Today's progressives now work for professional organizations more comfortable with the inside game in Washington DC (and capitols throughout the West), where they are outmatched and outspent by corporate interests. Labor unions now focus on the narrowest possible understanding of the interests of their members, and membership continues to decline in lockstep with the narrowing of their goals. Meanwhile, promising movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter lack sufficient power to accomplish meaningful change. Why do progressives in the United States keep losing on so many issues?In No Shortcuts, Jane McAlevey argues that progressives can win, but lack the organized power to enact significant change, to outlast their bosses in labor fights, and to hold elected leaders accountable. Drawing upon her experience as a scholar and longtime organizer in the student, environmental, and labor movements, McAlevey examines cases from labor unions and social movements to pinpoint the factors that helped them succeed - or fail - to accomplish their intended goals. McAlevey makes a compelling case that the great social movements of previous eras gained their power from mass organizing, a strategy today's progressives have mostly abandoned in favor of shallow mobilization or advocacy. She ultimately concludes that, in order to win, progressive movements need strong unions built from bottom-up organizing strategies that place the power for change in the hands of workers and ordinary people at the community level.Beyond the concrete examples in this book, McAlevey's arguments have direct implications for anyone involved in organizing for social change. Much more than cogent analysis, No Shortcuts explains exactly how progressives can go about rebuilding powerful movements at work, in our communities, and at the ballot box.

    He then jets forward to the nineteenth century, where systems we can easily recognize as modern bureaucracies come into being. In some areas of life—like with the modern postal systems of Germany and France—these bureaucracies have brought tremendous efficiencies to modern life. But Graeber argues that there is a much darker side to modern bureaucracy that is rarely ever discussed. Indeed, in our own “utopia of rules,” freedom and technological innovation are often the casualties of systems that we only faintly understand.Provocative and timely, the book is a powerful look and history of bureaucracy over the ages and its power in shaping the world of ideas.

    This book proves once and for all that so-called higher education continues to sink lower and lower into the depths of liberal madness as close-minded professors turn their students into socialists, atheists, race-baiters, and sex-crazed narcissists.In this book, author Ben Shapiro asks three critical questions:Why are universities so biased?Why do students take their professors at face value?What can we do to stop it?In addition to outlining practical solutions as part of a multi-pronged strategy to deal with this problem, Brainwashed encourages students toconsider the motives of their professors;pay attention to how professors use facts and editorialize during lectures; andask questions, encourage debate, and think before buying into a professor's mindset.Praise for Brainwashed:Ben Shapiro's writing is smart, informative, and incisive. He is wise beyond his years without losing the refreshing fearlessness of youth. Ann Coulter, bestselling author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Slander, and TreasonIn Brainwashed, Shapiro tells the truth--that universities are forums of left-liberal indoctrination, where dissent is discouraged and penalized, with more restrictions on free speech rather any other part of American society. Parents who are paying for tuition might want to take note, and see what their hard-earned money is paying for. Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report and co-author of The Almanac of American PoliticsWelcome to P.C. 101. In this trenchant insider's expose, Ben Shapiro bears witness to the modern American campus freak show. You'll get up close and personal with the Marxist loons, moral relativists, multicultural zealots, and American-haters who are corrupting young minds. Brainwashed reveals the ignominious lows to which higher education has sunk. Get deprogrammed. Buy this book! Michelle Malkin, nationally syndicated columnist and author of InvasionSharp thinking, tight writing, crazy-but-true stories: Ben Shapiro sees campus brainwashing and raises a national protest. This is a good book to give both freshmen who need warning and voters/alumni who need to take action. Dr. Marvin Olasky, University of Texas professor and editor-in-chief of World magazineA worthy successor to God and Man at Yale and Harvard Hates America in exploring the belly of the academic beast. David Horowitz, founder of Students for Academic Freedom and author of Radical Son and Left IllusionsWhat Animal House did for the toga party, Brainwashed should do for American resistance to campus radicalism. Rusty Humphries, nationally syndicated radio talk show host

    The Seven Deadly Virtues sits down next to readers at the bar, buys them a drink, and an hour or three later, ushers them into the revival tent without them even realizing it.   The book’s contributors include Sonny Bunch, Christopher Buckley, David “Iowahawk” Burge, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Graham, Mollie Hemingway, Rita Koganzon, Matt Labash, James Lileks, Rob Long, Larry Miller, P. J. O’Rourke, Joe Queenan, Christine Rosen, and Andrew Stiles. Jonathan V. Last, senior writer at the Weekly Standard, editor of the collection, is also a contributor. All eighteen essays in this book are appearing for the first time anywhere.   In the book’s opening essay, P. J. O’Rourke observes: “Virtue has by no means disappeared. It’s as much in public view as ever. But it’s been strung up by the heels. Virtue is upside down. Virtue is uncomfortable. Virtue looks ridiculous. All the change and the house keys are falling out of Virtue’s pants pockets.”   Here are the virtues everyone (including the book’s contributors) was taught in Sunday school but have totally forgotten about until this very moment.  In this sanctimony-free zone:   • Joe Queenan observes: “In essence, thrift is a virtue that resembles being very good at Mahjong. You’ve heard about people who can do it, but you’ve never actually met any of them.” • P. J. O’Rourke notes: “Fortitude is quaint. We praise the greatest generation for having it, but they had aluminum siding, church on Sunday, and jobs that required them to wear neckties or nylons (but never at the same time). We don’t want those either.” • Christine Rosen writes: “A fellowship grounded in sociality means enjoying the company of those with whom you actually share physical space rather than those with whom you regularly and enthusiastically exchange cat videos.” • Rob Long offers his version of modern day justice: if you sleep late on the weekend, you are forced to wait thirty minutes in line at Costco. • Jonah Goldberg offers: “There was a time when this desire-to-do-good-in-all-things was considered the only kind of integrity: ‘Angels are better than mortals. They’re always certain about what is right because, by definition, they’re doing God’s will.’ Gabriel knew when it was okay to remove a mattress tag and Sandalphon always tipped the correct amount.” • Sonny Bunch dissects forbearance, observing that the fictional Two Minutes Hate of George Orwell’s 1984 is now actually a reality directed at living, breathing people. Thanks, in part, to the Internet, “Its targets are designated by a spontaneously created mob—one that, due to its hive-mind nature—is virtually impossible to call off.”   By the time readers have completed The Seven Deadly Virtues, they won’t even realize that they’ve just been catechized into an entirely different—and better—moral universe.

    As founding Director of the Conflict Transformation Program and Institute of Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University, he has provided consultation and direct mediation in a range of situations from the Miskito/Sandinista conflict in Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, and the Philippines. His influential 1997 book Building Peace has become a classic in the discipline. This new book represents his thinking and learning over the past several years. He explores the evolution of his understanding of peacebuilding by reflecting on his own experiences in the field. Peacebuilding, in his view, is both a learned skill and an art. Finding this art, he says, requires a worldview shift. Conflict professionals must envision their work as a creative act - an exercise of what Lederach terms the moral imagination.

    In this multiple award-winning and bestselling diagnosis of the contemporary American spirit, David James Duncan suggests that the de facto political party embodied by the so-called "Christian Right" has turned worship into a self-righteous betrayal of the words and example of the very Jesus it claims to praise. In a bracing and often hilarious response to this trend, God Laughs & Plays offers "churchless sermons," stories, memoir, conversations, and cosmological reflections that scorn riches and embrace the poor; bless peacemakers, not war-makers; celebrate creation, diversity, empathy, playfulness and beauty; and insist that Divine Mystery is indeed mysterious and compassion is literally compassionate. The spiritual kingdom described by Jesus, this unusual book reminds us, is located not "in the Sky" or beyond a disastrous future, but within us, to be sought and embodied in the here and now.

    Budziszewski presents and defends the natural-law tradition in what is at once a primer for students and a vigorous argument for scholars. Written on the Heart expounds the work of the leading architects of theory on natural law, including Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and John Locke. It also takes up contemporary philosophy, theology and political science, colorfully running against the intimidating tide of advanced pluralism that finds natural law so difficult to tolerate.

    This inexpesnive pamphlet edition is sure to be prized by Americans of all ages.

    The power of rationalization - the means by which one mentally transforms wrong into right - drives the gay rights movement, gives it its revolutionary character, and makes its advocates indefatigable. The homosexual cause moved naturally from a plea for tolerance to cultural conquest because the security of its rationalization requires universal acceptance. In other words, we all must say that the bad is good. At stake in the rationalization of homosexual behavior is the notion that human beings are ordered to a purpose that is given by their Nature. The understanding that things have an in-built purpose is being replaced by the idea that everything is subject to man's will and power, which is considered to be without limits. This is what the debate over homosexuality is really about - the Nature of reality itself. The outcome of this dispute will have consequences that reach far beyond the issue at hand. Already America's major institutions have been transformed-its courts, its schools, its military, its civic institutions, and even its diplomacy. The further institutionalization of homosexuality will mean the triumph of force over reason, thus undermining the very foundations of the American Republic.

    Taking a wholly different view, Asma Barlas develops a believer's reading of the Qur'an that demonstrates the radically egalitarian and antipatriarchal nature of its teachings.Beginning with a historical analysis of religious authority and knowledge, Barlas shows how Muslims came to read inequality and patriarchy into the Qur'an to justify existing religious and social structures and demonstrates that the patriarchal meanings ascribed to the Qur'an are a function of who has read it, how, and in what contexts. She goes on to reread the Qur'an's position on a variety of issues in order to argue that its teachings do not support patriarchy. To the contrary, Barlas convincingly asserts that the Qur'an affirms the complete equality of the sexes, thereby offering an opportunity to theorize radical sexual equality from within the framework of its teachings. This new view takes readers into the heart of Islamic teachings on women, gender, and patriarchy, allowing them to understand Islam through its most sacred scripture, rather than through Muslim cultural practices or Western media stereotypes.

    More than just a tirade against religion, this is the work of an impassioned, idealistic socialist writing at the beginning of the First World War, when the notion of an international socialist revolution still seemed like a very real possibility to many of the left-leaning thinkers of the day. Sinclair's chief concern is social justice and his aim is to enlighten common people by training his critical intelligence like a sharpshooter on the many hypocrisies of established religion, which stand in the way of achieving a just society for all. More than anything he is particularly incensed by the collusion of religion with the power structure of capitalism in exploiting the poor to increase its own wealth while ignoring the obvious material needs of the less fortunate. In the end Sinclair places his faith in a "new religion" based on the known facts of human nature and on the largely untapped potential of human beings to solve their own problems through reason and science.This work, written before Sinclair and others on the American left became disillusioned with Stalin's Soviet-style socialism, offers an interesting glimpse into the intellectual currents prevalent on the left at the beginning of the twentieth century.

    And so, too often, 'the bland lead the bland'. Our unfamiliar problems need a new approach, and the reception given to this famous book has shown the value of its fresh, lively ideas.'A compelling challenge to conventional thought'  The New York Times'He shows himself a truly sensitive and civilized man, whose ideas are grounded in the common culture of the two continents, and may serve as a link between them; his book is of foremost importance for them both'  The Times Literary SupplementJohn Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) was a Canadian-American economist. A Keynesian and an institutionalist, Galbraith was a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism and progressivism. Galbraith was the author of 30 books, including The Economics of Innocent Fraud, The Great Crash: 1929, and A History of Economics.

    Evidence that Jesus had siblings contradicts Church dogma on the virgin birth, and James is also a symbol of Christian teachings that have been obscured. While Peter is traditionally thought of as the leader of the apostles and the “rock” on which Jesus built his church, Jeffrey Bütz shows that it was James who led the disciples after the crucifixion. It was James, not Peter, who guided them through the Church's first major theological crisis--Paul's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. Using the canonical Gospels, writings of the Church Fathers, and apocryphal texts, Bütz argues that James is the most overlooked figure in the history of the Church. He shows how the core teachings of Jesus are firmly rooted in Hebraic tradition; reveals the bitter battles between James and Paul for ideological supremacy in the early Church; and explains how Paul's interpretations, which became the foundation of the Church, are in many ways its betrayal. Bütz reveals a picture of Christianity and the true meaning of Christ's message that are sometimes at odds with established Christian doctrine and concludes that James can serve as a desperately needed missing link between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to heal the wounds of centuries of enmity.

    Half familiar with superficial aspects of Christianity, hopeful of there being greater depth than has beenfound so far, she or he is curious, insistent, looking for something to believe in but not ready to leap without good reason. Such a person is asking, Why be Christian?In a passionate and personal way, Hall probes fundamental religious questions and wrestles with thecogency of basic Christian convictions about Jesus and God, about religious belief and the human predicament, about inauthentic forms of Christianity, about what is missing in human life today. QuotingUnamuno's dictum that Faith that does not doubt is dead faith, Hall's accessible and straightforward book helps readers to reclaim a Christianity of personal, intellectual, and moral integrity. This book maywell prove a modern religious classic.

    How could it have happened, especially after all that we've learned from the Great Depression? Why wasn't it anticipated so that remedial steps could be taken to avoid or mitigate it? What can be done to reverse a slide into a full-blown depression? Why have the responses to date of the government and the economics profession been so lackluster? Richard Posner presents a concise and non-technical examination of this mother of all financial disasters and of the, as yet, stumbling efforts to cope with it. No previous acquaintance on the part of the reader with macroeconomics or the theory of finance is presupposed. This is a book for intelligent generalists that will interest specialists as well.Among the facts and causes Posner identifies are: excess savingsflowing in from Asia and the reckless lowering of interest rates by theFederal Reserve Board; the relation between executive compensation, short-term profit goals, and risky lending; the housing bubble fuelled bylow interest rates, aggressive mortgage marketing, and loose regulations; the low savings rate of American people; and the highly leveraged balance sheets of large financial institutions.Posner analyzes the two basic remedial approaches to the crisis, which correspond to the two theories of the cause of the Great Depression: the monetarist--that the Federal Reserve Board allowed the money supply to shrink, thus failing to prevent a disastrous deflation--and the Keynesian--that the depression was the product of a credit binge in the 1920's, a stock-market crash, and the ensuing downward spiral in economic activity. Posner concludes that the pendulum swung too far and that our financial markets need to be more heavily regulated.Read Richard Posner's blog, and his latest article in The Atlantic.