Torn Apart
How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $21.83
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Dorothy Roberts
-
Janina Edwards
-
By:
-
Dorothy Roberts
About this listen
An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change
Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts reveals that the child welfare system is better understood as a “family policing system” that collaborates with law enforcement and prisons to oppress Black communities. Child protection investigations ensnare a majority of Black children, putting their families under intense state surveillance and regulation. Black children are disproportionately likely to be torn from their families and placed in foster care, driving many to juvenile detention and imprisonment.
The only way to stop the destruction caused by family policing, Torn Apart argues, is to abolish the child welfare system and liberate Black communities.
©2022 Dorothy Roberts (P)2022 Basic BooksListeners also enjoyed...
-
Shattered Bonds
- The Color of Child Welfare
- By: Dorothy Roberts
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson, Dorothy Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shattered Bonds tells this story as no other book has before - from the perspective of a prominent Black, female legal theoretician. The current state of the child-welfare system in America is a well-known tragedy. Thousands of children every year are removed from their parents' homes, often for little reason other than the endemic poverty that afflicts women and children more than any other group in the United States.
-
-
Important, worthwhile read
- By Mel on 07-03-23
By: Dorothy Roberts
-
Let This Radicalize You
- Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
- By: Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe. Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue, and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.
-
-
together, we fight back
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-24
By: Kelly Hayes, and others
-
We Were Once a Family
- A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
- By: Roxanna Asgarian
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored.
-
-
Biased
- By Amazon Customer on 10-05-23
By: Roxanna Asgarian
-
We Do This ‘Til We Free Us
- Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice
- By: Mariame Kaba
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if social transformation and liberation isn't about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.
-
-
content is great, but audiobook is unlistenable
- By Lesley Bredell on 03-22-22
By: Mariame Kaba
-
Becoming Abolitionists
- Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
- By: Derecka Purnell
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From community policing initiatives to increasing diversity, none of it has stopped the police from killing about three people a day. Millions of people continue to protest police violence because these “solutions” do not match the problem: The police cannot be reformed. In Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition.
-
-
highly recommended
- By C.O. on 12-17-21
By: Derecka Purnell
-
Black Marxism
- The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Third Edition
- By: Cedric J. Robinson, Robin D.G. Kelley - foreword, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard - preface, and others
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this ambitious work, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand Black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of Black people and Black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism, Robinson argues, must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of Blacks on Western continents, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this.
-
-
"Racial Capitalism"
- By Don Morris on 09-02-22
By: Cedric J. Robinson, and others
-
Shattered Bonds
- The Color of Child Welfare
- By: Dorothy Roberts
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson, Dorothy Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shattered Bonds tells this story as no other book has before - from the perspective of a prominent Black, female legal theoretician. The current state of the child-welfare system in America is a well-known tragedy. Thousands of children every year are removed from their parents' homes, often for little reason other than the endemic poverty that afflicts women and children more than any other group in the United States.
-
-
Important, worthwhile read
- By Mel on 07-03-23
By: Dorothy Roberts
-
Let This Radicalize You
- Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
- By: Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe. Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue, and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.
-
-
together, we fight back
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-24
By: Kelly Hayes, and others
-
We Were Once a Family
- A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
- By: Roxanna Asgarian
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored.
-
-
Biased
- By Amazon Customer on 10-05-23
By: Roxanna Asgarian
-
We Do This ‘Til We Free Us
- Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice
- By: Mariame Kaba
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if social transformation and liberation isn't about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.
-
-
content is great, but audiobook is unlistenable
- By Lesley Bredell on 03-22-22
By: Mariame Kaba
-
Becoming Abolitionists
- Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
- By: Derecka Purnell
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From community policing initiatives to increasing diversity, none of it has stopped the police from killing about three people a day. Millions of people continue to protest police violence because these “solutions” do not match the problem: The police cannot be reformed. In Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition.
-
-
highly recommended
- By C.O. on 12-17-21
By: Derecka Purnell
-
Black Marxism
- The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Third Edition
- By: Cedric J. Robinson, Robin D.G. Kelley - foreword, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard - preface, and others
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this ambitious work, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand Black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of Black people and Black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism, Robinson argues, must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of Blacks on Western continents, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this.
-
-
"Racial Capitalism"
- By Don Morris on 09-02-22
By: Cedric J. Robinson, and others
-
Decolonial Marxism
- Essays from the Pan-African Revolution
- By: Walter Rodney
- Narrated by: Terrence Kidd
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Early in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora. He was not only a witness of a Pan-African and socialist internationalism, but a prime actor in mass organization, catalyzing rebellious ferment, and theorizing an anti-colonial path to self-emancipation. This volume demonstrates the unbending consistency that unites his life and work: the ongoing reinvention of living conception of Marxism, and a respect for the still untapped potential of mass self-rule.
-
-
Another Rodney Classic
- By Amazon Customer on 03-26-24
By: Walter Rodney
-
Punishment Without Crime
- How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal
- By: Alexandra Natapoff
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Punishment Without Crime offers an urgent new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Based on extensive original research, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inner workings of a massive petty offense system that produces over 13 million cases each year.
-
-
This Book Should Be A Required Read For All
- By Anonymous User on 08-08-19
-
The Dawning of the Apocalypse
- The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century
- By: Gerald Horne
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
August 2019 saw numerous commemorations of the year 1619, when what was said to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans occurred in North America. Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people here quickly defected to local Indigenous populations, and compelled their captors to flee. Deploying such illuminating research, The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the "creation myth" of settler colonialism and how the US was formed.
-
-
Horrible narration
- By William Harrington on 06-05-22
By: Gerald Horne
-
"You Should Be Grateful"
- Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption
- By: Angela Tucker
- Narrated by: Angela Tucker
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Your parents are so amazing for adopting you! You should be grateful that you were adopted.” Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss, and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily.
-
-
A Good Start
- By Ricky Ferrari Traner on 07-18-24
By: Angela Tucker
-
Undoing Drugs
- The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction
- By: Maia Szalavitz
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz
- Length: 14 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From “one of the bravest, smartest writers about addiction anywhere” (Johann Hari, New York Times best-selling author) - the untold story of harm reduction, a surprisingly simple idea with enormous power.
-
-
Wow! An amazing amount of harm reduction info!
- By Bobbi Jensen, Criminal Justice Consultant, Educator and Reform Activist on 09-19-21
By: Maia Szalavitz
-
The Racial Contract
- By: Charles Wade Mills
- Narrated by: Jeff Wilburn
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last 500 years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed.
-
-
An important but difficult read
- By Anne T Chambers on 03-02-18
-
San Fransicko
- Why Progressives Ruin Cities
- By: Michael Shellenberger
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Progressives claimed they knew how to solve homelessness, inequality, and crime. But in cities they control, progressives made those problems worse.
-
-
An excellent book about the problem with the progressive movement
- By Amazon Customer on 10-18-21
-
Mutual Aid
- Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
- By: Dean Spade
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.
-
-
An excellent primer on collective good
- By Robert R. Fike on 01-27-22
By: Dean Spade
-
Elite Capture
- How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else)
- By: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
- Narrated by: Jaime Lincoln Smth
- Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom. But the “identity politics” so compulsively referenced bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, “identity politics” is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.
-
-
An Essential Read
- By TheFrozenBiscuit on 04-22-23
-
The Rage of Innocence
- How America Criminalizes Black Youth
- By: Kristin Henning
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drawing upon 25 years of experience representing Black youth in Washington, DC’s juvenile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America’s irrational, manufactured fears of these young people and makes a powerfully compelling case that the crisis in racist American policing begins with its relationship to Black children.
-
-
Very Enlightening!
- By Dr. Laurel E. Thompson on 02-01-22
By: Kristin Henning
-
Are Prisons Obsolete?
- By: Angela Y. Davis
- Narrated by: Angela Y. Davis
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With her characteristic brilliance, grace, and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration," and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.
-
-
Buying the paperback now too
- By Theresa Frey on 03-14-23
By: Angela Y. Davis
-
White Space, Black Hood
- Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality
- By: Sheryll Cashin
- Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The iconic Black hood, like slavery and Jim Crow, is a peculiar American institution animated by the ideology of white supremacy. Politicians and people of all colors propagated “ghetto” myths to justify racist policies that concentrated poverty in the hood and created high-opportunity white spaces. In White Space, Black Hood, Sheryll Cashin traces the history of anti-Black residential caste - boundary maintenance, opportunity hoarding, and stereotype-driven surveillance - and unpacks its current legacy....
-
-
Powerful exposition about geography and race
- By J. Craig on 10-10-21
By: Sheryll Cashin
Critic reviews
"Roberts buttresses her impassioned call for dismantling the child welfare system by skillfully situating it within a larger web of institutions intended to surveil, control, and punish Black Americans. This illuminating and alarming study shatters the 'facade of benevolence' surrounding foster care."—Publishers Weekly
Related to this topic
-
Con Job
- How Democrats Gave Us Crime, Sanctuary Cities, Abortion Profiteering, and Racial Division
- By: Crystal Wright
- Narrated by: Crystal Wright
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Black voters have overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party for the last fifty years - and for their loyalty, black Americans have been rewarded with worsening schools, collapsed families, skyrocketed incarceration rates, disappearing jobs, and rising crime. Crystal Wright, editor of the blog Conservative Black Chick, exposes how the Democratic Party has systematically betrayed black voters.
-
-
Awesome!
- By Tracy on 05-11-16
By: Crystal Wright
-
Prey
- Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights
- By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Narrated by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Prey, Ayaan Hirsi Ali presents startling statistics, criminal cases and personal testimony. Among these facts: In 2014, sexual violence in Western Europe surged following a period of stability. This violence isn’t a figment of alt-right propaganda, Hirsi Ali insists, even if neo-Nazis exaggerate it. It’s a real problem that Europe—and the world—cannot continue to ignore. She explains why so many young Muslim men who arrive in Europe engage in sexual harassment and violence, tracing the roots of sexual violence in the Muslim world.
-
-
Feminist Must-Read
- By Annie Raks on 02-26-21
By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
-
American Psychosis
- How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System
- By: E. Fuller Torrey
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
E. Fuller Torrey's audiobook provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public.
-
-
Devastating analysis on US mental health policy!
- By Kevin on 07-13-14
By: E. Fuller Torrey
-
Chokehold
- Policing Black Men
- By: Paul Butler
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread - all with the support of judges and politicians.
-
-
Good but not amazing
- By Andrew on 12-16-17
By: Paul Butler
-
Viral Justice
- How We Grow the World We Want
- By: Ruha Benjamin
- Narrated by: Ruha Benjamin
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.
-
-
Fantastic book!
- By Avie Kearney on 05-21-23
By: Ruha Benjamin
-
The Way We Never Were
- American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
- By: Stephanie Coontz
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 17 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man's home has never been his castle, the "male breadwinner marriage" is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today. In The Way We Never Were, acclaimed historian Stephanie Coontz examines two centuries of the American family, sweeping away misconceptions about the past that cloud current debates about domestic life. The 1950s do not present a workable model of how to conduct our personal lives today, Coontz argues.
-
-
fantastic report on the dangers of nostalgia
- By Richard Stine on 06-29-21
By: Stephanie Coontz
-
Con Job
- How Democrats Gave Us Crime, Sanctuary Cities, Abortion Profiteering, and Racial Division
- By: Crystal Wright
- Narrated by: Crystal Wright
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Black voters have overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party for the last fifty years - and for their loyalty, black Americans have been rewarded with worsening schools, collapsed families, skyrocketed incarceration rates, disappearing jobs, and rising crime. Crystal Wright, editor of the blog Conservative Black Chick, exposes how the Democratic Party has systematically betrayed black voters.
-
-
Awesome!
- By Tracy on 05-11-16
By: Crystal Wright
-
Prey
- Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights
- By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Narrated by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Prey, Ayaan Hirsi Ali presents startling statistics, criminal cases and personal testimony. Among these facts: In 2014, sexual violence in Western Europe surged following a period of stability. This violence isn’t a figment of alt-right propaganda, Hirsi Ali insists, even if neo-Nazis exaggerate it. It’s a real problem that Europe—and the world—cannot continue to ignore. She explains why so many young Muslim men who arrive in Europe engage in sexual harassment and violence, tracing the roots of sexual violence in the Muslim world.
-
-
Feminist Must-Read
- By Annie Raks on 02-26-21
By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
-
American Psychosis
- How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System
- By: E. Fuller Torrey
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
E. Fuller Torrey's audiobook provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. On staff at the National Institute of Mental Health when the program was being developed and implemented, Torrey draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with people involved, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved in the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public.
-
-
Devastating analysis on US mental health policy!
- By Kevin on 07-13-14
By: E. Fuller Torrey
-
Chokehold
- Policing Black Men
- By: Paul Butler
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread - all with the support of judges and politicians.
-
-
Good but not amazing
- By Andrew on 12-16-17
By: Paul Butler
-
Viral Justice
- How We Grow the World We Want
- By: Ruha Benjamin
- Narrated by: Ruha Benjamin
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.
-
-
Fantastic book!
- By Avie Kearney on 05-21-23
By: Ruha Benjamin
-
The Way We Never Were
- American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
- By: Stephanie Coontz
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 17 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man's home has never been his castle, the "male breadwinner marriage" is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today. In The Way We Never Were, acclaimed historian Stephanie Coontz examines two centuries of the American family, sweeping away misconceptions about the past that cloud current debates about domestic life. The 1950s do not present a workable model of how to conduct our personal lives today, Coontz argues.
-
-
fantastic report on the dangers of nostalgia
- By Richard Stine on 06-29-21
By: Stephanie Coontz
-
Please Stop Helping Us
- How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed
- By: Jason L. Riley
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the Black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries? In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding Black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of Blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer Black college graduates than would otherwise exist.
-
-
Required reading
- By Ken Larsen on 02-15-15
By: Jason L. Riley
-
Golden Gulag
- Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California
- By: Ruth Wilson Gilmore
- Narrated by: Machelle Williams
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since 1980, the number of people in US prisons has increased more than 450 percent. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world". Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces conjoined to produce the prison boom.
-
-
Started off great but devolved into case study
- By normal person on 10-16-21
-
An African American and Latinx History of the United States
- By: Paul Ortiz
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.
-
-
I had to return
- By Andrew Alvarez on 05-19-20
By: Paul Ortiz
-
Fight of the Century
- Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases
- By: Michael Chabon - editor, Ayelet Waldman - editor
- Narrated by: an all-star cast
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization’s 100-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in - Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona - need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now.
-
-
Outstanding
- By Nancy B on 10-06-20
By: Michael Chabon - editor, and others
-
We Are Not Yet Equal
- Understanding Our Racial Divide
- By: Carol Anderson, Tonya Bolden
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Carol Anderson's White Rage took the world by storm, landing on the New York Times best seller list and best book of the year lists from New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Chicago Review of Books. It launched her as an in-demand commentator on contemporary race issues for national print and television media and garnered her an invitation to speak to the Democratic Congressional Caucus. This compelling young adult adaptation brings her ideas to a new audience.
-
-
Great
- By JD on 07-06-20
By: Carol Anderson, and others
-
Forget "Having It All"
- How America Messed Up Motherhood - and How to Fix It
- By: Amy Westervelt
- Narrated by: Amy Westervelt
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Forget "Having It All", Westervelt traces the roots of our modern expectations of mothers and motherhood back to extremist ideas held by the first Puritans who attempted to colonize America and examines how those ideals shifted - or didn't - through every generation since.
-
-
A Thorough and Well-Researched Book on The "Mom Predicament"
- By Merle B on 04-10-19
By: Amy Westervelt
-
White Rage
- The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
- By: Carol Anderson
- Narrated by: Pamela Gibson
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014 and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as 'Black rage', historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in the Washington Post showing that this was, instead, 'white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames,' she wrote, 'everyone had ignored the kindling.'
-
-
Good History, Was Hoping For More Insight
- By Mike on 09-08-16
By: Carol Anderson
-
How Rights Went Wrong
- Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart
- By: Jamal Greene
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rights are a sacred part of American identity. Yet they were an afterthought for the Framers. Only as a result of the racial strife that exploded during the Civil War—and a series of resulting missteps by the Supreme Court—did rights gain such outsized power. Over and again, courts have treated rights conflicts as zero-sum games in which awarding rights to one side means denying rights to others. As eminent legal scholar Jamal Greene shows in How Rights Went Wrong, we need to recouple rights with justice—before they tear society apart.
-
-
A different way to look at rights.
- By Nicolas Pabon on 07-11-23
By: Jamal Greene
-
Know Your Price
- Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities
- By: Andre M. Perry
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The deliberate devaluation of Blacks and their communities has had very real, far-reaching, and negative economic and social effects. An enduring white supremacist myth claims brutal conditions in Black communities are mainly the result of Black people's collective choices and moral failings. But there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can't solve. Noted educator, journalist, and scholar Andre Perry takes listeners on a tour of six Black-majority cities whose assets and strengths are undervalued.
-
-
More about Black lives than property
- By J. Craig on 04-13-22
By: Andre M. Perry
-
Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask
- By: Anton Treuer
- Narrated by: Kaipo Schwab
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What have you always wanted to know about Indians? Do you think you should already know the answers-or suspect that your questions may be offensive? In matter-of-fact responses to over 120 questions, both thoughtful and outrageous, modern and historical, Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist Anton Treuer gives a frank, funny, and sometimes personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway.
-
-
one of the better books
- By Erica Kerr on 07-14-18
By: Anton Treuer
-
Lies the Government Told You
- Myth, Power, and Deception in American History
- By: Andrew P. Napolitano
- Narrated by: Andrew Napolitano
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Lies the Government Told You, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano reveals how America's freedom, as guaranteed by the US Constitution, has been forfeited by a government more protective of its own power than its obligations to preserve our individual liberties.
-
-
A Must Read America 🇺🇸
- By Jamie Schaible on 05-30-23
-
Big Dirty Money
- The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime
- By: Jennifer Taub
- Narrated by: Eliza Foss
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How ordinary Americans suffer when the rich and powerful use tax doges or break the law to get richer and more powerful - and how we can stop it. There is an elite crime spree happening in America, and the privileged perps are getting away with it. Selling loose cigarettes on a city sidewalk can lead to a choke-hold arrest, and death, if you are not among the top one percent.
-
-
The Loss of Glass-Steagal has led to Cheating
- By Rajiv on 05-23-21
By: Jennifer Taub
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Shattered Bonds
- The Color of Child Welfare
- By: Dorothy Roberts
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson, Dorothy Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shattered Bonds tells this story as no other book has before - from the perspective of a prominent Black, female legal theoretician. The current state of the child-welfare system in America is a well-known tragedy. Thousands of children every year are removed from their parents' homes, often for little reason other than the endemic poverty that afflicts women and children more than any other group in the United States.
-
-
Important, worthwhile read
- By Mel on 07-03-23
By: Dorothy Roberts
-
Broken
- Transforming Child Protective Services—Notes of a Former Caseworker
- By: Jessica Pryce
- Narrated by: Deanna Anthony
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joining the ranks of Evicted and The New Jim Crow, a former caseworker’s searing, clear-eyed investigation of the child welfare system—from foster care to incarceration—that exposes the deep-rooted biases shaping the system, witnessed through the lives of several Black families.
-
-
loved the perspective!
- By D. Simmons-Carvajal on 09-05-24
By: Jessica Pryce
-
Relinquished
- The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
- By: Gretchen Sisson
- Narrated by: Angel Pean, Emily Norman, Katie Koster, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real.
-
-
Where are the narratives from adopted people?
- By Loren on 12-04-24
By: Gretchen Sisson
-
"You Should Be Grateful"
- Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption
- By: Angela Tucker
- Narrated by: Angela Tucker
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Your parents are so amazing for adopting you! You should be grateful that you were adopted.” Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss, and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily.
-
-
A Good Start
- By Ricky Ferrari Traner on 07-18-24
By: Angela Tucker
-
Evicted
- Poverty and Profit in the American City
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
-
-
Former Property Manager
- By Charla on 05-18-16
By: Matthew Desmond
-
The Color of Law
- A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
- By: Richard Rothstein
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, he incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
-
-
Better suited to print than audio
- By ProfGolf on 02-04-18
-
Shattered Bonds
- The Color of Child Welfare
- By: Dorothy Roberts
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson, Dorothy Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shattered Bonds tells this story as no other book has before - from the perspective of a prominent Black, female legal theoretician. The current state of the child-welfare system in America is a well-known tragedy. Thousands of children every year are removed from their parents' homes, often for little reason other than the endemic poverty that afflicts women and children more than any other group in the United States.
-
-
Important, worthwhile read
- By Mel on 07-03-23
By: Dorothy Roberts
-
Broken
- Transforming Child Protective Services—Notes of a Former Caseworker
- By: Jessica Pryce
- Narrated by: Deanna Anthony
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joining the ranks of Evicted and The New Jim Crow, a former caseworker’s searing, clear-eyed investigation of the child welfare system—from foster care to incarceration—that exposes the deep-rooted biases shaping the system, witnessed through the lives of several Black families.
-
-
loved the perspective!
- By D. Simmons-Carvajal on 09-05-24
By: Jessica Pryce
-
Relinquished
- The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
- By: Gretchen Sisson
- Narrated by: Angel Pean, Emily Norman, Katie Koster, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful decade-long study of adoption in the age of Roe, revealing the grief of the American mothers for whom the choice to parent was never real.
-
-
Where are the narratives from adopted people?
- By Loren on 12-04-24
By: Gretchen Sisson
-
"You Should Be Grateful"
- Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption
- By: Angela Tucker
- Narrated by: Angela Tucker
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Your parents are so amazing for adopting you! You should be grateful that you were adopted.” Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss, and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily.
-
-
A Good Start
- By Ricky Ferrari Traner on 07-18-24
By: Angela Tucker
-
Evicted
- Poverty and Profit in the American City
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
-
-
Former Property Manager
- By Charla on 05-18-16
By: Matthew Desmond
-
The Color of Law
- A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
- By: Richard Rothstein
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, he incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
-
-
Better suited to print than audio
- By ProfGolf on 02-04-18
What listeners say about Torn Apart
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lori Clark
- 04-09-22
Powerful!
Loved it! The system is not broken, it is functioning exactly how it was designed to work.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Woman
- 04-12-22
Important to Read. Unfinished Work.
The book is a must read to understand why the child welfare system does not work. However, it may leave you wanting a part two with more detailed solutions. Other people, agencies and institutions will need to use this book to come up with a game plan.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!