Tuesday, November 4, 2025

IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS

Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department
by Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis
Penquin Press, 2025
 
[Publication date:  November 4, 2025]
From Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, a shocking investigation of unparalleled depth into the subversion of the Justice Department over the last decade, culminating in President Donald Trump upending this cornerstone of democracy and threatening America’s rule of law as we have long known it

Throughout his first administration, Trump did more than any other president to politicize the nation’s top law enforcement agency, pressuring appointees to shield him, to target his enemies, and even to help him cling to power after his 2020 election defeat. The department, pressed into a defensive crouch, has never fully recovered.

Injustice exposes not only the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine the department at every turn but also how delays in investigating Trump’s effort to overturn the will of voters under Attorney General Merrick Garland helped prevent the country from holding Trump accountable and enabled his return to power. With never-before-told accounts, Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis take readers inside as prosecutors convulsed over Trump’s disdain for the rule of law, and FBI agents, the department’s storied investigators, at times retreated in fear. They take you to the rooms where Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team set off on an all-but-impossible race to investigate Trump for absconding with classified documents and waging an assault on democracy—and inside his prosecution’s heroic and fateful choices that ultimately backfired.

With a plethora of sources deeply embedded in the ranks of three presidencies, Leonnig and Davis reveal the daily war secretly waged for the soul of the department, how it has been shredded by propaganda and partisanship, and how—if the United States hopes to live on with its same form of government—Trump’s war with the Justice Department will mark a turning point from which it will be hard to recover. 
Injustice is the jaw-dropping account of partisans and enablers undoing democracy, heroes still battling to preserve a nation governed by laws, and a call to action for those who believe in liberty and justice for all.
 
ABOUT THE AUTHORS: 
 

Carol Leonnig, a five-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the author of three bestselling books and an investigative reporter who has worked at The Washington Post for the last twenty-five years. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on security failures by the Secret Service. She also was part of Post teams awarded Pulitzers in 2024, 2022, 2018, and 2014. Leonnig, a contributor to MSNBC, is the author of Zero Fail and coauthor of A Very Stable Genius and I Alone Can Fix It.

Aaron C. Davis is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post who has won the Pulitzer Prize twice and has been a finalist three times. He was a lead writer and reporter on the Post’s investigative series into the January 6 attack, which won the George Polk Award, the Toner Prize, and, with other Post coverage, the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. In 2018, he was part of a Post team that won the Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting. Davis has reported from fourteen countries. He began at The Washington Post in 2008, after reporting for the Associated Press, The Mercury News, and Florida Today. 
 
Blind Persistence: The History of the Before Columbus Foundation
Edited by Ishmael Reed and Justin Desmangles
Baraka Books, 2025


[Publication date: November 1, 2025]
 
The Before Columbus Foundation, founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed and others, is "dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature." It operates on the premise that storytelling traditions existed thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, which counters the myth that storytelling begins with the Puritan settlement. Puritans weren’ t even the first Europeans to arrive in North America. It founded the American Book Awards in 1978, which has recognized hundreds of writers who otherwise would have been ignored. Its board of directors includes three MacArthur Fellows, three former U.S. Poet Laureates, three Pulitzer Prize winners, a winner of the Booker Prize, and a recipient of a Presidential medal. BLIND PERSISTENCE is the Before Columbus story as told by a host of leading American poets, novelists, public intellectuals. Contributors include Wajahat Ali, Carolyn Forché , Joy Harjo, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Nancy Mercado, Margaret Porter Troupe, Shawn Wong and more
 
ABOUT THE EDITORS:
 
Ishmael Reed has authored fifty works of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, plays and librettos, and edited numerous anthologies. He has received prizes in every category. The fourth novel in his “ Terribles” series, The Terrible Fives, is forthcoming from Baraka Books in 2026. Other recent works include Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues (2022), and The Shine Challenge 2025, premiered at NYC’ s Theater for the New City on January 30, 2025. Reed is also a cartoonist, songwriter, musician and composer, public media commentator and publisher Justin Desmangles is chairman of the Before Columbus Foundation, administrator of the American Book Awards, and creator of the radio broadcast New Day Jazz. A member of the board of directors of the Oakland Book Festival, Mr. Desmangles is also a program producer at the African-American Center of the San Francisco Public Library. His poetry and journalism has appeared in Amerarcana, Black Renaissance Noire, Drumvoices Revue, Konch, and Musiqology. 
 
Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power
by Abby Phillip
Flatiron Books. 2025

[Publication date: October 28, 2025]


From CNN’s Abby Phillip, a triumphant new look at Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns of the 1980s and how they changed Black political power

“A joyful, rich, must-read biography of a politician whose flaws and gifts were in constant, intense competition.” 
―Jake Tapper

Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, activist, raconteur, and political candidate, finally gets a book worthy of his stature courtesy of CNN anchor Abby Phillip.

Focusing on his presidential runs in 1984 and, especially, 1988, Phillip highlights how Jackson built an unlikely coalition that showed how Black political power could be consolidated. His experience working under Martin Luther King; his organizing the SLCC’s Operation Breadbasket in Chicago and beyond; and his roots in the deep South combined into two astonishingly impactful presidential campaigns. Appealing to the working people of urban enclaves like that of Chicago, young people on college campuses, and Black people across the South, he created the modern Democratic coalition―one that has been used by all major Democrats seeking national success from Obama to Biden to Harris.

With her expert reporting, natural storytelling skills, and a story so full of humanity, politics, and hope, Abby Phillip has written a rousing popular history that sheds new light on an American icon.
 

REVIEWS: 


“A Dream Deferred by Abby Phillip is a must read. As a student and mentee of Rev. Jesse Jackson since I was 12 years old, I can say this book explores his historic leadership that helped reshape American politics and the post–Dr. King civil rights movement in the late 20th century. Abby does it honestly exploring Rev. Jackson’s strengths and weaknesses, clearly saying why he is a historic leader that must be studied.” ―Rev. Al Sharpton, American civil rights activist, and founder of the National Action Network.

“One of the most compelling and brilliant journalists of her generation, Abby Phillip has written a rich, complex, page-turning portrait of a man who was more influential in American politics than he's often given credit for. A Dream Deferred is a joyful, rich, must-read biography of a politician whose flaws and gifts were in constant, intense competition.” ―Jake Tapper, bestselling author of Original Sin and CNN host

“Reverend Jackson's early-eighties presidential campaigns were a transcendent turning point for Black political power―he boldly showed that a broad coalition of folks from different social classes and diverse points of views could be built with integrity, charisma, energy, intelligence, and an openness to all kinds of people. In A Dream Deferred, Abby Phillip brings those aspects of his healing and ultimately heartbreaking campaigns to glorious life in a book that is engrossing, revelatory and urgent in understanding how we got here.” ― Bakari Sellers, New York Times bestselling author of The Moment

“Jesse Jackson stood in the midst of history and made some too. This book is an important reflection on the evolution of black political power and Jesse Jackson’s role in it. This is a story that needs to be told.”―Andrew Young, civil rights leader and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

“In this incisive account of the trailblazing and often controversial civil rights leader and presidential candidate, CNN anchor Phillip brings a seasoned reporter’s sharp research and keen insight to the inner workings and significant accomplishments of this complicated but compelling figure. An admiring yet unflinching portrait convincingly weighing Jackson’s contributions against his contradictions.”―Kirkus Reviews

“[A] splendid effort to give this political chapter of Jackson’s life the recognition it rightfully deserves [. . .] Gracefully in control of the narrative [. . .] Phillip casts Jackson not as a sprinter coming up short in the final stretch, but as a relay racer passing the baton to the current political movements.”―The Washington Post

“CNN anchor Phillip debuts with a fresh and illuminating account of Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns [. . .] a paradigm-shifting reassessment of a progressive firebrand’s legacy.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
 
Abby Phillip anchors NewsNight with Abby Phillip on CNN. She’s also worked at The Washington Post, ABC News,and Politico. Throughout her career she has covered multiple presidents, campaign finance, lobbying and several presidential campaigns. Phillip was named to the Time 100 Next List in 2021 and she was a recipient of the National Urban League’s Women of Power award. Phillip was raised in Maryland and is a graduate of Harvard University. She lives in New York City with her husband, daughter, and pup Booker T.


Arthur Jafa: Live Evil
by Arthur Jafa 
Flora Katz and Vassilis Oikonomopouloss (Editors)
Walther König, Köln, 2025

 
[Publication date:  September 9, 2025]

An expansive survey of video, installation and more from Arthur Jafa, whose practice is "a counterpunch to anyone who wants to put people of color in their place" (Wes Hill)

Published with LUMA Arles.

Over several decades, American filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa has constructed a compelling body of work that defies categorization. Both powerful and lyrical, his practice combines a profoundly unsettling blend of images and histories. Bringing together affective memories that touch on US history, violence, repression, modalities of survival and how these exist in the production and dissemination of images, music, sound and time-based media, Jafa reflects on the ontology of race and Blackness. This richly illustrated catalog reproduces key works from Jafa's wide-ranging oeuvre and explores the philosophical, historical and artistic implications of his practice, featuring essays and a series of conversations between Jafa and key practitioners working in the fields of cinema, arts and theory.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Arthur Jafa (born 1960) grew up in Mississippi, where his lifelong fascination with found imagery manifested in his childhood hobby of assembling binders of photographs culled from various sources. As a cinematographer and director of photography, Jafa has collaborated with Stanley Kubrick, Solange Knowles and Spike Lee, among many others. His work on Julie Dash's 1991 film Daughters of the Dust won him the Best Cinematography award at Sundance. At the 2019 Venice Biennale, he was awarded the Golden Lion for The White Album. Jafa lives and works in Los Angeles.