What if idealistic reform itself is a culprit?In Political Realism, Jonathan Rauch argues that well-meaning efforts to stem corruption and increase participation have stripped political leaders and organizations of the tools they need to forge compromises and make them stick. Fortunately, he argues, much of the damage can be undone by rediscovering political realism. Instead of trying to drive private money away out of politics, how about channeling it to strengthen parties and leaders? Instead of doubling down on direct democracy, how about giving political professionals more influence over candidate nominations? Rauch shows how a new generation of realist thinkers is using time-tested truths about politics and government to build reforms for our time.Rich with contrarian insights and fresh thinking, Political Realism is an eye-opening challenge to today's conventional wisdom about what ails American government and politics.

    The new edition, An Enduring Debate, continues the important discussion of nuclear proliferation and the dangers of a nuclear-armed world. With new chapters on the questions surrounding a nuclear North Korea, Iran, and Iraq and the potential for a world free of nuclear weapons, this Third Edition will continue to generate a lively classroom experience.

    Lee Scott and white-water expert turned sustainability consultant Jib Ellison, the result is nothing less than a green business revolution.Wal-Mart—long the target of local businesses, labor advocates, and environmentalists who deplore its outsourced, big-box methods—has embraced an unprecedented green makeover, which is now spreading worldwide. The retail giant that rose from Sam Walton's Ozarks dime store is leveraging the power of 200 million weekly customers to drive waste, toxics, and carbon emissions out of its stores and products. Neither an act of charity nor an empty greenwash, Wal-Mart's green move reflects its river guide's simple, compelling philosophy: that the most sustainable, clean, energy-efficient, and waste-free company will beat its competitors every time. Not just in some distant, utopian future but today.From energy conservation, recycling, and hybrid trucks to reduced packaging and partnerships with environmentalists it once met only in court, Wal-Mart has used sustainability to boost its bottom line even in a tough economy—belying the age-old claim that going green kills jobs and profits. Now the global apparel business, the American dairy industry, big agriculture, and even Wall Street are following Wal-Mart's lead, along with the 100,000 manufacturers whose products must become more sustainable to remain on Wal-Mart's shelves. Here Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Edward Humes charts the course of this unlikely second industrial revolution, in which corporate titans who once believed profit and planet must be at odds are learning that the best business just may be a force of nature.

    Michael Anton, the author of that controversial viral essay, now says that the last few years have only served to prove his "Flight 93" thesis: the left has become more aggressive, more vindictive, and more dangerous—and the stakes have never been higher.  To reframe the upcoming 2020 election, Anton looks at California: a state that has descended from a middle-class paradise into crumbling, crowded chaos under unchallenged Democrat rule. Where California goes, so goes the United States of America, Anton argues—unless conservatives take a stand.

    In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world's leading climatologists, predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age and raise the oceans by 50 meters. The great ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland may take more than a century to melt, and the overall change in sea level will be one hundred times what is forecast for 2100. By comparing the global warming projection for the next century to natural climate changes of the distant past, and then looking into the future far beyond the usual scientific and political horizon of the year 2100, Archer reveals the hard truths of the long-term climate forecast.Archer shows how just a few centuries of fossil-fuel use will cause not only a climate storm that will last a few hundred years, but dramatic climate changes that will last thousands. Carbon dioxide emitted today will be a problem for millennia. For the first time, humans have become major players in shaping the long-term climate. In fact, a planetwide thaw driven by humans has already begun. But despite the seriousness of the situation, Archer argues that it is still not too late to avert dangerous climate change--if humans can find a way to cooperate as never before.Revealing why carbon dioxide may be an even worse gamble in the long run than in the short, this compelling and critically important book brings the best long-term climate science to a general audience for the first time.

    With players Bobby Bonilla, Vince Coleman, Bret Saberhagen, and Howard Johnson, winning another championship seemed a mere formality. The 1992 New York Mets never made it to Cooperstown, however. Veteran newspapermen Bob Klapisch and John Harper reveal the extraordinary inside story of the Mets’ decline and fall—with the sort of detail and uncensored quotes that never run in a family newspaper. From the sex scandals that plagued the club in Florida to the puritanical, no-booze rules of manager Jeff Torborg, from bad behavior on road trips to the downright ornery practical “jokes” that big boys play, The Worst Team Money Could Buy is a grand-slam classic.

    It is unique among textbooks on climate change in that it combines an introduction of the science with an introduction to the non-science issues such as the economic and policy options. Unlike more purely descriptive textbooks, it contains the quantitative depth that is necessary for an adequate understanding of the science of climate change. The goal of the book is for a student to leave the class ready to engage in the public policy debate on this issue. This is an invaluable textbook for any introductory survey course on the science and policy of climate change, for both non-science majors and introductory science students.

    Kunstler’s shocking vision of our post-oil future caught the attention of environmentalists and business leaders alike, and stimulated widespread discussion about our dependence on fossil fuels and our dysfunctional financial and government institutions. Kunstler has since been profiled in The New Yorker and invited to speak at TED. In Too Much Magic, Kunstler evaluates what has changed in the last seven years and shows us that, in a post-financial-crisis world, his ideas are more relevant than ever. "Too Much Magic" is what Kunstler sees in the bright visions of a future world dreamed up by optimistic souls who believe technology will solve all our problems. Their visions remind him of the flying cars and robot maids that were the dominant images of the future in the 1950s. Kunstler’s image of the future is much more sober. With vision, clarity of thought, and a pragmatic worldview, Kunstler argues that the time for magical thinking and hoping for miracles is over, and the time to begin preparing for the long emergency has begun.

    Spanning ten historic years, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939 to ‘Joe-1’, the first Soviet atomic bomb test in August 1949, Atomic is the first fully realised popular account of the race between Nazi Germany, Britain, America and the Soviet Union to build atomic weapons.Drawing on declassified material such as MI6's Farm Hall transcripts, coded Soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project, and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the Soviet archives, Atomic presents a brilliant new account of the race to build humankind's most destructive weapon.Rich in personality, action, confrontation and deception, Jim Baggott’s book tells an epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human understanding.

    In these pages the virtuoso scientists who plumbed the secrets of electricity come vividly to life, including familiar giants like Thomas Edison; the visionary Michael Faraday, who struggled against the prejudices of the British class system; and Samuel Morse, a painter who, before inventing the telegraph, ran for mayor of New York on a platform of persecuting Catholics. Here too is Alan Turing, whose dream of a marvelous thinking machine—what we know as the computer—was met with indifference, and who ended his life in despair after British authorities forced him to undergo experimental treatments to “cure” his homosexuality. From the frigid waters of the Atlantic to the streets of Hamburg during a World War II firestorm to the interior of the human body, Electric Universe is a mesmerizing journey of discovery by a master science writer.

    The U.S. is expected to be "energy independent" and a "net exporter" in less than a decade, a move that will upend global politics, destabilize Saudi Arabia, crush Russia's chokehold over Europe, and finally bolster American power again.Or will it?Investigative journalist Bethany McLean digs deep into the cycles of boom and bust that have plagued the American oil industry for the past decade, from the financial wizardry and mysterious death of fracking pioneer Aubrey McClendon, to the investors who are questioning the very economics of shale itself. McLean finds that fracking is a business built on attracting ever-more gigantic amounts of capital investment, while promises of huge returns have yet to bear out. Saudi America tells a remarkable story that will persuade you to think about the power of oil in a new way.

    The authors identify 10 qualities, attributes, and skills that help to explain Lincoln's effectiveness, despite seemingly insurmountable odds:1. Implementing and sustaining a mission and vision with focused and profound clarity2. Communicating ideas effectively with precise and straightforward language3. Building a diverse and competent team to successfully address the mission4. Engendering trust, loyalty, and respect through humility, humor, and personal example5. Leading and serving with emotional intelligence and empathy6. Exercising situational competence and responding appropriately to implement effective change7. Rising beyond personal and professional trials through tenacity, persistence, resilience, and courage8. Exercising purposeful visibility9. Demonstrating personal growth and enhanced competence as a lifetime learner, willing to reflect on and expand ideas10. Believing that hope can become a realityChapters devoted to each element explore the historical record of Lincoln's life and actions, then discuss the implications for modern educators. End-of-chapter exercises provide a structure for reflection, analysis of current behaviors, and guidance for future work, so that readers can create their own path to success--inspired by the example of one of the greatest leaders of all time.

    On the third day of fierce fighting, Robert E. Lee’s attempt to invade the North came to a head in Pickett’s Charge. The infantry assault, consisting of nine brigades of soldiers in a line that stretched for over a mile, resulted in casualties of over 50 percent for the Confederates and a huge psychological blow to Southern morale.Pickett’s Charge is a detailed analysis of one of the most iconic and defining events in American history. This book presents a much-needed fresh look, including the unvarnished truths and ugly realities, about the unforgettable story. With the luxury of hindsight, historians have long denounced the folly of Lee’s attack, but this work reveals the tactical brilliance of a master plan that went awry. Special emphasis is placed on the common soldiers on both sides, especially the non-Virginia attackers outside of Pickett’s Virginia Division. These fighters’ moments of cowardice, failure, and triumph are explored using their own words from primary and unpublished sources. Without romance and glorification, the complexities and contradictions of the dramatic story of Pickett's Charge have been revealed in full to reveal this most pivotal moment in the nation’s life. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    While nuclear science improves our everyday lives—from medicine to microwave technology—radiation’s invisible powers can trigger cancer and cellular mayhem. Writing with a biographer’s passion, Craig Nelson unlocks one of the great mysteries of the universe in a work that is tragic, triumphant, and above all, fascinating.From the discovery of X-rays in the 1890s, through the birth of nuclear power in an abandoned Chicago football stadium, to the bomb builders of Los Alamos and the apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove era, Nelson illuminates a pageant of fascinating historical figures: Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Franklin Roosevelt, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Harry Truman, Curtis LeMay, John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Ronald Reagan, and Mikhail Gorbachev, among others. He reveals how brilliant Jewish scientists fleeing Hitler transformed America from a nation that created lightbulbs and telephones into one that split atoms; how the most grotesque weapon ever invented could realize Alfred Nobel’s lifelong dream of global peace; and how, in our time, emergency workers and low-level utility employees fought to contain run-amok nuclear reactors while wondering if they would live or die. Radiance defies our common-sense views of nature, with its staggering amounts of energy flowing from seemingly inert rock and matter pulsing in half-lives that transforms into other states over the course of decades or in the blink of an eye. Radiation is as scary a word as cancer, but it’s the power that keeps our planet warm, as well as the force behind earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, and so organic to all life that even our own human bodies are radioactive. By tracing mankind’s complicated relationship with the dangerous energy it discovered and unleashed, Nelson reveals how atomic power and radiation are indivisible from our everyday lives.Brilliantly told and masterfully crafted, The Age of Radiance provides a new understanding of a misunderstood epoch in history and restores to prominence the forgotten heroes and heroines who have changed all of our lives for better and for worse. It confirms Craig Nelson’s position as one of the most lively and skillful popular historians writing today.

    Its nucleus is so heavy that it is highly unstable and radioactive. If broken apart, it unleashes the tremendous power within the atom—the most controversial type of energy ever discovered.Set against the darkening shadow of World War II, Amir D. Aczel's suspenseful account tells the story of the fierce competition among the day's top scientists to harness nuclear power. The intensely driven Marie Curie identified radioactivity. The University of Berlin team of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner--he an upright, politically conservative German chemist and she a soft-spoken Austrian Jewish theoretical physicist--achieved the most spectacular discoveries in fission. Curie's daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, raced against Meitner and Hahn to break the secret of the splitting of the atom. As the war raged, Niels Bohr, a founder of modern physics, had a dramatic meeting with Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist in charge of the Nazi project to beat the Allies to the bomb. And finally, in 1942, Enrico Fermi, a prodigy from Rome who had fled the war to the United States, unleashed the first nuclear chain reaction in a racquetball court at the University of Chicago.At a time when the world is again confronted with the perils of nuclear armament, Amir D. Aczel's absorbing story of a rivalry that changed the course of history is as thrilling and suspenseful as it is scientifically revelatory and newsworthy.