Full AspenCat Catalog

How rough is too rough? Rodney King is an unfamiliar name for those growing up today, but the ongoing conversation concerning police brutality is one they know all-too well. This collection deep-dives into police training procedure, what constitutes excessive force, and what happens when the community disagrees with the police and the justice system. Relevant topics covered in this balanced anthology include the 1992 L.A. riots and the 2014 outcry...

When Zach, a white boy from Philly, moves to a racially divided town, he befriends Black siblings Capri and Justin, but when the police murder one of their friends, the town erupts into an all-out war, with Capri, Justin, and Zach caught in the middle.

"High-profile cases, such as the killings of George Floyd and Daunte Wright, have sparked widespread debates on police use of police force, when it is justified, and how it can be regulated"--

Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens - and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander...

Matthew Horace was an officer at the federal, state, and local level for 28 years working in every state in the country. Yet it was after seven years of service when Horace found himself face-down on the ground with a gun pointed at his head by a white fellow officer, that he fully understood the racism seething within America's police departments. Using gut-wrenching reportage, on-the-ground research, and personal accounts garnered by interviews...

"In 2020, police killings caught on bystander video placed US police under scrutiny and spurred activists to call for reform. Learn the history and factors behind police brutality in the US, especially in Black communities"--

"In an alternate 2020 timeline, Al Gore won the 2000 election and declared a War on Climate Change rather than a War on Terror. For twenty years, Democrats have controlled all three branches of government, enacting carbon-cutting schemes that never made it to a vote in our world. Green infrastructure projects have transformed U.S. cities into lush paradises (for the wealthy, white neighborhoods, at least), and the Bureau of Carbon Regulation levies...

In Jason Mott's Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and urgent: since Mott's novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. As these characters' stories build and build...

"As a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement, Shaun King has become one of the most recognizable and powerful voices on the front lines of civil rights in our time. His commitment to reforming the justice system and making America a more equitable place has brought challenges and triumphs, soaring victories and crushing defeats. Throughout his wide-ranging activism, King's commentary remains rooted in both exhaustive research and abundant passion....

"When Freddie Gray was arrested for possessing an 'illegal knife' in April 2015, he was, by eyewitness accounts that video evidence later confirmed, treated 'roughly' as police loaded him into a vehicle. By the end of his trip in the police van, Gray was in a coma he would never recover from. In the wake of a long history of police abuse in Baltimore, this killing felt like a final straw--it led to a week of protests and then five days described alternately...