Month: September 2018

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

While most of the general population has been lulled into a false sense of security, bankers and tech executives are spending millions upon millions of dollars to prepare for the collapse of society.  Do they know something that the rest of us do not?

Apparently talk of doomsday scenarios has become very popular at Silicon Valley dinner parties, and as you will see below, having a plan to escape to New Zealand appears to be a very popular “Plan B” among the tech elite.  Of course this is not just a west coast phenomenon.  Many bankers on the east coast have similar concerns and have also been developing contingency plans.  Ladies and gentlemen, they know what is coming and they are feverishly getting prepared for it.  In fact, J.P. Morgan Chase’s head quant just publicly declared that the next financial crisis is going to result in “social unrest not seen in the U.S. in half a century”.  The following comes from CNBC…

Sudden, severe stock sell-offs sparked by lightning-fast machines. Unprecedented actions by central banks to shore up asset prices. Social unrest not seen in the U.S. in half a century.

That’s how J.P. Morgan Chase‘s head quant, Marko Kolanovic, envisions the next financial crisis. The forces that have transformed markets in the last decade, namely the rise of computerized trading and passive investing, are setting up conditions for potentially violent moves once the current bull market ends, according to a report from Kolanovic sent to the bank’s clients on Tuesday. His note is part of a 168-page mega-report, written for the 10th anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis, with perspectives from 48 of the bank’s analysts and economists.

If you visit my website on a regular basis, you already know that I have been warning that rising levels of anger and frustration are rapidly eroding the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis.

Back in 1968, the Vietnam war was in full swing, a presidential election was approaching and two of the most prominent leaders in America had just been assassinated.  Chaos erupted in the streets as a result, and Kolanovic is absolutely convinced that we will see a similar eruption soon…

Kolanovic closes his report on an ominous note: “The next crisis is also likely to result in social tensions similar to those witnessed 50 years ago in 1968.”

That year saw the peak of both the Vietnam War and anti-war movement and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Today, the internet and social media are helping to polarize groups, and events including the U.S. election and Brexit show tensions that will probably worsen in the next crisis, he said.

When society begins to come apart at the seams, many among the elite do not plan to stick around for the day of reckoning.

A Bloomberg article that was just published entitled “The Super Rich of Silicon Valley Have a Doomsday Escape Plan” has some amazing revelations.  According to the article, over the past two years seven “Silicon Valley entrepreneurs” have purchased survival bunkers from a company in Texas and shipped them to locations in New Zealand…

In recent months, two 150-ton survival bunkers journeyed by land and sea from a Texas warehouse to the shores of New Zealand, where they’re buried 11 feet underground.

Seven Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have purchased bunkers from Rising S Co. and planted them in New Zealand in the past two years, said Gary Lynch, the manufacturer’s general manager. At the first sign of an apocalypse — nuclear war, a killer germ, a French Revolution-style uprising targeting the 1 percent — the Californians plan to hop on a private jet and hunker down, he said.

It would be weird enough if one wealthy individual did this, but the count is now up to seven.

So why have they chosen New Zealand?

Well, it is because New Zealand doesn’t have any enemies, English is spoken there, it is very stable, and it is very far away from everything else.

Plus, the country allows wealthy individuals “to essentially buy residency”…

The nation allows emigres to essentially buy residency through investor visas, and rich Americans have poured a fortune into the country, often by acquiring palatial estates.

Billionaire hedge-fund honcho Julian Robertson owns a lodge overlooking Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown, the South Island’s luxury resort destination. Fidelity National Financial Inc. Chairman Bill Foley has a homestead in the Wairarapa region, north of Wellington, and Titanic director James Cameron bought a mansion nearby at Lake Pounui.

There has been a significant exodus of wealthy Americans to New Zealand in recent years, and once things start getting really bad there will be a steady stream of private jets taking off from locations in the U.S. and landing in that beautiful nation.

Of course not everyone plans to leave.  Luxury survival bunkers are also being constructed all over the heartland of America, but they aren’t cheap.

For example, it was being reported that a “penthouse” inside the Survival Condo in Kansas was selling for more than four million dollars…

Another shelter for the ultra-wealthy is the Survival Condo in Kansas.

It was designed to withstand a nuclear blast or nature’s worst, but is far cry from what you might expect an underground shelter to look like.

There is a cinema, a swimming pool with a water slide, a spa, a lounge, a gym and an indoor shooting range to keep occupants entertained.

But survival comes at a price.

Last year, it was reported that plush 3,600sq ft penthouses within the shelter – a former missile silo – were selling for $4.5m (£3.6m).

Needless to say, anyone outside of the top 1 percent is not going to make it into the Survival Condo.

And in order to keep the rest of us out, it has an armory that is “stocked with guns and ammo”…

Additionally, an armory stocked with guns and ammo is in place in case of an attack by non-members, and is also available for owners to practice.

The bunker is able to sustain its owners for up to five years, by raising tilapia in fish tanks and growing hydroponic vegetables under lamps.

The elite can see what so many of the rest of us can also see.

Our future looks very troubling, and it appears to be wise to get prepared for what is coming in advance.

Unfortunately, the rest of us don’t have the money to buy a luxury survival bunker or to fly to New Zealand on a private jet.  Money may not be able to buy happiness, but it can buy a pretty good escape plan.

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China has launched ahead of the United States with “several dozen successful hypersonic missile tests that Washington cannot ignore,” Missile Defense Agency commander Lieutenant General Samuel Greaves warned Tuesday.

“The Chinese have now done several dozen successful hypersonic (missile) tests… we just cannot (ignore),” Greaves briefed a group of government officials held by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

Under Secretary of Defense for Management and Engineering Michael Griffin also acknowledged that China had alarmingly carried out dozens of successful hypersonic missile tests and warned that Russia was not far behind the Chinese in hypersonic missile development.

“Hypersonic missiles [are] being developed by both China and Russia. We are concerned about both … When they have done dozens of tests we have not done that is a concern,” he said.

In August, China allegedly showed one the tests via footage from a new missile test that would likely make a mockery of US missile defense systems in battle. The experimental “waverider” vehicle, China’s first, rides the shock waves generated during hypersonic flight. It could one day carry multiple nuclear warheads to North America undetected.

According to the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA), an aerodynamic research institution in Beijing and part of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASTC), the hypersonic missile test was conducted in northwestern China.

The CAAA released a statement last month, indicating the Starry Sky-2 missile was carried into space by a solid-propellant rocket before separating.

Video of the rocket launch

#China has successfully tested its new aircraft, the Starry Sky-2, which can even be used to carry nuclear missiles at a speed never seen before. Recently China & #Russia showed the world their new toys. For whom they display it? What intention is behind that? #defense #Military pic.twitter.com/XqA2AsleZn

— Cristina Font 柯伊娜 (@cfontharo) August 7, 2018

After separation, it descended to lower altitudes as it autonomously conducted extreme turning manoeuvers, reaching Mach 5.5 (hypersonic speeds) for more than 400 seconds, and reached a top speed of Mach 6, or 7,344km/h (4,563mph), the CAAA WeChat statement said.

The test was deemed a “complete success,” stated CAAA, which posted a series of behind the scenes images of the experiment on social media. “The Starry Sky-2 flight test project was strongly innovative and technically difficult, confronting a number of cutting-edge international technical challenges.”

Although the missile is still in development stage and probably a few years out from series production, waveriders could be used to carry conventional and or nuclear warheads undetected through the world’s most advanced anti-missile defense systems.

Last month was the first time China had officially confirmed its development of “waverider” technology, though it has been working on hypersonic glide vehicles since 2014. China, Russia, and the US are the main contenders in the hypersonic race and are engaged in what some see as a new arms race based on the technology.

Earlier this year, Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US is extremely vulnerable to future attack by hypersonic missiles.

“The first, most important message I want to deliver today is that the forces under my command are fully ready to deter our adversaries and respond decisively, should deterrence ever fail. We are ready for all threats. No one should doubt this,” Gen. Hyten said in his opening statement.

However, in a follow-on conversation with Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, Hyten cautioned:

“we [US] don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon [hypersonic missiles] against us.”

Admiral Harry Harris, former head of the US Pacific Command and now the ambassador to South Korea, said in February, “China’s hypersonic weapons development outpaces ours… we’re falling behind.”

To make up for lost time, the Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin with approximately $1.5 billion in contracts this summer to develop a hypersonic missile for the Air Force.

While many believe American Hegemony is here to stay, there is a strong possibility that it could be somewhat displaced in the coming years as China gains access to hypersonic technologies.

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Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

If the world’s economies still need central bank life support to survive, they aren’t healthy–they’re barely clinging to life.

The “recovery”/Bull Market is in its 10th year, and yet central banks are still tiptoeing around as if the tiniest misstep will cause the whole shebang to shatter: what are they so afraid of? The cognitive dissonance / crazy-making is off the charts:

On the one hand, central banks are still pursuing unprecedented stimulus via historically low interest rates, liquidity and easing the creation of credit on a vast scale. Some central banks continue to buy assets such as stocks and bonds to directly prop up the “market.” (If assets don’t actually trade freely, is it even a market?)

On the other hand, we’re being told the global economy is in synchronized growth and this is the greatest economy ever in the U.S. and China.

Wait a minute: so the patient has been on life-support for 10 years and authorities are telling us the patient is now super-healthy? If the patient is so healthy, then why is he still on life support after 10 years of “recovery”? If the global economy is truly healthy, then central banks should end all their stimulus programs and let the market discover the price of credit, risk and assets.

If the economy is truly expanding organically, i.e. under its own power, then it doesn’t need the life-support of manipulated low interest rates, trillions of dollars in central bank asset purchases, trillions of dollars in backstopping, guarantees, credit swaps, etc.

If the economy were truly recovering, wouldn’t central banks have tapered their stimulus and intervention long ago? Instead, central bank stimulus skyrocketed to new highs in 2015-2017 as global markets took a slight wobble. That little slide triggered a massive central bank response, as if the patient had just suffered a cardiac arrest.

As for China’s economy being so healthy–then why are Chinese authorities expanding credit in such manic desperation? Healthy economies growing organically don’t need authorities pumping trillions of yen, yuan, euros and dollars into credit and asset markets.

So what are central banks so afraid of? Why are they still tiptoeing around in fear after 10 years of unprecedented stimulus? The answer is as obvious as the emperor’s buck-naked body: central banks know the global economy is so brittle, so fragile and so dependent on cheap credit for its survival that the slightest contraction in credit will collapse the entire system.

If the world’s economies still need central bank life support to survive, they aren’t healthy–they’re barely clinging to life. The idea that central banks can wean a sick-unto-death global economy off life support is magical thinking, and central banks know it.

If the patient isn’t getting well after 10 years on life support, he isn’t going to get well.

And so we have the travesty of a mockery of a sham of “tapering”, a gimmicky PR charade of reducing the trillions of life support by a few drops, as if the patient will leap off the gurney and run a marathon as soon as we reduce the stimulus by a few more drops. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so delusional.

It’s one or the other: if the patient is healthy, then withdraw all stimulus and let interest rates go wherever market participants take them. If the patient is actually extremely ill, then maybe we should look beyond central banks propping up a rotten, corrupt, exploitive, venal, parasitic, predatory status quo to systemic transformation.

*  *  *

My new mystery The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake is a ridiculously affordable $1.29 (Kindle) or $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free in PDF format.  My new book Money and Work Unchained is now $6.95 for the Kindle ebook and $15 for the print edition. Read the first section for free in PDF format. If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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And the saga continues…

Two days after the New York Times reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller informed President Trump’s legal team in a letter that he would accept written answers to questions about whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, Bloomberg reported Thursday that Mueller has delivered a “formula” to Trump’s lawyers for doing an in-person interview, appearing to contradict the implication that Mueller is giving up on securing an interview with the president.

As its source for the new information, Bloomberg cited an interview with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has given Donald Trump’s lawyers a proposal “that lays out a formula for doing” an interview with the president, according to his lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

“There are a few things wrong with it,” Giuliani said in an interview Thursday. He said he can’t discuss the details because “it’s just too sensitive at this point.”

If nothing else, the report confirms that Trump’s legal team is still haggling with Mueller over the terms of a possible presidential interview, a process that started more than 8 months ago. Earlier this week, leaked excerpts from an upcoming book by Watergate reporter Bob Woodward detailed an alleged episode where former Trump counsel John Dowd advised Trump to refuse the interview, saying “it’s either that or an orange jumpsuit”.

Giuliani confirmed that Trump attorney Jane Raskin is handling the negotiations with Mueller’s team.

But for now, Giuliani said, Trump lawyer Jane Raskin is going back-and-forth on interview terms with Mueller lawyer James Quarles. They talked at least once on Wednesday, he said.

“We are in active discussions, not just an exchange of letters” Giuliani said. “We are down to a couple important points.”

Giuliani said the two remaining issues are “very important to us” while declining to say what they were. If Mueller’s team won’t compromise on the key points, Giuliani, the former New York mayor, said, “I don’t think we can recommend to the president” that he do an interview.

The Times report from earlier this week specified that Mueller didn’t ask for written answers on questions pertaining to  allegations that Trump obstructed justice due to the belief that the invocation of executive privilege could complicate that pursuit.

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It appears that a new sectarian civil war is beginning to erupt in Iraq during a sensitive government transition phase, and the United States and its local allied forces in the Baghdad government are targets. 

According to early breaking reports tonight at least three mortars have struck near the US embassy’s gate in the protected ‘green zone’ at the heart of the Iraqi capital.

Though there’s currently no reports of injuries or significant damage, Western journalists on the ground say the embassy was specifically targeted by Iran-backed Shia militias. 

Video #Mortar attack on #US #embassy in #Baghdad #Iraq our sources confirm by #Iran backed #Asaeb_Ahlil_Alhaq pic.twitter.com/DgSuNRS6UR

— انتفاض قنبر E Qanbar (@eqanbar) September 6, 2018

And elsewhere in Basra, to the south, there are reports that Iran’s consulate is under siege and further that more than a dozen local Shia militia HQ offices have been torched. 

In Baghdad, regional sources indicate loud sirens are blaring at the American embassy in the aftermath of the attack. 

Early reports: Point of Origin for mortar attacks on US Embassy is Ziyouna neighborhood in Baghdad – AAH controlled area. pic.twitter.com/tR0vWEYnXk

— Michael P Pregent (@MPPregent) September 6, 2018

 

Tonight’s targeted attack comes two days after ten pro-Iran Shia militias in the country published a statement vowing to expel foreign troops and advisers by force if they didn’t immediately leave Iraq. 

“We will deal with them [foreign troops in Iraq] as occupying forces, and we will use our legitimate rights by employing all possible means to force them out of the country,” the Iraqi factions warned, adding that foreign troops were “in their sights”.

The Tuesday statement further declared there was an “Anglo-American-led dirty and dangerous conspiracy to impose a devilish coalition” on the people of Iraq which seeks to weaken the government and make it Baghdad a puppet Brett McGurk, who is the White House appointed special envoy for the anti-ISIL coalition. 

What’s happening in #Iraq tonight :
-3 mortars have landed near the US embassy’s gate in green zone #Baghdad ,no major damage.
-Unconfirmed news about Iran’s consulate being under siege by the protesters in #Basra
-About 13 Shia forces’ HQs were set on fire in Basra
…

— Nafiseh Kohnavard (@nafisehkBBC) September 6, 2018

Currently a tense tug-of-war is underway as the United States and Iran struggle to influence the formation of the next national government in Baghdad. Elsewhere in Iraq popular protests and riots are springing up in response to lack of basic services like electricity and clean water. 

Over the past days Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi has further stirred tensions by sacking key government ministers — a move interpreted by many as sectarian driven. 

Developing… 

 

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Submitted by Daniel Mitchell of Mises Wire

President Trump has proposed a one-year pay freeze for federal bureaucrats, which has reinvigorated the debate over whether compensation levels for the civil service are too lavish.

The Washington Post opines this is nothing but “government bashing,” but this chart from my former colleague Chris Edwards should be more than enough evidence to show that federal bureaucrats have a big advantage over workers in the economy’s productive sector.

And there is plenty of additional evidence that federal employment is very attractive. For instance, it’s just about impossible to get fired from a bureaucracy.

Though defenders of the civil service sometimes make the preposterous claim that nobody gets fired because bureaucrats are such good employees.

The low rate at which federal employees are fired for poor performance doesn’t prove the government accepts it but instead “could actually be a positive sign,”… A report from the Merit Systems Protection Board in effect responds to members of Congress and others who contend that federal managers don’t care, or don’t dare, to take disciplinary action because of civil service protections. “…If the agency is successful in preventing poor performance…, a small number of performance-based removals could actually be a positive sign,” MSPB said. …Of the 2.1 million federal employees in a government database…, about 10,000 are fired for either poor performance or misconduct each year. …That low rate of firing has been cited in proposals to force agencies to take action… Individual employees, too, commonly express dissatisfaction with how agencies handle poor performers among their co-workers.

I have to confess that my jaw dropped when I read this article. Maybe we should ask veterans whether they think all federal bureaucrats do a good job?

Or we can ask non-profit groups whether they think IRS bureaucrats are top-quality workers? Or ask anyone who has ever tried to navigate the federal government?

We also know that the counties where most federal bureaucrats reside are now the richest region of the entire nation.

The three richest counties in the United States with populations of 65,000 or more, when measured by their 2016 median household incomes, were all suburbs of Washington, D.C., according to data released today by the Census Bureau. Eight of the 20 wealthiest counties with populations of 65,000 or more were also suburbs of Washington, D.C.–as were 10 of the top 25. …With Falls Church City included in the 2015 data, the nation’s four wealthiest counties were D.C. suburbs.

To be fair, this data is also driven by all the high-paid lobbyists. contracts, consultants, and others who have their snouts buried in the federal trough. So the incredible wealth of the DC region is really an argument for shrinking the size and scope of the federal government.

But the bureaucracy is part of the problem.

Interestingly, even the Congressional Budget Office concluded that bureaucrats are overpaid. And CBO almost certainly understated the gap, as noted in congressional testimony.

The CBO report’s headline figure is that, on average, federal salaries and benefits are 17 percent above private-sector levels. … I would consider the CBO’s reported federal compensation premium to be on the low end… when I analyze federal employee wages using the methodology that the progressive-leaning Economic Policy Institute has used in numerous studies of state and local government salaries, I find an average federal salary premium of not 2 percent but of about 14 percent. … The CBO chose to value federal employees’ pension benefits using a 5 percent discount rate. Using that discount rate, the federal employee retirement package was found to be substantially more generous than is received by comparable private-sector employees. But…corporate pensions are not nearly as safe as federal pensions, as witnessed by pending benefit reductions for “multiemployer” defined benefit plans. Valuing federal pension benefits using a lower discount rate to better reflect their safety would find a higher overall federal compensation premium.

Notwithstanding all this evidence, the unions representing bureaucrats nonetheless try to crank out numbers showing federal employees are underpaid.

To be sure, overall compensation levels don’t tell us everything. It is important to adjust for education, skills, and other factors.

Which is why the most useful, powerful, and revealing data in this debate is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which measures voluntary quit rates by industry. If there is a lot of turnover in a sector of the economy, that suggests workers are underpaid. But if there are very few voluntary departures, that suggests workers in that part of the economy are overpaid.

And the numbers from BLS clearly show that federal bureaucrats are far less likely to leave their positions when compared to employees in the private sector.

This five-fold gap is staggering. I have lots of friends who work for the federal government. Most privately confess that they know that are making out like bandits. I think I’ll send this chart to the few holdouts.

By the way, I shared the numbers about quit rates for state and local bureaucrats back in 2011. Same story, though the compensation gap isn’t quite as large and may be driven mostly by unfunded fringe benefits.

P.S. I’m much more interested in shrinking government rather than shrinking pay levels. The correct pay for bureaucrats at the Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Energy, and Agriculture is zero. Why? Because those bureaucracies shouldn’t exist.

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Americans’ relationship with Facebook has shifted to “It’s Complicated.”

Facebook bears have been having a fantastic third quarter as the stock has wiped out more than $130 billion in market cap. And for anybody brave (or foolhardy) enough to short the FAANG heavy weight, their year was only made better by Wednesday’s Congressional testimony by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. During the hours-long ordeal (Unlike Sandberg, Dorsey attended two hearings), Senator Mark Warner’s threats of looming regulation – “Congress will have to set social media regulation” – weighed on the Nasdaq as Facebook and other major constituents sunk like a stone.

While Sandberg projected an aura of poise for the duration of her grilling by the Senate Intelligence Committee, she made several notable flubs (particularly her clumsy handling of Kamala Harris’s prodding questions about Facebook’s efforts to contain hate speech), which only furthered the market’s distress. And in the latest sign that the furor ignited earlier this year by the Cambridge Analytica scandal has yet to die down (and indeed may have permanently damaged Facebook’s brand), the Pew Research Center made the bombshell claim that one in four Facebook users have now deleted the company’s mobile app from their phones. The claim was made in a study published Wednesday.

What’s worse, that number becomes much more significant when the focus is on 18-29-year-olds – 44% of that demographic say they’ve deleted the app. Declines among older users were much lower (12%). But of course young people are the most treasured demographic for social media firms because of their reputation as trend-setters. In another sign that Cambridge Analytica has made Americans more privacy-conscious (and thus more likely to deprive Facebook of valuable user data), the study claimed that just over half of Facebook users age 18 or older – 54% – said they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months, according to Pew, which collected the survey data between May 29 and June 11. Meanwhile, 42% of users say they’ve taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more.

All told, some 74% of Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these three actions in the past year. And while Republicans and conservatives are (justifiably) more skeptical of bias exhibited by Facebook and other social media giants, the data show that both Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to have deleted Facebook’s app or slowed or stopped their usage of the platform.

To be sure, Facebook’s problems began even before the user-privacy scandal: User-engagement data collected by Cowen’s showed a significant drop in engagement during the first quarter – a sign that users are spending less and less time using Facebook. Of course, the teens have long since migrated to Snapchat and (Facebook owned) Instagram. This latest study is just another discouraging sign that one of the pioneers of the social media landscape is finally seeing its luster fade.

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Authored by Grace Gottschling via Campus Reform,

Each year, hundreds of colleges and universities across the United States assign incoming freshmen a “summer reading” book that is discussed throughout the year. 

Campus Reform reviewed the summer reading assignments from over 400 schools. While many selections focused on motivation and self-help, Social Justice was the overarching theme this year, including topics on immigration, racism, and sexuality.

While not every book assigned was overtly left-leaning, several books chosen this year explore explicitly liberal themes. This has been an ongoing trend among liberal colleges, who create mandatory programs like summer readings to communicate social justice themes to students.

The Kiss: Intimacies from Writers, edited by Brian Turner, is a collection of short stories written by several authors who recall romantic encounters from a variety of situations and locations. The Kiss has been assigned to incoming freshmen at Sierra Nevada College.

“From Sioux Falls to Khartoum, from Kyoto to Reykjavik; from the panchayat forests of India to the Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland; in taxis and at bus stops, in kitchens and sleigh beds, haystacks and airports around the globe—people are kissing one another,”  the description from publisher W.W. Norton reads. “The sublime kiss. The ambiguous kiss. The devastating kiss.” 

“A deliciously diverse anthology of essays, stories, poems, and graphic memoirs, where writers explore the deeply human act of kissing,” the description continues.

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas, follows the fictional aftermath of an unjustified police shooting of an unarmed black boy. The novel has been assigned by six schools, including the State University of New York at Brockport and Kansas State University. 

“The novel goes on to raise cogent and credible counter-arguments to the flattening narratives often presented by authorities and echoed by many media outlets in shooting cases involving young black males,” declares a review by The Atlantic. “Thomas’s novel keenly understands the dangers of defaulting to the cop/vigilante versus ‘thug’ framing device: The deceased get put on trial, rather than their killers.”

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, is a fictional account of a near-future society in which the United States has been replaced by a patriarchal theocratic regime where women’s primary focus is replenishing the waning population.

“Women are the main target of the regime’s brutality,” a review from The Guardian surmised. “Their rights and personal freedoms have been abolished. They are no longer allowed to work, to own assets or to be in relationships not sanctioned by the state. They are now categorised according to marital status and reproductive ability.”

The Handmaid’s Tale was assigned by four schools, including the University of California, Berkeley and Northwestern University.

Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, edited by Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown, is a collection of short stories by a variety of authors involved in social justice and activism. The book was created and named in honor of award winning author Octavia Butler. 

Octavia’s Brood is described by NY Journal of Books as an exploration of “current social issues such as capitalism, climate change, gentrification, immigration, etc. through the lens of science fiction and with the goal of social change.”

The stories, as described by the Journal, “suggest that science fiction or speculative fiction is indeed the ideal venue for imagining a world without war, violence, prisons, or capitalism.”

Octavia’s Brood was assigned by Western Washington University.

No Apparent Distress: A Doctor’s Coming-of-Age on the Front Lines of American Medicine, by Rachel Pearson, documents the author’s medical experiences, including her time at an abortion clinic. The book has been assigned to the incoming class at Lehigh University.

“Pearson’s inspired collective of illuminating clinical episodes immediately sparks to life with anecdotes from her early work in a female-owned and -operated abortion clinic in her 20s,” a Kirkus review states. “Her experience there as a young, bilingual patient advocate counseling Spanish-speaking women greatly broadened her perspective on women’s issues, ‘the suffering that women go through,’ and it solidified her decision to pursue a career in medicine.”

In The Country We Love: My Family Divided, by Diane Guerrero, documents Guerrero’s experience after she illegally immigrated to the United States with her family as a child. The book explores how Guerrero went from an undocumented immigrant to a famous actress serving as an Ambassador for Citizenship and Naturalization under the Obama administration. 

“Like many of the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country, her parents worked in countless low-paying menial jobs while in constant fear, knowing that they could be snatched away any time,” Publisher’s Weekly noted in its review. “They tried to obtain green cards and citizenship through legal channels, but were scammed by a con artist.” 

The autobiography was assigned by the University of Houston and the University of South Carolina, Beaufort.

USC-Beaufort explains that it assigned the book to “provide opportunities for students to gain cultural competence and understand different perspectives.”

Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family, by Amy Ellis Nutt, was assigned by three schools, including California State University, Northridge and CSU-Sacramento. The fictional novel is based on a real family’s experience raising twin boys, one of whom decided to transition to female as a child. 

“When trying to illuminate the possible biological origins of transgenderism, Ms. Nutt explains that genital formation and sexual differentiation of the brain are distinct processes that may not always correspond,” a New York Times review details. “When theorizing about this particular, beguiling case—transgenderism in one of two identical twins—she notes that even a fetus’s position in the womb can affect its hormone intake.”

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander breaks down the relationship between mass incarceration of black Americans and Jim Crow laws. Alexander is currently a visiting professor of Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary. 

“[Alexander] wrote this book for liberals like her to alert them that this system—in which people are being targeted, criminalized, stereotyped to support popular complacent consent for criminalization, incarcerated, and then denied full citizenship upon release—is a legacy to the racial caste system that was Jim Crow,” according to The New Orleans Review.

Alexander’s book has been assigned by two schools this summer, including the University of Missouri Law School, which describes the book as “controversial and provocative, arguing that the war on drugs and unequal enforcement of criminal laws have legalized old forms of discrimination regarding employment, housing, voting rights, educational opportunities, and other public benefits.”

The most commonly assigned book this year is Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which explores a black father’s advice to his young son regarding race and living as a black man in modern America. The book explores different periods of American history in which race played a key factor, such as the American Civil War, the development of historically black colleges, and modern Chicago.

“Americans have built an empire on the idea of ‘race,’ a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion,” according to Coates’ publisher, Penguin Random House. 

The book asks several questions, such as “What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?”

Topping the list, Between the World and Me has been chosen for the summer reading by eight colleges this summer, including the University of Vermont, Pacific College, Augustana University, and Westfield State University.

“Coates’s book offers a timely exploration of both the lived experience of race and the structural consequences of racism, weaving together individual experiences and broad insights,” the University of Vermont explains. “As such, the book models critical inquiry, offering students and all of us at UVM an example of what it means to pursue ideas and their consequences, drawing on multiple disciplinary perspectives.”

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