21st century

The author uses the anniversary of the death of famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King to examine how King fought and died for equal rights among all people of color, and how America has changed in the four decades since his death.

Journalist Thomas L. Friedman presents commentaries he wrote surrounding the September 11 terrorist attacks, spanning December 2000 through July 2002, as well as a diary of his travels to such places as Afghanistan and Israel in the months following the attacks.

Discusses George W. Bush's journey to the presidency and his leadership in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, examining Bush's personality and political skills, as well as the factors and biases that shape and color political media coverage.

Discusses the "Arab Spring", a series of uprisings in Arab countries due to the beginnings of democracy.

"Yoani Sanchez is an unusual dissident: no street protests, no attacks on big politicos, no calls for revolution. Rather, she produces a simple diary about what it means to live under the Castro regime in Cuba: the difficulty of shopping and chronic hunger; the art of repairing ancient appliances; the struggle for real news and the burdens of reading the party newspaper; the fear of admission to hospitals that lack the supplies for basic sterilization; and a life structured by a propaganda machine that pushes deep into the media, the public square, and the schools. Each sensitive dispatch is a brutal and honest depiction of Cuban life today. For these simple acts of truth telling--which are published online at Generation Y, and collected here in English for the first time--Sanchez is treated as a domestic radical: she is summoned by the police; her friends are threatened; she was recently kidnapped and beaten. The state newspaper has gone so far to call her "a spy in the pay of capitalism." Her ultimate concern, however, is for her friends in prison, and for the many who have fled, and for all those who have ceased to believe in the future of Cuba. Here the situation is elegantly expressed from the perspective of important and compelling new voice, one that has already found a worldwide audience online"--.

Contains twenty-seven essays in which the authors debate issues related to Africa, including the problems faced in the country, the spread of AIDS, the preservation of wild lands, and relief policies and initiatives.