Empires were abolished and replaced by a global arrangement enforced by the U.S. Navy. With all the world's oceans safe for the first time in history, markets and resources were made available for everyone. Enemies became partners.We think of this system as normal - it is not. We live in an artificial world on borrowed time.In The Accidental Superpower, international strategist Peter Zeihan examines how the hard rules of geography are eroding the American commitment to free trade; how much of the planet is aging into a mass retirement that will enervate markets and capital supplies; and how, against all odds, it is the ever-ravenous American economy that - alone among the developed nations - is rapidly approaching energy independence. Combined, these factors are doing nothing less than overturning the global system and ushering in a new (dis)order. For most, that is a disaster-in-waiting, but not for the Americans. The shale revolution allows Americans to sidestep an increasingly dangerous energy market. Only the United States boasts a youth population large enough to escape the sucking maw of global aging. Most important, geography will matter more than ever in a de-globalizing world, and America's geography is simply sublime.

    Deadly Force discusses: Understand the legal and ethical issues surrounding use of lethal force by private citizens Learn about the social and psychological issues surrounding use of lethal force in defense of self or others Preparation and mitigation--steps the responsible armed citizen can/should take "After forty years as a practicing criminal defense attorney, I know that what Mas says, teaches, and writes is the best, state-of-the-art knowledge you can get." ~Jeff Weiner, Former President, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

    government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise – and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower.For more than forty years, the United States has played an indispensable role helping the Chinese government build a booming economy, develop its scientific and military capabilities, and take its place on the world stage, in the belief that China's rise will bring us cooperation, diplomacy, and free trade. But what if the "China Dream" is to replace us, just as America replaced the British Empire, without firing a shot?Based on interviews with Chinese defectors and newly declassified, previously undisclosed national security documents, The Hundred-Year Marathon reveals China's secret strategy to supplant the United States as the world's dominant power, and to do so by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. Michael Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker who has served in senior national security positions in the U.S. government since the days of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, draws on his decades of contact with the "hawks" in China's military and intelligence agencies and translates their documents, speeches, and books to show how the teachings of traditional Chinese statecraft underpin their actions. He offers an inside look at how the Chinese really view America and its leaders – as barbarians who will be the architects of their own demise.Pillsbury also explains how the U.S. government has helped – sometimes unwittingly and sometimes deliberately – to make this "China Dream" come true, and he calls for the United States to implement a new, more competitive strategy toward China as it really is, and not as we might wish it to be. The Hundred-Year Marathon is a wake-up call as we face the greatest national security challenge of the twenty-first century.

    It is the Progressive view that is taught in our schools, that is preached by Hollywood, and that shapes the policies of the Obama administration. If America is a force for inequality and injustice in the world, its power deserves to be diminished; if traditional America is based on oppression and theft, then traditional America must be reformed—and the federal government can do the reforming.In America: Imagine a World without Her D'Souza offers a passionate and sharply reasoned defense of America, knocking down every important accusation made by Progressives against our country. In this book, you'll learn:-Why it is a pernicious myth that English colonists "stole" America from the Indians or that American settlers and soldiers "stole" the southwest from Mexico-Why the descendants of slaves—and the successive waves of immigrants to the United States—are better off here than in their old countries-How America, more than any other country, is based on rewarding the enterprise and hard-work of the common man-How traditional American virtues sustain prosperity and freedom, and Progressive arguments about "liberation" and "justice" undercut them-How Progressive demagoguery about "inequality" expands the power of government and its grasp on the taxpayer's wallet-Why we should fear the Progressive agenda of "reform" which is in fact an agenda of totalitarian control of the state over the individual-Why national decline is a choice--a choice that it is still not too late to reverseProvocative in its analysis, stunning in its conclusions, Dinesh D'Souza's America will be the most talked about book of the year.

    The next president declared upon Nixon’s resignation “our long national nightmare is over”—but then congressional investigators exposed the CIA for assassinating foreign leaders. The collapse of the South Vietnamese government rendered moot the sacrifice of some 58,000 American lives. The economy was in tatters. And as Americans began thinking about their nation in a new way—as one more nation among nations, no more providential than any other—the pundits declared that from now on successful politicians would be the ones who honored this chastened new national mood.Ronald Reagan never got the message. Which was why, when he announced his intention to challenge President Ford for the 1976 Republican nomination, those same pundits dismissed him—until, amazingly, it started to look like he just might win. He was inventing the new conservative political culture we know now, in which a vision of patriotism rooted in a sense of American limits was derailed in America’s Bicentennial year by the rise of the smiling politician from Hollywood. Against a backdrop of melodramas from the Arab oil embargo to Patty Hearst to the near-bankruptcy of America’s greatest city, The Invisible Bridge asks the question: what does it mean to believe in America? To wave a flag—or to reject the glibness of the flag wavers?

    In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming.Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age government, political parties, the media.The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world.Originally published in 2014, this updated edition of The Revolt of the Public includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump's improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit and concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.

    These three documents are the basis for our entire way of life. Every citizen should have a copy.

    How many people in America today are truly well-versed in the history of the Second Amendment, and why it was included in the Bill of Rights? In HANDS OFF MY GUN, Dana Loesch explains why the Founding Fathers included the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights, and argues that "gun control" regulations throughout history have been used to keep minority populations under control. She also contends that current arguments in favor of gun control are primarily based on emotions and fear. This narrative is a must-read for every Second Amendment supporter. Dana Loesch is a determined and fierce advocate for those rights and shouts out: hands off my gun!

    Standing a few feet from President Obama, I warned my fellow citizens of the dangers facing our country and called for a return to the principles that made America great.Many Americans heard and responded, but our nation’s decline has continued. Today the danger is greater than ever before, and I have never shared a more urgent message than I do now. Our growing debt and deteriorating morals have driven us far from the founders’ intent. We’ve made very little progress in basic education. Obamacare threatens our health, liberty, and financial future. Media elitism and political correctness are out of control. Worst of all, we seem to have lost our ability to discuss important issues calmly and respectfully regardless of party affiliation or other differences. As a doctor rather than a politician, I care about what works, not whether someone has an (R) or a (D) after his or her name. We have to come together to solve our problems. Knowing that the future of my grandchildren is in jeopardy because of reckless spending, godless government, and mean-spirited attempts to silence critics left me no choice but to write this book. I have endeavored to propose a road out of our decline, appealing to every American’s decency and common sense. If each of us sits back and expects someone else to take action, it will soon be too late. But with your help, I firmly believe that America may once again be “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Sincerely, Ben Carson

    Avert your eyes from this dangerous extremist, citizen! Government is composed of wise public servants who innocently pursue the common good! In Real Dissent, Tom Woods demolishes some of the toughest critics of libertarianism in his trademark way. In doing so he strays beyond what he calls the index card of allowable opinion, the narrow range within which the media and political classes permit debate to take place in America. Should 40% or 35% of our income be taxed? That's the kind of debate the New York Times prefers. Should our income be taxed at all? Now that's out of bounds, citizen! In foreign policy, Americans are permitted to choose between bombing a despised country or starving its people to death. You favor peace? Why, you must be an "extremist"! On the Federal Reserve, the debate is over which policy the Fed should pursue. But what if the Fed is itself the problem? No answer, because the question isn't raised. Real Dissent is organized into ten parts: Part I: War and Propaganda Part II: Capitalism and Anti-Capitalism Part III: Libertarianism Attacked, and My Replies Part IV: Ron Paul and Forbidden Truths Part V: End the Fed Part VI: History and Liberty Part VII: When Libertarians Go Wrong [on people who don't quite get their own philosophy] Part VIII: Books You May Have Missed Part IX: Talking Liberty: Selected Tom Woods Show Interviews Part X: Back to Basics Afterword: How I Evaded the Gatekeepers of Approved Opinion The index card of allowable opinion forces Americans into narrow and pointless debates, and closes off discussion of plausible and humane alternatives. For the sake of American liberty, it’s time we set that thing on fire. This book is a match. PRAISE FOR TOM WOODS: “During my presidential campaigns, Tom Woods wrote some of the most effective replies to some of my unkindest critics.... "Real Dissent is great fun to read, but also filled with useful debating points that will come in handy as you make the case for the free society with friends and family. Over the years I have worked together closely with Tom, one of the libertarian movement’s brightest and most prolific scholars, and I am delighted to commend his new book to you. You will enjoy it, and profit from it.” Ron Paul, former U.S. Congressman “The smartest guy in the room.” Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, FOX News “Tom Woods is one of my dearest allies in the struggle against wrong-headed and dangerous economic policy.” Peter Schiff “Tom Woods has written some great stuff over the years, and he's contributed to the education of a lot of people, including myself.” David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, 1981-1985 About the Author Thomas E. Woods Jr. is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and host of The Tom Woods Show, a Monday-through-Friday podcast (at TomWoodsRadio.com). He has appeared on CNBC, FOX News, MSNBC, C-SPAN, FOX Business, Bloomberg Television, and many other outlets, and has been a guest on hundreds of radio programs. Tom is the New York Times betselling author of 12 books, including Meltdown (on the financial crisis) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.

    Drawing on his experience as one of the foremost statesmen of the modern era—advising presidents, traveling the world, observing and shaping the central foreign policy events of recent decades—Kissinger now reveals his analysis of the ultimate challenge for the twenty-first century: how to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historical perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism.There has never been a true “world order,” Kissinger observes. For most of history, civilizations defined their own concepts of order. Each considered itself the center of the world and envisioned its distinct principles as universally relevant. China conceived of a global cultural hierarchy with the Emperor at its pinnacle. In Europe, Rome imagined itself surrounded by barbarians; when Rome fragmented, European peoples refined a concept of an equilibrium of sovereign states and sought to export it across the world. Islam, in its early centuries, considered itself the world’s sole legitimate political unit, destined to expand indefinitely until the world was brought into harmony by religious principles. The United States was born of a conviction about the universal applicability of democracy—a conviction that has guided its policies ever since.Now international affairs take place on a global basis, and these historical concepts of world order are meeting. Every region participates in questions of high policy in every other, often instantaneously. Yet there is no consensus among the major actors about the rules and limits guiding this process, or its ultimate destination. The result is mounting tension.Grounded in Kissinger’s deep study of history and his experience as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, World Order guides readers through crucial episodes in recent world history. Kissinger offers a unique glimpse into the inner deliberations of the Nixon administration’s negotiations with Hanoi over the end of the Vietnam War, as well as Ronald Reagan’s tense debates with Soviet Premier Gorbachev in Reykjavík. He offers compelling insights into the future of U.S.–China relations and the evolution of the European Union, and examines lessons of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking readers from his analysis of nuclear negotiations with Iran through the West’s response to the Arab Spring and tensions with Russia over Ukraine, World Order anchors Kissinger’s historical analysis in the decisive events of our time.Provocative and articulate, blending historical insight with geopolitical prognostication, World Order is a unique work that could come only from a lifelong policymaker and diplomat.

    Based on several years of ethnographic research in conflict zones around the world, it demonstrates that everyday elements - such as the expatriates' social habits and usual approaches to understanding their areas of operation - strongly influence peacebuilding effectiveness. Individuals from all over the world and all walks of life share numerous practices, habits, and narratives when they serve as interveners in conflict zones. These common attitudes and actions enable foreign peacebuilders to function in the field, but they also result in unintended consequences that thwart international efforts. Certain expatriates follow alternative modes of thinking and acting, often with notable results, but they remain in the minority. Through an in-depth analysis of the interveners' everyday life and work, this book proposes innovative ways to better help host populations build a sustainable peace.

    Maybe, that’s why in the presidential election of 2012, more people did not vote than voted for either candidate. We, the people, must realize we hold the power through our one vote. If we do not exercise that power, we have no right to complain!In One Vote, Dr. Ben Carson makes an urgent, nonpartisan, and unbiased plea for every American citizen to exercise the power of their vote in every election. This convenient and easy-to-use book will give you everything you need to become an informed voter. After reading this book, you will know how to ask the right questions about candidates, parties, and voting records; find the candidates and political parties that coincide with your values; locate your own senator and congressman; request information from your representatives; discover what bills your representatives have sponsored; and uncover how your representatives have voted in the past.One Vote can help you make sure your voice is heard.

    Drawing on a wide range of examples, from the sordid history of U.S. involvement with Cuba to the sanctions on Iran, he details how America's rhetoric of freedom and human rights so often diverges from its actions. He delves deep into the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel-Palestine, providing unexpected and nuanced insights into the workings of imperial power on our increasingly chaotic planet. And, in a new afterword, he addresses the election of Donald Trump and what it shows about American society.

    How could she talk to the boy she liked without making a fool of herself? Would she find the right shoes to wear to the high school party? She had heard the old stories about World War II, when neighbor turned against neighbor, but she never gave them a second thought. That had all happened ages ago and she was living in a modern Yugoslavian city were Serbs and Muslims were close friends. Then Yugoslavia started to break apart, the national army turned its guns against its own people and Jasmina had to grow up fast. The River Runs Salt, Runs Sweet is a young woman’s powerful and inspiring memoir of love, loss and survival during The Bosnian War. The innocent paid the greatest price in Bosnia. More than half of the four million residents in Bosnia became refugees, an estimated 100,000 people were killed and 20,000-50,000 women were raped, many of them repeatedly. The Bosnians didn’t ask for NATO or UN troops—just the means to defend themselves from genocide so they didn’t have to fight tanks with old hunting rifles. Jasmina wrote her story to bear witness to what happened to her country and to the people she loved and lost. But as she wrote, she came to understand that her story was about much more. Everyone experiences loss. Everyone, even in peacetime, loses loved ones. Everyone feels jostled or even violated by events beyond their control. Everyone suffers the losses of disillusionment and betrayal, sooner or later. As she thought about the things that kept her going in the worst of times, Jasmina began to understand that her story was about more than Bosnia. It was about how we manage to endure, to support one another and to recover from the most difficult of trials. “My losses happened to come all at once—personally, physically and emotionally. I lost some of my faith in humanity when I discovered that people who were your best friends one day could conspire to destroy you the next. And there were more losses beyond that. Ultimately, I lost almost everything that many of us would call a normal life. Yet here I am, on the road back not only to a normal life, but perhaps a happy one...” There are many who have endured the suffering Jasmina experienced as a young woman, but survival is our most basic instinct. What sets her apart is that in the midst of genocide, her humanity survived. And in her remarkable story, we can find lessons and inspiration to help us persevere when we encounter turbulent times of our own.

    Complete, easy to read, no jargon, well documented, and gives a fascinating look at the raw decay of culture and economy now at work in America. It also provides a beautifully described explanation of the lasting principles of prosperity and constitutional freedoms that must be restored relatively quickly. The Naked Socialist strips away the fakery, the false hopes, the hollow dreams, and the meaningless promises that socialists have foisted on countless millions---not just for the present, but over thousands of years. With clear, brief, and step-by-step examples and anecdotes, the author explains what socialism is, where it came from, how it works, how to recognize it, and why it always destroys its host nation. You will learn that the Seven Pillars of Socialism are not at all new, but a phenomenon that first appeared more than 6,000 years ago---and why socialism managed to mushroom in nations and cultures right up into today’s current events. The Naked Socialist is divided into five parts: 1) Gaining an understanding of what socialism is, 2) How it has appeared in human history, 3) The miracle that stopped socialism, 4) The corruption of that miracle, and, 5) The steps to return that miracle to America and the rest of the world today. Included throughout the book are several questions to teach, test and emphasize important points so that students of freedom may see where this nation needs to move to regain its lost liberties. The Naked Socialist fulfills an urgent need to answer such questions as, • How much of the U.S. Constitution has been replaced with socialism? • What is socialism, and why does it eventually ruin everything it touches? • How did the Founding Fathers specifically make socialism illegal? • How did socialism destroy Rome, the ancient Inca, Jamestown, and Plymouth? Are these same patterns of demise at work today? • Which U.S. presidents socialized America, and what steps did they take to do it? Are these reversible? • How is socialism hurting other nations around the globe? • What are the best examples of socialism in action today? • What are the Seven Pillars of Socialism? • How can people learn to recognize socialism in their midst, or, learn if they're thinking like a socialist? • What are the 46 goals of socialism? • What will it take to eradicate socialism once and for all? The study of freedom breathes hope and encouragement into all things---it sheds light into the dark corners of deception and conspiracy, showing that truth is the only authentic “transparency.” Once socialism is stripped naked, those badly needed answers to restore freedom will materialize for everyone’s benefit. Find those answers, plus hope and courage, in the pages of The Naked Socialist.

    There is great hope for Malaysia if many more Hannahs could be replicated in politics.Dr. Daniel HoSenior Pastor, DUMC, Petaling JayaHannah’s story grips you with its refreshing honesty. From finding God to rediscovering her confidence, to the miracle of her marriage proposal and her amazing journey into politics, it speaks about God. It fired me to pray for such a generation to rise up and rebuild our land! It will inspire you to always seek God’s best in the face of many “good” options; for it is in surrender to Him that the best will be given to us.Dr. Philip LynSenior Pastor, Skyline SIB, Kota KinabaluHannah Yeoh Tseow Suan is the Speaker of the Selangor State Legislative Assembly and State Assemblyman for Subang Jaya, Selangor. Hannah won the N31 state seat in the General Elections 2008 as a DAP candidate at the age of 29. She was elected as the Speaker at the age of 34, making her the first woman and youngest Speaker in Malaysia. She obtained her Bachelor of Laws from University of Tasmania. She is married to Ramachandran M, an IT entrepreneur. They are now proud parents of two baby girls Shay Adora Ram and Kayleigh Imani Ram. The couple is passionate about nation-building and seeks to inspire Malaysians to play their respective parts in establishing a righteous nation free from corruption and racial discrimination.

    It popularized the phrase "The Man in the Arena", as a person who is heavily involved in a situation that requires courage, skill, or tenacity, as opposed to someone sitting on the side-lines and watching: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds …” Presidents John F. Kennedy an Richard Nixon quoted from "The Man in the Arena" in their speeches.

    Those fighting such stereotypes have countered with a portrait of Islam's medieval "Golden Age," marked by rationality, tolerance, and even proto-secularism. How can we understand Islamic history, culture, and thought beyond this dichotomy?In this magisterial cultural and intellectual history, Thomas Bauer reconsiders classical and modern Islam by tracing differing attitudes toward ambiguity. Over a span of many centuries, he explores the tension between one strand that aspires to annihilate all uncertainties and establish absolute, uncontestable truths and another, competing tendency that looks for ways to live with ambiguity and accept complexity. Bauer ranges across cultural and linguistic ambiguities, considering premodern Islamic textual and cultural forms from law to Quranic exegesis to literary genres alongside attitudes toward religious minorities and foreigners. He emphasizes the relative absence of conflict between religious and secular discourses in classical Islamic culture, which stands in striking contrast to both present-day fundamentalism and much of European history. Bauer shows how Islam's encounter with the modern West and its demand for certainty helped bring about both Islamicist and secular liberal ideologies that in their own ways rejected ambiguity--and therefore also their own cultural traditions.Awarded the prestigious Leibniz Prize, A Culture of Ambiguity not only reframes a vast range of Islamic history but also offers an interdisciplinary model for investigating the tolerance of ambiguity across cultures and eras.

    Their dreams are straightforward: with more money, they can improve their children's lives. But the reality of their experiences is often harsh, and structural barriers—particularly those rooted in immigration policies and gender inequities—prevent many from reaching their economic goals.Sacrificing Families offers a first-hand look at Salvadoran transnational families, how the parents fare in the United States, and the experiences of the children back home. It captures the tragedy of these families' daily living arrangements, but also delves deeper to expose the structural context that creates and sustains patterns of inequality in their well-being. What prevents these parents from migrating with their children? What are these families' experiences with long-term separation? And why do some ultimately fare better than others?As free trade agreements expand and nation-states open doors widely for products and profits while closing them tightly for refugees and migrants, these transnational families are not only becoming more common, but they are living through lengthier separations. Leisy Abrego gives voice to these immigrants and their families and documents the inequalities across their experiences.

    Author and historian Chris DeRose chronicles history’s most epic Presidential Royal Rumble, which culminated in a multi-front effort against Lincoln’s reelection bid, but not before:     * John Tyler engaged in shuttle diplomacy between President Buchanan and the new Confederate Government. He chaired the Peace Convention of 1861, the last great hope for a political resolution to the crisis. When it failed, Tyler joined the Virginia Secession Convention, voted to leave the Union, and won election to the Confederate Congress.     * Van Buren, who had schemed to deny Lincoln the presidency, supported him in his efforts after Fort Sumter, and thwarted Franklin Pierce's attempt at a meeting of the ex-Presidents to undermine Lincoln.     * Millard Fillmore hosted Lincoln and Mary Todd on their way to Washington, initially supported the war effort, offered critical advice to keep Britain at bay, but turned on Lincoln over emancipation.      * Franklin Pierce, talked about as a Democratic candidate in 1860 and ’64, was openly hostile to Lincoln and supportive of the South, an outspoken critic of Lincoln especially on civil liberties. After Vicksburg, when Jefferson Davis’s home was raided, a secret correspondence between Pierce and the Confederate President was revealed.     * James Buchanan, who had left office as seven states had broken away from the Union, engaged in a frantic attempt to vindicate his administration, in part by tying himself to Lincoln and supporting the war, arguing that his successor had simply followed his policies.      How Abraham Lincoln battled against his predecessors to preserve the Union and later to put an end to slavery is a thrilling tale of war waged at the top level of power.

    Crackling with caustic wit and insight, no aspect of American life is safe from Jimmy's hilarious scrutiny. He gets to the heart of the issues: why Republicans should support gay marriage or why the President shouldn't have Secret Security until the country has gun control, bringing clarity and hilarity to the incoherent noise of our punditocracy. This outrageously entertaining manifesto is an excellent resource for those who have survived long arguments during family dinners. And in a media environment dominated by corporate interests, Jimmy's take-no-prisoners approach is fearless: going after both political parties, and all corners of mainstream news. A David against an army of Goliaths. Equal measures of silliness and spleen-venting, Your Country IsJust Not That Into You is the most oddly uplifting political book ofthe year.

    Therefore, to survive economically, our middle class needs and deserves a supplementary source of nonlabor income. To meet this need, Barnes proposes to give every American a share of the wealth we own together starting with our air and financial infrastructure. These shares would pay dividends of several thousand dollars per year money that wouldn t be welfare or wealth redistribution but legitimate property income."

    security policy scarcely changed from the Bush to the Obama administration? National Security and Double Government offers a disquieting answer. Michael J. Glennon challenges the myth that U.S. security policy is still forged by America's visible, Madisonian institutions - thePresident, Congress, and the courts. Their roles, he argues, have become largely illusory. Presidential control is now nominal, congressional oversight is dysfunctional, and judicial review is negligible. The book details the dramatic shift in power that has occurred from the Madisonian institutionsto a concealed Trumanite network - the several hundred managers of the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies who are responsible for protecting the nation and who have come to operate largely immune from constitutional and electoral restraints. Reform efforts facedaunting obstacles. Remedies within this new system of double government require the hollowed-out Madisonian institutions to exercise the very power that they lack. Meanwhile, reform initiatives from without confront the same pervasive political ignorance within the polity that has given rise tothis duality. The book sounds a powerful warning about the need to resolve this dilemma-and the mortal threat posed to accountability, democracy, and personal freedom if double government persists. This paperback version features an Afterword that addresses the emerging danger posed by populistauthoritarianism rejecting the notion that the security bureaucracy can or should be relied upon to block it.

    This book starts with the notion of potential outcomes, each corresponding to the outcome that would be realized if a subject were exposed to a particular treatment or regime. In this approach, causal effects are comparisons of such potential outcomes. The fundamental problem of causal inference is that we can only observe one of the potential outcomes for a particular subject. The authors discuss how randomized experiments allow us to assess causal effects and then turn to observational studies. They lay out the assumptions needed for causal inference and describe the leading analysis methods, including, matching, propensity-score methods, and instrumental variables. Many detailed applications are included, with special focus on practical aspects for the empirical researcher.

    Drug running. False flag ops. A shadow paramilitary global network. Synthetic wars. CIA-NATO: A darker truth. Operation Gladio Plan B: Murder. OG 68—a k a Greg McPhearson—no longer works for the company. The hunter has now become prey. He knows this beast: what created him and shattered his soul. Until Mai. When he opened the door to her three years ago, he opened what soul he had left. Yet no amount of pride or power, he discovers—too late—can ever replace one precious breath … When a sting is called off at the last minute by his FBI bosses per order of the CIA, Special Agent Ryan Marcello decides to do some digging. He calls in senior analyst Elsie Simon, expert in the Turkey-Central Asian-Caucasus nexus, to help track down the high-level target with ties to ruthless power players in a global narcotics-terrorism ring. Every lead and each new suspect brings them that much closer to home. With Elsie’s help, and at risk to their lives, the two begin their own investigation … The murdered son of a U.S. mogul leads to the hiring of Ryan and Elsie, who are used and then trapped in a byzantine scheme of retribution: of black ops within black ops, trails gone cold, kidnappings, blackmail, unexplained murders … a plot that extends from Russia and Azerbaijan to Cambodia, Vietnam, and deep inside the Deep State. In a world where reality now stands on its head, “my enemy’s enemy is my enemy”—and for his final mission, no one would be spared … the Gladio would be acting alone ...

    She unravels the multi-generational blood, intermarriage, and protégé relationships that have confined national influence to a privileged cluster of people. These families and individuals recycle their power through elected office and private channels in Washington, DC.All the Presidents' Bankers sheds new light on pivotal historic events—such as why, after the Panic of 1907, America's dominant bankers convened to fashion the Federal Reserve System; how J. P. Morgan's ambitions motivated President Wilson during World War I; how Chase and National City Bank chairmen worked secretly with President Roosevelt to rescue capitalism during the Great Depression while J.P. Morgan Jr. invited Roosevelt's son yachting; and how American financiers collaborated with President Truman to construct the World Bank and IMF after World War II.Prins divulges how, through the Cold War and Vietnam era, presidents and bankers pushed America's superpower status and expansion abroad, while promoting broadly democratic values and social welfare at home. But from the 1970s, Wall Street's rush to secure Middle East oil profits altered the nature of political-financial alliances. Bankers' profit motive trumped heritage and allegiance to public service, while presidents lost control over the economy—as was dramatically evident in the financial crisis of 2008.This unprecedented history of American power illuminates how the same financiers retained their authoritative position through history, swaying presidents regardless of party affiliation. All the Presidents' Bankers explores the alarming global repercussions of a system lacking barriers between public office and private power. Prins leaves us with an ominous choice: either we break the alliances of the power elite, or they will break us.

    invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. It is an intriguing account of a war in progress, as seen through the eyes of a military theorist able to anticipate events with an almost prophetic degree of accuracy. Throughout the book, 4GW theory is defined, described, and refined as events in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places demonstrate the theory’s utility in making sense of current events and predicting future ones. The inevitable failure of the New Iraqi Army and the U.S.-installed al-Maliki government is explained years in advance, as is the rise of the Islamic State and other 4th Generation forces presently battling for power in post-occupation Iraq. Lind also makes an ominous, but compelling case for the gradual spread of 4th Generation chaos and the decline of the state throughout the world, including in the United States of America. Featuring a Foreword by the brilliant Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld, On War is a fascinating book that is a must-read for every military professional, wargamer, and amateur student of the art of war. In one of the key passages of the book, Lind writes: “4th Generation war is the greatest change since the Peace of Westphalia, because it marks the end of the state’s monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries are fighting non-state opponents, and almost always, the state is losing.” William S. Lind is one of the most significant and influential military theorists on the planet. The author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook and a founder of 4th Generation War theory, Mr. Lind is known and respected by military personnel around the world.

    Cohesive insurgent groups produce more effective war-fighting forces and are more credible negotiators; organizational cohesion shapes both the duration of wars and their ultimate resolution. In Networks of Rebellion, Paul Staniland explains why insurgent leaders differ so radically in their ability to build strong organizations and why the cohesion of armed groups changes over time during conflicts. He outlines a new way of thinking about the sources and structure of insurgent groups, distinguishing among integrated, vanguard, parochial, and fragmented groups.Staniland compares insurgent groups, their differing social bases, and how the nature of the coalitions and networks within which these armed groups were built has determined their discipline and internal control. He examines insurgent groups in Afghanistan, 1975 to the present day, Kashmir (1988-2003), Sri Lanka from the 1970s to the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, and several communist uprisings in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The initial organization of an insurgent group depends on the position of its leaders in prewar political networks. These social bases shape what leaders can and cannot do when they build a new insurgent group. Counterinsurgency, insurgent strategy, and international intervention can cause organizational change. During war, insurgent groups are embedded in social ties that determine they how they organize, fight, and negotiate; as these ties shift, organizational structure changes as well.

    The standard account credits founders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott with defining and then leading the campaign for women's suffrage. In her provocative new history, Lisa Tetrault demonstrates that Stanton, Anthony, and their peers gradually created and popularized this origins story during the second half of the nineteenth century in response to internal movement dynamics as well as the racial politics of memory after the Civil War. The founding mythology that coalesced in their speeches and writings--most notably Stanton and Anthony's "History of Woman Suffrage"--provided younger activists with the vital resource of a usable past for the ongoing struggle, and it helped consolidate Stanton and Anthony's leadership against challenges from the grassroots and rival suffragists. As Tetrault shows, while this mythology has narrowed our understanding of the early efforts to champion women's rights, the myth of Seneca Falls itself became an influential factor in the suffrage movement. And along the way, its authors amassed the first archive of feminism and literally invented the modern discipline of women's history.

    The experience of the impossible peaked at the end of the last century—politically, sexually, economically, and ecologically. The dream of progress became the trauma of reality, and confidence in better outcomes waned. Yet the connectivity and collectivity of social movements, of the fragile, unlikely webs of an alternative notion of existence, keep materializing—a haunting hope, dense in relationships, suggesting a more convivial, relational world.Catherine Keller brings process, feminist, and ecological theologies into conversation with continental philosophy, the quantum entanglements of a “participatory universe,” and the writings of Walt Whitman, Alfred North Whitehead, and Judith Butler to develop a “theopoetics” for all relations. Global movements, personal embroilments, and the inextricable relationship of humans and nonhumans—these phenomena, in their unsettling togetherness, are exceeding our capacities to know, grasp, and manage. By staging a series of encounters between the relational and the apophatic, the inseparable and the nonknowable, Keller shows what can be born from negative entanglement.-from Columbia University Press

    Their unique stories reveal African Americans fighting for an alternative economic and civil rights movement--even as the Republican Party appeared increasingly hostile to that very idea. Black party members attempted to influence the direction of conservatism--not to destroy it, but rather to expand the ideology to include black needs and interests.As racial minorities in their political party and as political minorities within their community, black Republicans occupied an irreconcilable position--they were shunned by African American communities and subordinated by the GOP. In response, black Republicans vocally, and at times viciously, critiqued members of their race and party, in an effort to shape the attitudes and public images of black citizens and the GOP. And yet, there was also a measure of irony to black Republicans' "loneliness": at various points, factions of the Republican Party, such as the Nixon administration, instituted some of the policies and programs offered by black party members. What's more, black Republican initiatives, such as the fair housing legislation of senator Edward Brooke, sometimes garnered support from outside the Republican Party, especially among the black press, Democratic officials, and constituents of all races. Moving beyond traditional liberalism and conservatism, black Republicans sought to address African American racial experiences in a distinctly Republican way.The Loneliness of the Black Republican provides a new understanding of the interaction between African Americans and the Republican Party, and the seemingly incongruous intersection of civil rights and American conservatism.

    Tracing its development from 1951 to the present, this ambitious study explains how PAS acquired both local and international relevance. Farish A. Noor charts the party’s rise alongside the different ideological postures—from anticolonialism to postrevolutionary Islamism—that it has adopted over the years.  Exploring how PAS has continuously adapted to contemporary realities, he makes an important contribution to our understanding of Malaysia’s Islamist movement, as well as the country’s broader political history.

    These states have small nuclear arsenals, often face multiple active conflicts, and sometimes have weak institutions. How do these nuclear states--and potential future ones--manage their nuclear forces and influence international conflict? Examining the reasoning and deterrence consequences of regional power nuclear strategies, this book demonstrates that these strategies matter greatly to international stability and it provides new insights into conflict dynamics across important areas of the world such as the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia.Vipin Narang identifies the diversity of regional power nuclear strategies and describes in detail the posture each regional power has adopted over time. Developing a theory for the sources of regional power nuclear strategies, he offers the first systematic explanation of why states choose the postures they do and under what conditions they might shift strategies. Narang then analyzes the effects of these choices on a state's ability to deter conflict. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, he shows that, contrary to a bedrock article of faith in the canon of nuclear deterrence, the acquisition of nuclear weapons does not produce a uniform deterrent effect against opponents. Rather, some postures deter conflict more successfully than others.Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era considers the range of nuclear choices made by regional powers and the critical challenges they pose to modern international security.

    The same is true for centralized state action against such groups. This wide-ranging book argues that, both normatively and historically, liberalpolitical thought rests on a deep tension between a rationalist suspicion of intermediate and local group power, and a pluralism favorable toward intermediate group life, and preserving the bulk of its suspicion for the centralizing state.The book studies this tension using tools from the history of political thought, normative political philosophy, law, and social theory. In the process, it retells the history of liberal thought and practice in a way that moves from the birth of intermediacy in the High Middle Ages to the BritishPluralists of the twentieth century. In particular it restores centrality to the tradition of ancient constitutionalism and to Montesquieu, arguing that social contract theory's contributions to the development of liberal thought have been mistaken for the whole tradition.It discusses the real threats to freedom posed both by local group life and by state centralization, the ways in which those threats aggravate each other. Though the state and intermediate groups can check and balance each other in ways that protect freedom, they may also aggravate each other'sworst tendencies. Likewise, the elements of liberal thought concerned with the threats from each cannot necessarily be combined into a single satisfactory theory of freedom. While the book frequently reconstructs and defends pluralism, it ultimately argues that the tension is irreconcilable and notsusceptible of harmonization or synthesis; it must be lived with, not overcome.

    After rallying non-Urdu speaking leaders around him, Jinnah imposed a unitary definition of the new nation state that obliterated linguistic diversity. This centralisation - 'justified' by the Indian threat - fostered centrifugal forces that resulted in Bengali secessionism in 1971 and Baloch, as well as Mohajir, separatisms today. Concentration of power in the hands of the establishment remained the norm, and while authoritarianism peaked under military rule, democracy failed to usher in reform, and the rule of law remained fragile at best under Zulfikar Bhutto and later Nawaz Sharif. While Jinnah and Ayub Khan regarded religion as a cultural marker, since their time the Islamists have gradually prevailed. They benefited from the support of General Zia, while others, including sectarian groups, cashed in on their struggle against the establishment to woo the disenfranchised. Today, Pakistan faces existential challenges ranging from ethnic strife to Islamism, two sources of instability which hark back to elite domination. But the resilience of the country and its people, the resolve of the judiciary and hints of reform in the army may open a new and more stable chapter in its history.

    In Democracy Disrupted: The Politics of Global Protest, commentator and political scientist Ivan Krastev proposes a provocative interpretation of these popular uprisings--one with ominous implications for the future of democratic politics.Challenging theories that trace the protests to the rise of a global middle class, Krastev proposes that the insurrections express a pervasive distrust of democratic institutions. Protesters on the streets of Moscow, Sofia, Istanbul, and S�o Paulo are openly suspicious of both the market and the state. They reject established political parties, question the motives of the mainstream media, refuse to recognize the legitimacy of any specific leadership, and reject all formal organizations. They have made clear what they don't want--the status quo--but they have no positive vision of an alternative future.Welcome to the worldwide libertarian revolution, in which democracy is endlessly disrupted to no end beyond the disruption itself.

    The multi-year, multi-billion dollar operation elected the nation's first black president, raised and spent more money than any other election effort in history, and built the most sophisticated voter targeting technologyever before used on a national campaign. What is missing from most accounts of the campaign is an understanding of how Obama for America recruited, motivated, developed, and managed its formidable army of 2.2 million volunteers. Unlike previous field campaigns that drew their power from staff, consultants, and paid canvassers, the Obama campaign's capacity came from unpaid local citizens who took responsibility for organizing their own neighborhoods months--and even years--in advance of election day. In so doing, Groundbreakers argues, the campaign engaged citizens in the work ofpracticing democracy. How did they organize so many volunteers to produce so much valuable work for the campaign? This book describes how.Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han argue that the legacy of Obama for America extends beyond big data and micro-targeting; it also reinvigorated and expanded traditional models of field campaigning. Groundbreakers makes the case that the Obama campaign altered traditional ground games by adopting theprinciples and practices of community organizing. Drawing on in-depth interviews with OFA field staff and volunteers, this book also argues that a key achievement of the OFA's field organizing was its transformative effect on those who were a part of it. Obama the candidate might have inspiredvolunteers to join the campaign, but it was the fulfilling relationships that volunteers had with other people--and their deep belief that their work mattered for the work of democracy--that kept them active.Groundbreakers documents how the Obama campaign has inspired a new way of running field campaigns, with lessons for national and international political and civic movements.

    Now the PMSCs are a bona-fide industry, an indispensable part of American foreign and military policy. PMSCs assist US forces in combat operations and replace them after the military withdraws from combat zones; they guard our embassies; they play key roles in US counterterrorism strategies; and Homeland Security depends on them. Their services include maritime security, police training, drone operations, cyber security, and intelligence analysis (as Edward Snowden has famously revealed). Even the United Nations employs them.When did this happen? The turning point came when the US found itself in a prolonged war with Iraq, but without adequate forces. So the Bush Administration turned to the PMSCs to fill the gap. Private contractors and subcontractors eventually exceeded the traditional troops. The industry has never scaled back.Ann Hagedorn profiles the members of Congress who recognize the dangers of dependence on PMSCs, but have been unable to limit them or even determine their true scope. She takes us to the exclusive club in London where the PMSCs were created, and she reveals the key figure in the evolution of the industry. She introduces us to a US Army general who studies new developments, such as PMSCs’ drone operations, and worries about PMSCs potentially fighting American troops. The Invisible Soldiers will inspire a national dialogue about a little-known international industry on which our security rests.

    Not between the states, but between true patriots who believe in our nation's founding principles and those he believes are working every day to undermine them and change the very nature of the country. Michael Savage is convinced we face more than just political differences. He believes the split between right and left is possibly irreversible unless we understand what's destroying American values and how to stop it. This fervent warning offers the Savage truth - a call to action in the voting booth - in order to defend the freedoms our Constitution so brilliantly established.

    Now there is a stand-alone resource to introduce this paradigm in an accessible way. Rather than simply looking at economics, it looks at the poverty of relationships between man and God, man and man, man and creation, and man and self. Utilizing free, online video lessons set both in Africa and the United States, the Small Group Experience is the ideal resource for small groups, Sunday school classes, parachurch and non-profit ministries, ministry training, and even individuals. In six lessons the concepts of When Helping Hurts are brought to the reader in a format that is perfect for training, discussion, and application. It is an ideal introduction to life-changing ideas and offers the perfect context for engagement. The videos provide expert instruction, and the Small group Experience provides questions and prompts for conversation, deeper learning, and taking action.

    While the legal protections of the First Amendment remain strong, the culture is obsessed with punishing individuals for allegedly offensive utterances. And academia – already an institution in which free speech is in decline – has grown still more intolerant, with high-profile “disinvitation” efforts against well-known speakers and demands for professors to provide “trigger warnings” in class.In this Broadside, Greg Lukianoff argues that the threats to free speech go well beyond political correctness or liberal groupthink. As global populations increasingly expect not just physical comfort but also intellectual comfort, threats to freedom of speech are only going to become more intense. To fight back, we must understand this trend and see how students and average citizens alike are increasingly demanding freedom from speech.

    He captivated audiences with his lucid challenge of dominant political analyses, the engaging style of his talks, and his commitment to social equality as well as individual freedom. Chomsky’s early insights into the workings of power in the modern world remain timely and compelling. Published for the first time, this series of lectures also provides the reader with an invaluable introduction to the essential ideas of one of the leading thinkers of our time.

    This is especially true in developed nations, where in some societies nonbelievers now outnumber believers. Unless religion collapses completely, or undergoes a remarkable resurgence, countries across the globe must learn to carefully and effectively manage this societal mix of religious and irreligious. For in a world already deeply riven by sectarian conflict, this unprecedented demographic shift presents yet another challenge to humanity. Writing in an engaging, accessible style, philosopher and lawyer Ronald A. Lindsay develops a tightly crafted argument for secularism—specifically, that in a religiously pluralistic society, a robust, thoroughgoing secularism is the only reliable means of preserving meaningful democracy and rights of conscience. Contrary to certain political pundits and religious leaders who commonly employ the term secularism as a scare word, Lindsay uses clear, concrete examples and jargon-free language to demonstrate that secularism is the only way to ensure equal respect and protection under the law—for believers and nonbelievers alike. Although critical of some aspects of religion, Lindsay neither presents an antireligious tirade nor seeks to convert anyone to nonbelief, reminding us that secularism and atheism are not synonymous. Rather, he shows how secularism works to everyone’s benefit and makes the definitive case that the secular model should be feared by none—and embraced by all.<!--?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /-->

    Napolitano exposes the alarming history of presidential power grabs performed in the name of national security.Judge, scholar, bestselling author, and Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew P. Napolitano is back with a shocking chronicle of America’s descent from a free society to a frightening surveillance state.In Suicide Pact, Napolitano details a long, sordid history of governmental—and especially presidential—encroachments on liberty, enacted in the name of protecting America but which serve insead to undermine national security and erode the nation’s founding freedoms.Appealing to all politically aware Americans but especially to highly engaged conservatives and libertarians (including his 576,000 Facebook fans and 240,000 Twitter followers), Napolitano’s sobering-yet-patriotic perspective unmasks rampant political doubletalk and Washington power plays by taking a clear, legally grounded look at how we got here.Blending fascinating history with fresh reporting and analysis on contemporary issues such as drone warfare and executions, NSA surveillance, and secret federal courts, Suicide Pact casts a vision beyond hollow rhetoric to common-sense solutions for returning sanity to our shores.

    Yet the court remains a mysterious institution, and the motivations of the nine men and women who serve for life are often obscure. Now, in Uncertain Justice, Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz show the surprising extent to which the Roberts Court is revising the meaning of our Constitution.This essential book arrives at a make-or-break moment for the nation and the court. Political gridlock, cultural change, and technological progress mean that the court's decisions on key topics—including free speech, privacy, voting rights, and presidential power—could be uniquely durable. Acutely aware of their opportunity, the justices are rewriting critical aspects of constitutional law and redrawing the ground rules of American government. Tribe—one of the country's leading constitutional lawyers—and Matz dig deeply into the court's recent rulings, stepping beyond tired debates over judicial "activism" to draw out hidden meanings and silent battles. The undercurrents they reveal suggest a strikingly different vision for the future of our country, one that is sure to be hotly debated.Filled with original insights and compelling human stories, Uncertain Justice illuminates the most colorful story of all—how the Supreme Court and the Constitution frame the way we live.

    During that time, host Brian Lamb has invited people to his Capitol Hill studio for hour-long conversations about contemporary society and history. In today's soundbite culture that hour remains one of television's last vestiges of in-depth, civil conversation. First came C-SPAN's Booknotes in 1989, which by the time it ended in December 2004, was the longest-running author-interview program in American broadcast history. Many of the most notable nonfiction authors of its era were featured over the course of 800 episodes, and the conversations became a defining hour for the network and for nonfiction writers. In January 2005, C-SPAN embarked on a new chapter with the launch of Q and A. Again one hour of uninterrupted conversation but the focus was expanded to include documentary film makers, entrepreneurs, social workers, political leaders and just about anyone with a story to tell. To mark this anniversary Lamb and his team at C-SPAN have assembled Sundays at Eight, a collection of the best unpublished interviews and stories from the last 25 years. Featured in this collection are historians like David McCullough, Ron Chernow and Robert Caro, reporters including April Witt, John Burns and Michael Weisskopf, and numerous others, including Christopher Hitchens, Brit Hume and Kenneth Feinberg. In a March 2001 Booknotes interview 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt described the show's success this way: "All you have to do is tell me a story." This collection attests to the success of that principle, which has guided Lamb for decades. And his guests have not disappointed, from the dramatic escape of a lifelong resident of a North Korean prison camp, to the heavy price paid by one successful West Virginia businessman when he won 314 million in the lottery, or the heroic stories of recovery from the most horrific injuries in modern-day warfare. Told in the series' signature conversational manner, these stories come to life again on the page. Sundays at Eight is not merely a token for fans of C-SPAN's interview programs, but a collection of significant stories that have helped us understand the world for a quarter-century.

    Much of that debate is dominated by the myth that the population is divided into those who benefit from the welfare state and those who pay into it.  But this groundbreaking book, written by a top UK social policy expert, uses extensive research and survey evidence to challenge that view. It shows that our complex and ever-changing lives mean that all of us rely on the welfare state throughout our lifetimes, not just a small welfare-dependent minority. Using everyday life stories and engaging graphics, John Hills clearly demonstrates how the facts are far removed from the popular misconceptions.

    . . . Hayton explains how this all came about and points to the growing risks of miscalculation and escalation."—Daniel Yergin, Wall Street Journal China’s rise has upset the global balance of power, and the first place to feel the strain is Beijing’s back yard: the South China Sea. For decades tensions have smoldered in the region, but today the threat of a direct confrontation among superpowers grows ever more likely. This important book is the first to make clear sense of the South Sea disputes. Bill Hayton, a journalist with extensive experience in the region, examines the high stakes involved for rival nations that include Vietnam, India, Taiwan, the Philippines, and China, as well as the United States, Russia, and others. Hayton also lays out the daunting obstacles that stand in the way of peaceful resolution.   Through lively stories of individuals who have shaped current conflicts—businessmen, scientists, shippers, archaeologists, soldiers, diplomats, and more—Hayton makes understandable the complex history and contemporary reality of the South China Sea. He underscores its crucial importance as the passageway for half the world’s merchant shipping and one-third of its oil and gas. Whoever controls these waters controls the access between Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific. The author critiques various claims and positions (that China has historic claim to the Sea, for example), overturns conventional wisdoms (such as America’s overblown fears of China’s nationalism and military resurgence), and outlines what the future may hold for this clamorous region of international rivalry.

    For many in the West, Moscow's actions in early 2014 marked the end of illusions about cooperation, and the return to geopolitical and ideological confrontation. Russia, for so long a peripheral presence, had become the central actor in a new global drama. In this groundbreaking book, renowned scholar Bobo Lo analyzes the broader context of the crisis by examining the interplay between Russian foreign policy and an increasingly anarchic international environment. He argues that Moscow's approach to regional and global affairs reflects the tension between two very different worlds—the perceptual and the actual.The Kremlin highlights the decline of the West, a resurgent Russia, and the emergence of a new multipolar order. But this idealized view is contradicted by a world disorder that challenges core assumptions about the dominance of great powers and the utility of military might. Its lesson is that only those states that embrace change will prosper in the twenty-first century.A Russia able to redefine itself as a modern power would exert a critical influence in many areas of international politics. But a Russia that rests on an outdated sense of entitlement may end up instead as one of the principal casualties of global transformation.

    While the federal government traditionally could constrain liberty only through acts of Congress and the courts, the executive branch has increasingly come to control Americans through its own administrative rules and adjudication, thus raising disturbing questions about the effect of this sort of state power on American government and society. With Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, Philip Hamburger answers this question in the affirmative, offering a revisionist account of administrative law. Rather than accepting it as a novel power necessitated by modern society, he locates its origins in the medieval and early modern English tradition of royal prerogative. Then he traces resistance to administrative law from the Middle Ages to the present. Medieval parliaments periodically tried to confine the Crown to governing through regular law, but the most effective response was the seventeenth-century development of English constitutional law, which concluded that the government could rule only through the law of the land and the courts, not through administrative edicts. Although the US Constitution pursued this conclusion even more vigorously, administrative power reemerged in the Progressive and New Deal Eras. Since then, Hamburger argues, administrative law has returned American government and society to precisely the sort of consolidated or absolute power that the US Constitution—and constitutions in general—were designed to prevent. With a clear yet many-layered argument that draws on history, law, and legal thought, Is Administrative Law Unlawful? reveals administrative law to be not a benign, natural outgrowth of contemporary government but a pernicious—and profoundly unlawful—return to dangerous pre-constitutional absolutism.

    During the last three years, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been compared with Bismarck and even Hitler in the European media. And yet few can deny that Germany today is very different from the stereotype ofnineteenth- and twentieth-century history. After nearly seventy years of struggling with the Nazi past, Germans think that they more than anyone have learned its lessons. Above all, what the new Germany thinks it stands for is peace. Germany is unique in this combination of economic assertivenessand military abstinence. So what does it mean to have a German Europe in the twenty-first century?In The Paradox of German Power, Hans Kundnani explains how Germany got to where it is now and where it might go in future. He explores German national identity and foreign policy through a series of tensions in German thinking and action: between continuity and change, between normality andabnormality, between economics and politics, and between Europe and the world.

    Colonists made multiple and interconnected attempts to destroy Indigenous peoples as groups. The contributors examine these efforts through the lens of genocide. Considering some of the most destructive aspects of the colonization and subsequent settlement of North America, several essays address Indigenous boarding school systems imposed by both the Canadian and U.S. governments in attempts to "civilize" or "assimilate" Indigenous children. Contributors examine some of the most egregious assaults on Indigenous peoples and the natural environment, including massacres, land appropriation, the spread of disease, the near-extinction of the buffalo, and forced political restructuring of Indigenous communities. Assessing the record of these appalling events, the contributors maintain that North Americans must reckon with colonial and settler colonial attempts to annihilate Indigenous peoples.Contributors. Jeff Benvenuto, Robbie Ethridge, Theodore Fontaine, Joseph P. Gone, Alexander Laban Hinton, Tasha Hubbard, Margaret D. Jabobs, Kiera L. Ladner, Tricia E. Logan, David B. MacDonald, Benjamin Madley, Jeremy Patzer, Julia Peristerakis, Christopher Powell, Colin Samson, Gray H. Whaley, Andrew Woolford

    Author Edward D. Kleinbard explains how the public's preoccupation with tax policy alone has obscured any understanding of government's ability to complement the private sector through investment and insuranceprograms that enhance the general welfare and prosperity of our society at large.He argues that when we choose how government should spend and tax, we open a window into our fiscal soul, because those choices are the means by which we express the values we cherish and the regard in which we hold our fellow citizens. Though these values are being diminished by short-sighteddecisions to starve government, strategic government spending can directly make citizens happier, healthier, and even wealthier.Expertly combining the latest economic research with his insider knowledge of the budget process into a simple yet compelling narrative, he unmasks the tax mythologies and false arguments that too often dominate contemporary discourse about budget policies. Large quantities of comparative data aresuccinctly distilled to situate the United States among its peer countries, so that readers can judge for themselves whether contemporary budget choices really reflect our aspirational fiscal soul.Kleinbard's presentation takes a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on economics, finance, law, political science and moral philosophy. He uniquely weaves economic research and moral philosophy together by emphasizing our welfare, not just our national income, and by contrasting the actual beliefsof Adam Smith, a great moral philosopher, with the cartoon version of the man presented by proponents of the most extreme forms of private market triumphalism.

    

    In Another Politics, he examines the trajectory of efforts that contributed to the radicalism of Occupy Wall Street and other recent movement upsurges. Drawing on voices of leading organizers across the United States and Canada, he delivers an engaging presentation of the histories and principles that shape many contemporary struggles. Dixon outlines the work of activists aligned with anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, and anti-oppression politics and discusses the lessons they are learning in their efforts to create social transformation. The book explores solutions to the key challenge for today’s activists, organizers, fighters, and dreamers: building a substantive link between the work of “against,” which fights ruling institutions, and the work of “beyond,” which develops liberatory alternatives.

    Focusing on the suburbs along the high-tech corridor of Route 128 around Boston, Lily Geismer challenges conventional scholarly assessments of Massachusetts exceptionalism, the decline of liberalism, and suburban politics in the wake of the rise of the New Right and the Reagan Revolution in the 1970s and 1980s. Although only a small portion of the population, knowledge professionals in Massachusetts and elsewhere have come to wield tremendous political leverage and power. By probing the possibilities and limitations of these suburban liberals, this rich and nuanced account shows that--far from being an exception to national trends--the suburbs of Massachusetts offer a model for understanding national political realignment and suburban politics in the second half of the twentieth century.

    This is the story of how three men – Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma – tried to shape its destiny in very different ways. Mandela helped usher in a new democracy with the formulation of one of the best constitutions in the world. But his leadership was not without its flaws as, under his watch, the first seeds of corruption were sown by the predatory elite. Mbeki brought a dark, complicated personality to the presidency and abandoned Mandela’s consultative approach for a more confrontational one. His focus on building South Africa’s economy was his greatest success but his failure to seriously address the AIDS epidemic in South Africa was an embarrassment and a tragedy. Jacob Zuma’s presidency saw the rise of a chauvinistic elite which questioned the very foundations of the new South Africa and its constitution. Under him, a new, arrogant, security elite began to roll back the human rights culture. Ray Hartley, by focusing on the ups and downs of three presidencies, has created a rich, complex narrative. In two turbulent decades, South Africa has won its place at the table of free nations, but has lost its moral authority.

    Stephen Neff avoids technical jargon as he surveys doctrines from natural law to feminism, and practices from the Warring States of China to the international criminal courts of today.Ancient China produced the first rudimentary set of doctrines. But the cornerstone of later international law was laid by the Romans, in the form of natural law--a universal law that was superior to early laws and governments. As medieval European states came into contact with non-Christian peoples, from East Asia to the New World, practical solutions had to be devised to the many legal quandaries that arose. In the wake of these experiences, international legal doctrine began to assume its modern form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.New challenges in the nineteenth century encompassed the advance of nationalism, the rise of free trade and European imperialism, the formation of international organizations, and the arbitration of disputes. Innovative doctrines included liberalism, the nationality school, and solidarism. The twentieth century witnessed the formation of the League of Nations and a World Court, but also the rise of socialist and fascist states and the advent of the Cold War. Yet the collapse of the Soviet Union brought little respite. As Neff makes clear, further threats to the rule of law today come from environmental pressures, genocide, and terrorism.

    For some students, it's still a good choice that leads to a successful career after graduation, but for many their degrees are worthless pieces of paper. Choose the wrong program and graduation is more likely to lead to disillusionment and debt than a steady paycheque.Yet parents, guidance counselors, and politicians still push higher education as if it's the only option for building a secure future. In this book, Ken S. Coates and Bill Morrison set out to explore the many educational opportunities and career paths open to Canadian high-school students and those in their twenties. This book is designed to help young adults decide whether to pursue a degree, enrol for skills training, or investigate one of the many other options that are available.

    Early Islam made a seminal but largely unrecognized contribution to the history of economic thought; it is the only religion founded by an entrepreneur. Descending from an elite dynasty of religious, civil, and commercial leaders, Muhammad was a successful businessman before founding Islam. As such, the new religion had much to say on trade, consumer protection, business ethics, and property. As Islam rapidly spread across the region so did the economic teachings of early Islam, which eventually made their way to Europe. Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism demonstrates how Islamic institutions and business practices were adopted and adapted in Venice and Genoa. These financial innovations include the invention of the corporation, business management techniques, commercial arithmetic, and monetary reform. There were other Islamic institutions assimilated in Europe: charities, the waqf, inspired trusts, and institutions of higher learning; the madrasas were models for the oldest colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. As such, it can be rightfully said that these essential aspects of capitalist thought all have Islamic roots.

    Canada was a willing ally in this “war,” and is currently cracking down on drug offences at a time when even the U.S. is beginning to climb down from its reliance on incarceration.

    "Iraq after America" examines the government and the sectarian and secular factions that have emerged in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of 2003, presenting the interrelations among the various elements in the Iraqi political scene. The book traces the origins of key trends in recent Iraqi history to explain the political and social forces that produced them, particularly during the intense period of civil war between 2003 and 2009. Along the way, the author looks at some of the most significant players in the new Iraq, explaining how they have risen to prominence and what their aims are. The author identifies the three trends that dominate Iraq s post-U.S. political order: authoritarianism, sectarianism, and Islamist resistance, tracing their origins and showing how they have created a toxic political and social brew, preventing Iraq s political elite from resolving the fundamental roots of conflict that have wracked that country since 2003 and before. He concludes by examining some aspects of the U.S. legacy in Iraq, analyzing what it means for the United States and others that, after more than a decade of conflict, Iraq s communities and its political class in particular have not yet found a way to live together in peace."

    Since Ward Connerly kickstarted a state-by-state political mobilization against affirmative action in the mid-1990s, the percentage of four-year public colleges that consider racial or ethnic status in admissions has fallen from 60 percent to 35 percent. Only 45 percent of private colleges still explicitly consider race, with elite schools more likely to do so, although they too have retreated. For law professor and civil rights activist Sheryll Cashin, this isn’t entirely bad news, because as she argues, affirmative action as currently practiced does little to help disadvantaged people. The truly disadvantaged—black and brown children trapped in high-poverty environs—are not getting the quality schooling they need in part because backlash and wedge politics undermine any possibility for common-sense public policies. Using place instead of race in diversity programming, she writes, will better amend the structural disadvantages endured by many children of color, while enhancing the possibility that we might one day move past the racial resentment that affirmative action engenders. In Place, Not Race, Cashin reimagines affirmative action and champions place-based policies, arguing that college applicants who have thrived despite exposure to neighborhood or school poverty are deserving of special consideration. Those blessed to have come of age in poverty-free havens are not. Sixty years since the historic decision, we’re undoubtedly far from meeting the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, but Cashin offers a new framework for true inclusion for the millions of children who live separate and unequal lives. Her proposals include making standardized tests optional, replacing merit-based financial aid with need-based financial aid, and recruiting high-achieving students from overlooked places, among other steps that encourage cross-racial alliances and social mobility.   A call for action toward the long overdue promise of equality, Place, Not Race persuasively shows how the social costs of racial preferences actually outweigh any of the marginal benefits when effective race-neutral alternatives are available.

    Chronologically arranged, each chapter in the book is devoted to the work of a single thinker. The selected texts together engage with 2000 years of debate on fundamental questions, which include: What is the purpose of political life? What is the good life, for us as individuals, and for us as a political community? What is justice? What is a right? Do human beings have rights? What kinds of human virtues are there and which regimes best promote them? The difficulty of accessing the texts included in this volume is the result not only of their subtlety but also of the dramatic change in everyday life. The authors shed light on the texts' vocabulary and complexities of thought and help students understand and weigh the various interpretations of each philosopher's thought. - Accessible interpretive essays on the greatest texts in the history of political thought, from Plato to Nietzsche. - Includes key passage plus a succinct discussion that glosses the text, examines later-day interpretations, and guides students in forming their own interpretations. - Allows students to learn from, rather than only about, each thinker, and to apply their thought to the present day.

    Climate change is one of the fundamental challenges facing the world today, and is the cause of significant international concern. In response, states have created aninternational climate regime. The treaties that comprise the regime - the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement - establish a system of governance to address climate change and its impacts. This book provides a clearanalytical guide to the climate regime, as well as other relevant international legal rules.The book begins by locating international climate change law within the broader context of international law and international environmental law. It considers the evolution of the international climate change regime, and the process of law-making that has led to it. It examines the key provisions ofthe Framework Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. It analyses the principles and obligations that underpin the climate regime, as well as the elaborate institutional and governance architecture that has been created at successive international conferences to develop commitmentsand promote transparency and compliance. The final two chapters address the polycentric nature of international climate change law, as well as the intersections of international climate change law with other areas of international regulation.This book is an essential introduction to international climate change law for students, scholars and negotiators.

    As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He facilitated many civic organizations, including Philadelphia's fire department and a university. Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity; as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become." Franklin, always proud of his working class roots, became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies. With two partners he published the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper that was known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the British policies. He became wealthy publishing Poor Richard's Almanack and The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin was also the printer of books for the Moravians of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1742 on). Franklin's printed Moravian books (printed in German) are preserved, and can be viewed, at the Moravian Archives located in Bethlehem. Franklin visited Bethlehem many times and stayed at the Moravian Sun Inn.

    Younger and younger girls are engaging in adult sexual attitudes and practices, and the pressure to conform means thousands have little self-worth and are vulnerable to exploitation. At the same time, thanks to social media, texting, and chatting services, predators are able to ferret out their victims more easily than ever before. In Walking Prey, advocate and former victim Holly Austin Smith shows how middle class suburban communities are fast becoming the new epicenter of sex trafficking in America. Smith speaks from experience: Without consistent positive guidance or engagement, Holly was ripe for exploitation at age fourteen. A chance encounter with an older man led her to run away from home, and she soon found herself on the streets of Atlantic City. Her experience led her, two decades later, to become one of the foremost advocates for trafficking victims. Smith argues that these young women should be treated as victims by law enforcement, but that too often the criminal justice system lacks the resources and training to prevent the vicious cycle of prostitution. This is a clarion call to take a sharp look at one of the most striking human rights abuses, and one that is going on in our own backyard.

    This book argues that the method known as process tracing is particularly well suited to developing and assessing theories about such mechanisms. The editors begin by establishing a philosophical basis for process tracing - one that captures mainstream uses while simultaneously being open to applications by interpretive scholars. Equally important, they go on to establish best practices for individual process-tracing accounts - how micro to go, when to start (and stop), and how to deal with the problem of equifinality. The contributors then explore the application of process tracing across a range of subfields and theories in political science. This is an applied methods book which seeks to shrink the gap between the broad assertion that 'process tracing is good' and the precise claim 'this is an instance of good process tracing'.

    First by the tens, then by the tens of thousands, protestors filled the streets and laid claim to the squares of nearly 1,500 towns and cities, until, one by one, the occupations were forcibly evicted.In The Occupiers, Michael Gould-Wartofsky offers a front-seat view of the action in the streets of New York City and beyond. Painting a vivid picture of everyday life in the square through the use of material gathered in the course of two years of on-the-ground investigation, Gould-Wartofsky traces the occupation of Zuccotti Park--and some of its counterparts across the United States and around the world--from inception to eviction. He takes up the challenges the occupiers faced, the paradoxes of direct democracy, and the dynamics of direct action and police action and explores the ways in which occupied squares became focal points for an emerging opposition to the politics of austerity, restricted democracy, and the power of corporate America.Much of the discussion of the Occupy phenomenon has treated it as if it lived and died in Zuccotti Park, but Gould-Wartofsky follows the evicted occupiers into exile and charts their evolving strategies, tactics, and tensions as they seek to resist, regroup, and reoccupy. Displaced from public spaces and news headlines, the 99 Percent movement has spread out from the financial centers and across an America still struggling to recover in the aftermath of the crisis. Even if the movement fails to achieve radical reform, Gould-Wartofsky maintains, its offshoots may well accelerate the pace of change in the United States in the years to come.

    Realists contend that trade compels states to struggle for vital raw materials and markets. Moving beyond the stale liberal-realist debate, "Economic Interdependence and War "lays out a dynamic theory of expectations that shows under what specific conditions interstate commerce will reduce or heighten the risk of conflict between nations.Taking a broad look at cases spanning two centuries, from the Napoleonic and Crimean wars to the more recent Cold War crises, Dale Copeland demonstrates that when leaders have positive expectations of the future trade environment, they want to remain at peace in order to secure the economic benefits that enhance long-term power. When, however, these expectations turn negative, leaders are likely to fear a loss of access to raw materials and markets, giving them more incentive to initiate crises to protect their commercial interests. The theory of trade expectations holds important implications for the understanding of Sino-American relations since 1985 and for the direction these relations will likely take over the next two decades."Economic Interdependence and War" offers sweeping new insights into historical and contemporary global politics and the actual nature of democratic versus economic peace.

    An exploration of the skills that let communities survive and thrive through troubled times.

    Using empirical data on production, trade, investment, profits, and foreign ownership in Canada, as well as a new analysis of the overlap among the boards of directors of the top 250 firms in Canada and the top 500 firms worldwide, Klassen argues that it is the increasing integration of Canadian businesses into the global economy that drives Canada's new, increasingly aggressive, foreign policy.Using government documents, think tank studies, media reports, and interviews with business leaders from across Canada, Klassen outlines recent systematic changes in Canadian diplomatic and military policy and connects them with the rise of a new transnational capitalist class. Joining Empire is sure to become a classic of Canadian political economy.

    This volume examines the ideas behind development: their origins, how they have changed and spread over time, and how they may evolve over thecoming decades. It also examines how the real-life experiences of different countries and organizations have been inspired by, and contributed to, thinking on development. The extent to which development 'works' depends in part on particular local, historical, or institutional contexts. Generalpolicy prescriptions fail when the necessary conditions that make them work are either absent, ignored, or poorly understood. There is a need to grasp how people understand their own development experience. If the countries of the world are varied in every way, from their initial conditions to thedegree of their openness to outside money and influence, and success is not centred in any one group, it stands to reason that there cannot be a single recipe for development.Each chapter provides an analytical survey of thinking about development that highlights debates and takes into account critical perspectives. It includes contributions from scholars and practitioners from the global North and the global South, spanning at least two generations and multipledisciplines. It will be a key reference on the concepts and theories of development - their origins, evolution, and trajectories - and act as a resource for scholars, graduate students, and practitioners.

    This book studies how this paradox emerged in India, the world's largest democracy. Tariq Thachil shows how arguments from studies of wealthy democracies (such as moral values voting) and the global south (such as patronage or ethnic appeals) cannot explain why poor voters in poor countries support parties that represent elite policy interests. He instead draws on extensive survey data and fieldwork to document a novel strategy through which elite parties can recruit the poor, while retaining the rich. He shows how these parties can win over disadvantaged voters by privately providing them with basic social services via grassroots affiliates. Such outsourcing permits the party itself to continue to represent the policy interests of their privileged base.

    While confirming a broad, shared liberalizing trend, it finds that there are in fact distinct varieties of liberalization associated with very different distributive outcomes. Most scholarship equates liberal capitalism with inequality and coordinated capitalism with higher levels of social solidarity. However, this study explains why the institutions of coordinated capitalism and egalitarian capitalism coincided and complemented one another in the Golden Era of postwar development in the 1950s and 1960s, and why they no longer do so. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this study reveals that the successful defense of the institutions traditionally associated with coordinated capitalism has often been a recipe for increased inequality due to declining coverage and dualization. Conversely, it argues that some forms of labor market liberalization are perfectly compatible with continued high levels of social solidarity and indeed may be necessary to sustain it."

    In Mixed Race Amnesia, Minelle Mahtani makes the case that this romanticized view of multiraciality governs both public perceptions and personal accounts of the mixed-race experience. Drawing on a series of interviews, she explores how, in order to adopt the view that being mixed race is progressive, a strategic forgetting takes place - one that obliterates complex diasporic histories. She argues that a new anti-colonial approach to multiraciality is needed, one that emphasizes how colonialism shapes the experiences of mixed-race people today.

    And what an eventful and tumultuous six decades it had been. During that time, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China was transformed from one of the world'spoorest countries into the world's fastest growing major economy, and from a weak state barely able to govern or protect its own territory to a rising power that is challenging the United States for global influence.Over those same years, the PRC also experienced the most deadly famine in human history, caused largely by the actions and inactions of its political leaders. Not long after, there was a collapse of government authority that pushed the country to the brink of (and in some places actually into) civilwar and anarchy.Today, China is, for the most part, peaceful, prospering, and proud. This is the China that was on display for the world to see during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The CCP maintains a firm grip on power through a combination of popular support largely based on its recent record of promoting rapideconomic growth and harsh repression of political opposition. Yet, the party and country face serious challenges on many fronts, including a slowing economy, environmental desecration, pervasive corruption, extreme inequalities, and a rising tide of social protest.Politics in China is an authoritative introduction to how the world's most populous nation and rapidly rising global power is governed today. Written by leading China scholars, the book's chapters offers accessible overviews of major periods in China's modern political history from themid-nineteenth century to the present, key topics in contemporary Chinese politics, and developments in four important areas located on China's geographic periphery: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

    Despite their enmity, regime allies and detractors alike have wielded traditional concepts of masculinity, femininity, and homophobia as a means of symbolic endorsement or disparagement of political leaders and policies.By repeatedly using machismo as a means of legitimation, Putin's regime (unlike that of Gorbachev or Yeltsin) opened the door to the concerted use of gendered rhetoric and imagery as a means to challenge regime authority. Sex, Politics, and Putin analyzes the political uses of gender norms and sexualization in Russia through three case studies: pro- and anti-regime groups' activism aimed at supporting or undermining the political leaders on their respective sides; activism regarding military conscription and patriotism; and feminist activism. Arguing that gender norms are most easily invoked as tools of authority-building when there exists widespread popular acceptance of misogyny and homophobia, Sperling also examines the ways in which sexism and homophobia are reflected in Russia's public sphere.

    Many more were never convicted, but are nonetheless subject to surveillance by the state. Never before has the American government maintained so vast a network of institutions dedicated solely to the control and confinement of its citizens.   A provocative assessment of the contemporary carceral state for American democracy, Arresting Citizenship argues that the broad reach of the criminal justice system has fundamentally recast the relation between citizen and state, resulting in a sizable—and growing—group of second-class citizens. From police stops to court cases and incarceration, at each stage of the criminal justice system individuals belonging to this disempowered group come to experience a state-within-a-state that reflects few of the country’s core democratic values. Through scores of interviews, along with analyses of survey data, Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver show how this contact with police, courts, and prisons decreases faith in the capacity of American political institutions to respond to citizens’ concerns and diminishes the sense of full and equal citizenship—even for those who have not been found guilty of any crime. The effects of this increasingly frequent contact with the criminal justice system are wide-ranging—and pernicious—and Lerman and Weaver go on to offer concrete proposals for reforms to reincorporate this large group of citizens as active participants in American civic and political life.

    The book details how our political culture has become diseased while at the same time dispelling the cynical view that politics has always been like it is today and always will be. And it prescribes a groundbreaking cure. Identifying distinguishable periods during which the nation’s ruling class employed different instruments of social, economic and political control, author Mike McCabe brings readers to terms with the troubling reality that we face another historic moment when democracy in America is giving way to oligarchy and gives this dismal period a name that captures its essence. The book reaches back to episodes from the past that speak powerfully to what our response could be to the current condition of American democracy. Tales of crooked political dealings, enterprising leaders and remarkable outcomes produced by dirt-poor unlettered men and women compel us to compare and contrast their predicament with our own. And we are left with little choice but to acknowledge that conditions like today’s have been faced before…and overcome. Blue Jeans in High Places spells out six steps citizens can take today to get back in the driver’s seat of our government. American politics is overdue for some extensive renovation. This book is about where it will happen, who will do it, and how.

    An American Founding Father, Adams was a statesman, diplomat, and a leading advocate of American independence from Great Britain. Well educated, he was an Enlightenment political theorist who promoted republicanism, as well as a strong central government, and wrote prolifically about his often seminal ideas-both in published works and in letters to his wife and key adviser Abigail Adams. Adams was a lifelong opponent of slavery, having never bought a slave. In 1770 he provided a principled, controversial, and successful legal defense to the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre, because he believed in the right to counsel and the "protect[ion] of innocence". Adams came to prominence in the early stages of the American Revolution. A lawyer and public figure in Boston, as a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress, he played a leading role in persuading Congress to declare independence. He assisted Thomas Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and was its primary advocate in the Congress. Later, as a diplomat in Europe, he helped negotiate the eventual peace treaty with Great Britain, and was responsible for obtaining vital governmental loans from Amsterdam bankers. A political theorist and historian, Adams largely wrote the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which together with his earlier Thoughts on Government, influenced American political thought. One of his greatest roles was as a judge of character: in 1775, he nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief, and 25 years later nominated John Marshall to be Chief Justice of the United States. Adams' revolutionary credentials secured him two terms as George Washington's vice president and his own election in 1796 as the second president. During his one term as president, he encountered ferocious attacks by the Jeffersonian Republicans, as well as the dominant faction in his own Federalist Party led by his bitter enemy Alexander Hamilton. Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, and built up the army and navy especially in the face of an undeclared naval war (called the "Quasi-War") with France, 1798-1800. The major accomplishment of his presidency was his peaceful resolution of the conflict in the face of Hamilton's opposition. In 1800, Adams was defeated for re-election by Thomas Jefferson and retired to Massachusetts. He later resumed his friendship with Jefferson. He and his wife founded an accomplished family line of politicians, diplomats, and historians now referred to as the Adams political family. Adams was the father of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States. His achievements have received greater recognition in modern times, though his contributions were not initially as celebrated as those of other Founders. Adams was the first U.S. president to reside in the executive mansion that eventually became known as the White House.

    The essays in Nationalizing Empires want to overcome the strict dichotomy between empire and nation state that has dominated historiography for decades.

    Shridath "Sonny" Ramphal has lived a long and global life. A lawyer and international diplomat, he rose from humble origins to become a key Advisor to Queen Elizabeth II as Head of the Commonwealth. Leaders from every continent engaged with him as the longest serving Secretary-General of the Commonwealth (1975–1990) and as the only person who served on all the Independent International Commissions that grappled with the world’s major issues. Glimpses of a Global Life involves a cast of the world’s leading characters and the central role Ramphal played alongside them in issues such as ending the apartheid in South Africa; laying the foundations for global concerns about the environment; the reform of global governance, and the resolution of conflicts. It is an analysis of major problems and challenges that dominated the twentieth century and which continue to shape the contours of the twenty-first.

    Drawing on nearly twenty years of ethnographic research, Hart argues that local government has become the key site of contradictions. Local practices, conflicts, and struggles in the arenas of everyday life feed into and are shaped by simultaneous processes of de-nationalization and re-nationalization. Together they are key to understanding the erosion of African National Congress hegemony and the proliferation of populist politics.This book provides an innovative analysis of the ongoing, unstable, and unresolved crisis in South Africa today. It also suggests how Antonio Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution, adapted and translated for present circumstances with the help of philosopher and liberation activist Frantz Fanon, can do useful analytical and political work in South Africa and beyond.

    An Islamist terrorist group dedicated to destroying Israel or the first Arab national Resistance to have ever defeated Tel-Aviv's troops, a patriotic and respectable party or a fascistnetwork having managed to control all levers of Lebanese political life... what exactly is Hezbollah? How did it acquire such an important role in the Middle-Eastern game and in Lebanese politics?This book has three purposes. It first gives an articulated definition of Hezbollah, presenting a thorough history of the party, describing its well-built internal structure, and the large scope of its social and political action. It then explains the evolution of the party's mobilization. Finally, it illustrates another path, political but mainly identity-related, that of the Shiite community, today the main constituent of Lebanese society.Through a rigorous and richly documented study, mainly based on primary sources, amongst which hundreds of interviews with rank and file members, executives and officials of the party, and research material never examined before, the author unveils brand new aspects of this organization, thuscompleting, in a clear and efficient manner, our understanding of both the Hezbollah phenomenon and Lebanese politics of the last two decades.

    and your ambassadors use it well. It makes a big difference if you have an Embassy that is some kind of artistic expression, which therefore recalls the country’s eminence.’Dr Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State, 1973-7    Since opening its doors in 1930, the British Ambassador’s Residence has been considered the premier diplomatic address in Washington. A neoclassical English country house with influences from American Colonial  architecture, the Residence was built when the great British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens was at the very peak of his powers. His only building in the United States, its majestic interiors, exteriors and gardens in the English style have been delighting Washington’s social and political elite for over eighty years. In this book, Anthony Seldon and Daniel Collings explore both the genius of Lutyens’ design for the Residence and the rich history of Anglo-American relations that has unfolded within its walls. The house and its extensive gardens are lavishly illustrated by specially commissioned photography, while striking images from the archives bring to life important events from its past. In 1939, the Residence bore witness to the first ever visit by a British monarch to the United States. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth hosted a garden party there, Washington’s social event of the decade, which was attended by the great and powerful of American politics, finance and high society. Through such prized events, and the skill of successive ambassadors, the building helped create and then embody the ‘special relationship’ between Great Britain and America. From Winston Churchill’s rambunctious visits during the Second World War to the dark days of Vietnam and the rejuvenation of the relationship during the Thatcher-Reagan period, the authors take the reader behind the elegant gates on Massachusetts Avenue deep into the corridors of power. This book offers an intimate and fascinating history, featuring previously untold stories of visiting royalty, presidents, prime ministers, and even the Beatles.

    In Perspectives on Nation-State Formation in Contemporary Africa, author Godknows Boladei Igali presents a digest that examines the challenges of state formation and national integration in Africa and off ers preferred solutions within the context of the symbolic diversities. In this study, Igali outlines the immediate context and challenges of national integration in Africa in its human dimension. He reviews the political formations of ancient Africa-which varied in size, philosophical premise, and organisational structures-and discusses partition, military invasions, conquest, and colonisation. He then addresses colonial rule or administration, African nationalism, and decolonisation and analyses the process of nation-state formation in post-independent Africa from the perspective of the political systems and ideologies Reviewing a wide range of time from ancient times through the colonial period and since independence, this survey discusses the processes of national integration and nation-state formation in Africa, providing perspectives that deepen the understanding of these nation-building processes.

    This book, the first of its kind in political science, reconsiders the design and execution of field research and explores its role in producing knowledge. First, it offers an empirical overview of fieldwork in the discipline based on a large-scale survey and extensive interviews. Good fieldwork takes diverse forms yet follows a set of common practices and principles. Second, the book demonstrates the analytic benefits of fieldwork, showing how it contributes to our understanding of politics. Finally, it provides intellectual and practical guidance, with chapters on preparing for field research, operating in the field and making analytic progress while collecting data, and on data collection techniques including archival research, interviewing, ethnography and participant observation, surveys, and field experiments.

    International law as a political institution helps to create such expectations by specifying how violence should be limited and clarifying which actors should comply with those limits. The success of the laws of war depends on three related factors: compliance between warring states and between soldiers on the battlefield, and control of soldiers by their militaries. A statistical study of compliance of the laws of war during the twentieth century shows that joint ratification strengthens both compliance and reciprocity, compliance varies across issues with the scope for individual violations, and violations occur early in war. Close study of the treatment of prisoners of war during World Wars I and II demonstrates the difficulties posed by states' varied willingness to limit violence, a lack of clarity about what restraint means, and the practical problems of restraint on the battlefield.

    Where the rule of law is weak and corruption pervasive, what may appear to be democratic or authoritarian breakthroughs are often just regular, predictable phases in longer-term cyclic dynamics patronal politics. This is shown through in-depth narratives of the post-1991 political history of all post-Soviet polities that are not in the European Union. This book also includes chapters on czarist and Soviet history and on global patterns."

    Accompanying his influential masterpiece, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a selection of pamphlets, speeches, public letters, private correspondence and, for the first time, two important and previously uncollected early essays.   Philosopher, statesman, and founder of conservatism, Burke was a dazzling orator and a visionary theorist who spent his long political career fighting abuses of power. He wrote at a time of great change, against the backdrop of the revolt of the American colonies, the expansion of the British Empire, the collapse of Ireland, and the French Revolution. Burke argued passionately in support of the American revolutionaries and in equally impassioned opposition to the horrors of the unfolding French Revolution. Making a case for upholding established rights and customs, and advocating incremental reform rather than radical revolutionary change, Burke’s writings have profoundly influenced modern democracies up to the present day.Edited and Introduced by Jesse Norman.

    Think present-day Washington.We KNOW what works but politics too often gets in the way. That’s why Congress has an approval rating lower than cockroaches and colonoscopies and only slightly above pedophiles.What Works is about solutions, not theories. It’s about pressuring political leadership to forget about the next election and start focusing on the needs of the people who work hard, send their tax dollars to Washington, and long to see the country achieve something of value.“What Works is so well done. And I think it is actually important . . . People say this or that article, is important, but this book really is. It is excellence on each page, written by the best.”—Rush Limbaugh

    A compelling intellectual and political study of a leading post–civil rights era African American political theorist and strategist.

    The author argues that wars are easiest to resolve when combatants believe that their adversaries will uphold a deal or that the costs of renewed war will be low. Several key sources of information inform this calculation. Drawing on both cross-national and case study data, including detailed interviews, the book demonstrates that when information suggests either that a peace agreement is likely to break down or that the results of a broken deal will be especially deadly, a settlement leaves combatants too vulnerable to countenance, resulting in wars lasting longer.

    It is not a book on urban India, or a book on Ahmedabad city, or even a book on the Sabarmati River Front Development (SRFD) project, but it is a book that uses all these lenses to conceptualize urban exploitation. The author develops a dialectical praxis of theory transfer that takes us from the First World to the Third World and back again. In the process, the arrow of theory transfer is not reversed, because theory cannot be transferred by simply changing the direction of the arrow; instead, an attempt is made to (re)produce and (re)inform different conceptual worlds by juxtaposing it with the SRFD project in Ahmedabad city. This book is, therefore, as much about the poor people of Ahmedabad as it is about global urban displacement and the politics of resettlement and resistance--theory and practice are always inflected, and the chapters demonstrate this inflection deeply and clearly. The point is to change the world, and to do so we must relentlessly struggle to better the concepts that we use to understand it with. This book is such a struggle.

    Most will not prevail. The existing scholarly wisdom provides one explanation for success, based on authority and control within the nascent states. With the aid of an expansive new dataset and detailed case studies, this book provides an alternative account. It argues that the strongest members of the international community have a decisive influence over whether today's secessionists become countries tomorrow and that, most often, their support is conditioned on parochial political considerations.

    

    So how can prejudice have a legitimate place in moral and political judgment? In this ambitious work, Adam Sandel shows that prejudice, properly understood, is not an unfortunate obstacle to clear thinking but an essential aspect of it. The aspiration to reason without preconceptions, he argues, is misguided.Ranging across philosophy from Aristotle to Heidegger and Gadamer, Sandel demonstrates that we inherit our prejudice against prejudice from the Enlightenment. By detaching reason from habit and common opinion, thinkers such as Bacon, Descartes, and Kant invented prejudice--as we understand it today--as an obstacle to freedom and a failure to think for oneself.The Place of Prejudice presents a powerful challenge to this picture. The attempt to purge understanding of culture and history leads not to truth, Sandel warns, but to shallowness and confusion. A purely detached notion of reason deprives judgment of all perspective, disparages political rhetoric as mere pandering, and denies us the background knowledge we need to interpret literature, law, and the past. In a clear, eloquent voice, Sandel presents instead a compelling case for reasoning within the world.

    Keller believes that although some deep parochial identities have eroded, they have not disappeared and may be more assertive than previously thought, especially in instances of political conflict. Keller reconsiders how national identity has been understood in Africa and presents new approaches to identity politics, intergroup relations, state-society relations, and notions of national citizenship and citizenship rights. Focusing on Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, and Rwanda, he lays the foundation for a new understanding of political transition in contemporary Africa.