Drawing on his own incarceration and exile, as well as on evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners and Soviet archives, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression—the state within the state that ruled all-powerfully. Through truly Shakespearean portraits of its victims—men, women, and children—we encounter secret police operations, labor camps and prisons; the uprooting or extermination of whole populations, the welcome that awaited Russian soldiers who had been German prisoners of war. Yet we also witness the astounding moral courage of the incorruptible, who, defenseless, endured great brutality and degradation.

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956—a grisly indictment of a regime, fashioned here into a veritable literary miracle—has now been updated with a new introduction that includes the fall of the Soviet Union and Solzhenitsyn's move back to Russia.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in Portuguese in 1968 and subsequently translated and published in English in 1970, presents the methodology of the late Paulo Freire. His work has been instrumental in empowering countless impoverished and illiterate individuals globally. The book gains particular relevance in the United States and Western Europe as it addresses the increasing acceptance of a permanent underclass among underprivileged and minority populations in urban areas.

The 30th Anniversary Edition includes a significant new introduction detailing Freire's life and the profound influence of this book, contributed by Donaldo Macedo, a writer and authoritative voice on Freire's work. This edition aims to motivate a new wave of educators, students, and general readers to engage with Freire's influential teachings.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott, is an essential work that delves into the reasons behind the failure of states to execute large-scale social planning successfully. It presents an analysis of various disasters, from Russia to Tanzania, probing why such efforts often result in calamity.

The book argues that disasters occur when states impose oversimplified visions on complex realities that they cannot fully comprehend. Scott emphasizes the importance of recognizing local, practical knowledge alongside formal, systematic knowledge. He critiques 'development theory' and state planning that ignores the values and wishes of the people it affects. This persuasive narrative identifies four conditions common to all planning disasters: the state's administrative ordering of nature and society; a 'high-modernist ideology' that overestimates the role of science in improving human life; the use of authoritarian power to implement broad interventions; and the inability of a weakened civil society to resist such plans.

Written with clarity, Seeing Like a State brings to light the intricate nature of the world we inhabit and serves as a cautionary tale about the limits of grand societal engineering.

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in a Jewish firm in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children. He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Herecounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid. Finally he provides the ultimate inside account.

Remember, remember the fifth of November...

A frightening and powerful tale of the loss of freedom and identity in a chillingly believable totalitarian world, V for Vendetta stands as one of the highest achievements of the comics medium and a defining work for creators Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

Set in an imagined future England that has given itself over to fascism, this groundbreaking story captures both the suffocating nature of life in an authoritarian police state and the redemptive power of the human spirit which rebels against it. Crafted with sterling clarity and intelligence, V for Vendetta brings an unequaled depth of characterization and verisimilitude to its unflinching account of oppression and resistance.

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now . . .

Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life.

Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change. The Dispossessed is a penetrating examination of society and humanity—and one man's brave undertaking to question the unquestionable and ignite the fires of change.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a tale of revolution, of the rebellion of a former penal colony on the Moon against its masters on the Earth. It is a tale of a culture whose family structures are based on the presence of two men for every woman, leading to novel forms of marriage and family. It is the story of the disparate people, a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic who become the movement's leaders, and of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to the revolt's inner circle, who for reasons of his own is committed to the revolution's ultimate success.

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the spice melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for...

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul's family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

Atlas Shrugged is a narrative that intertwines ethics, metaphysics, politics, economics, and sex. It is the story of a man who said he would stop the motor of the world, and did. Is he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators? The reader is invited to discover the answer through a mystery story that integrates a ruthlessly brilliant plot structure with an irresistible suspense.

The novel presents an astounding panorama of human life - from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy, to the great steel industrialist who does not know he is working for his own destruction, to the philosopher who becomes a pirate, to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph, to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad, to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels.

Atlas Shrugged is not only a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller but also a masterful depiction of the potential of human greatness, portrayed with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century's leading artists.

Animal Farm is a brilliant political satire and a powerful and affecting story of revolutions and idealism, power, and corruption. 'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.' Mr. Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm.

Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell's masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

Sarmiento, proscrito por la tiranía rosista y exiliado por dos veces en Chile, fue periodista brillante, político y polemista literario. "Facundo" es una biografía concebida como historia, historia de las guerras civiles de su patria centradas en la figura de Juan Facundo Quiroga, el más famoso, cruel, violento y despiadado caudillo de las guerras civiles argentinas. El desarrollo de los acontecimientos impulsó a Sarmiento a unir el tema biográfico a la realidad presente, denunciando a su enemigo Rosas.