No Escape

December 1, 2021

In Wastelands, award-winning novelist Addison turns to nonfiction to profile a rural community so angered by the damage done by pollution-spewing Big Agriculture that it sued the worst offender--and won. New York Times best-selling author Bremmer sets us on a Collision Course, predicting that more pandemics, increased climate-change complications, and life-altering new technologies will inevitably be a part of our future (100,000-copy first printing). Distinguished Stanford political scientist Fukuyama, perhaps best known forThe End of History and the Last Man, now examines Liberalism and Its Discontents at a time of political upheaval (75,000-copy first printing). "Corner Office" columnist at theNew York Times, Gelles calls General Electric CEO Jack Welch The Man Who Broke Capitalism, indicting him for the harm done by his brand of capitalism and showing how some companies are trying to undo it with different strategies. Award-winning journalist Hill ( BET News) and New York Times best-selling author Brewster (The Century) join forces in Seen and Unseen, considering videos like those showing the killing of George Floyd and the harassment of Christian Cooper to investigate how technology has impacted our conversations about race (100,000-copy first printing). Photographer Palley's Into the Inferno recalls eight years spent documenting California's raging wildfires, showing that the state's fire season now lasts year-round and calling for climate action (see also poet Kevin Goodan's Spot Weather Forecast). Former president of the Uyghur Humans Rights Project and now a commissioner for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Turkel uses memoir in No Escape to reveal China's ongoing repression of the Uyghur people.

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March 28, 2022
“I will always speak up, even if it is through my own tears,” writes human rights lawyer Turkel in this harrowing account of how China is combining “dystopian-level AI spying” and “Chairman Mao–style totalitarianism” to suppress his fellow Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang province. Contending that the 2017 roundup of nearly 17,000 people for such offenses as “reciting the Koran during a funeral” was the “first-known instance of a computer-generated mass incarceration,” Turkel catalogues a litany of horrors endured by those who have been sent to “reeducation camps,” including forced sterilizations and abortions, torture, and rape. He also delves into the history of Xinjiang, noting that in the early 1950s, Chinese authorities began importing Han settlers into the mineral-rich region, seizing farms and homes from local Uyghurs. When they resisted, the government launched a campaign to erase the Uyghurs’ “centuries-old ethno-national identity, religion, and cultural heritage” and, after 9/11, began labeling all Uyghurs as “potential Al Qaeda terrorists.” Turkel, whose elderly parents remain in Xinjiang, describes the mechanics of Beijing’s all-encompassing surveillance system in the province and documents links between forced labor camps and international brands including Nike, Calvin Klein, and Apple. Suffused with visceral details and righteous anger, this is a devastating plea for help. Agent: Howard Yoon, Ross Yoon Agency.

April 2, 2022

Turkel, currently appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), has written a matter-of-fact yet devastating account of the ongoing human rights abuses and genocide of the Uyghur people of the Xinjiang region of China. The author combines a description of his family's experiences within China, his successful application for asylum in America, and his own path from student to high-powered human rights lawyer in Washington, DC. He also includes information from researchers and journalists who have publicized the measures taken against Uyghurs in China. These measures include mass incarceration, forced sterilization, sexual assault, torture, and the systematic destruction of Uyghur religious, cultural, and social structures. Turkel details the features of a high-tech surveillance state, where every individual is required to submit samples of DNA and biometric information, and undergo continual monitoring by camera, phone, and even live-in human surveillance. The final chapters outline the author's push for the Trump administration to recognize the genocide of the Uyghur people in early 2021, efforts which eventually led to the bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act signed by President Biden at the end of 2021. VERDICT An important, harrowing overview of the ongoing human rights crisis in Xinjiang, China.--Rebecca Brody

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.