and intellectual thought. But how is black nationalism popularly understood? And how should we reckon with the unique position of black people in the United States, where black nationalism has been fundamentally shaped by the white nationalism expressed before the Civil War?
In this illuminating new book, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar sheds much-needed light on black community, unity, and identity. The story of black nationalism is not limited to "back-to-Africa" Garveyites or to the religious nationalism of the Nation of Islam. By retelling the story of Malcolm X, Ogbar reveals how black nationalist thought has shaped ideas centered on internationalism, self-determination, self-defense, and electoral empowerment. More than "racial solidarity" or racial pride, black nationalism seeks territorial and political sovereignty – and the (often transnational) efforts to achieve nationhood have brought disparate communities together under the single banner of nationalism.
Offering both a panoramic and meticulous history, this lively book is essential reading for anyone who has been curious about the extraordinary impact of black nationalism in contemporary America.
REVIEWS:
"Today, more than ever, we need Malcolm's model of a revolutionary spirit, his love for oppressed people, his commitment to self-determination, and his belief in political sovereignty. Land of Our Own is brilliantly argued, and in many ways undeniable."
--Kellie Carter Jackson, Wellesley College and author of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance
"For many, black nationalism evokes iconic images of Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. In Land of Our Own, Jeffrey Ogbar broadens this familiar narrative. A masterful synthesis of history and political thought, this book is essential reading for newcomers and established students of black nationalism alike."
--Ashley D. Farmer, author of Queen Mother, Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Connecticut.
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