Indeed, no other legislature in the world approaches its power. Yet most Americans have only a murky idea of how it works. In The U.S. Congress, Donald A. Ritchie, a congressional historian for more than thirty years, takes readers on a fascinating, behind-the-scenes tour of Capitol Hill--pointing out the key players, explaining their behavior, and translating parliamentary language into plain English. No mere civics lesson, this eye-opening book provides an insiders perspective on Congress, matched with a professional historians analytical insight. After a swift survey of the creation of Congress by the constitutional convention, he begins to unscrew the nuts and pull out the bolts. What is it like to campaign for congress? To attract large donors? To enter either house with no seniority? He answers these questions and more, explaining committee assignments (and committee work), the role of staffers and lobbyists, floor proceedings, parliamentary rules, and coalition building. Ritchie explores the great effort put into constituent service--as representatives and senators respond to requests from groups and individuals--as well as media relations and news coverage. He also explores how the grand concepts we all know from civics class--checks and balances, advise and consent, congressional oversight--work in practice, in an age of strong presidents and a muscular Senate minority (no matter which party is in that position). In this sparkling addition to Oxfords Very Short Introduction series, Donald Ritchie moves beyond the cynicism and the platitudes to provide a gem of a portrait of how Congress really works.

    30-Second Architecture

    Because it was extremely difficult to verbalize the events to her own children years later, her adult family knew very little of the details until 30 years after her passing in 1967. That is when her granddaughter discovered her writings and promised to tell the story of what she endured.

    It contains meticulous trail descriptions that range from comfortable strolls for families to difficult treks for those looking for a challenging workout. Extensive key-at-a-glance information makes it easier to choose a hike based on length, difficulty, or scenery. A helpful list of hikes in the front of the book highlights those with special interests — best hikes for children, scenic hikes, hikes good for wildlife viewing, best hikes for runners, and more. Each hike report includes commentary on trailside geology, flowers, and wildlife. Historical notes provide fascinating details about early miners, trailblazers, the Pony Express, and Mormon pioneers. Whether lacing up boots, stepping into sneakers or strapping on snowshoes, Salt Lake City is a premier destination for outdoor adventure.

    Nevertheless, it has exerted a more powerful hold on international popular music than any nation besides England and America. From Prince Buster to Burning Spear, Lee "Scratch" Perry to Yellowman, Bob Marley to Shabba Ranks, reggae music is one of the most dynamic and powerful musical forms of the twentieth century. And, as Lloyd Bradley shows in his deft, definitive, and always entertaining book, it is and always has been the people's music. Born in the sound systems of the Kingston slums, reggae was the first music poor Jamaicans could call their own, and as it spread throughout the world, it always remained fluid, challenging, and distinctly Jamaican. Based on six years of research -- original interviews with most of reggae's key producers, musicians, and international players -- and a lifelong enthusiasm for one of the most remarkable of the world's musics, This Is Reggae Music is the definitive history of reggae.

    During World War II, six million Jews—as well as other targeted groups including Poles, the handicapped, and homosexuals—were systematically murdered by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Although the weight and heft of The Holocaust Chronicle cannot capture the immensity of its subject, the book’s 768 pages suggest that the Holocaust is a topic that must be openly confronted. Written and fact-checked by top scholars, the chronicle offers:A 3,000-item timeline pinpointing specific events that contributed to the Holocaust, such as Nazi Germany occupation during World War II, the sealing of urban ghettos in Europe, and the deportation of millions of Jews to death camps.Nearly 2,000 photographs chronicling the Holocaust in starkly visual terms, including images of the massacre of more than 33,000 Ukrainian Jews at Babi Yar and pictures from the liberation of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.Fourteen chapter-opening essays that put the most important years of the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath into perspective, beginning with Hitler’s rise to power and ending with the convictions of such Nazi officials as Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg Trial.More than 250 sidebars detailing the significant places, issues, events, and people of the Holocaust, including Anne Frank and Heinrich Himmler.An extensive prologue and epilogue that discuss the buildup to and aftermath of the Holocaust.* This is an alternate cover of Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures (ISBN-13: 9781680228328), content is the same. *

    immigration policy--a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the 20th century.Mae Ngai offers a close reading of the legal regime of restriction that commenced in the 1920s--its statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, administrative enforcement, differential treatment of European and non-European migrants, and long-term effects. In well-drawn historical portraits, Ngai peoples her study with the Filipinos, Mexicans, Japanese, and Chinese who comprised, variously, illegal aliens, alien citizens, colonial subjects, and imported contract workers.She shows that immigration restriction, particularly national-origin and numerical quotas, re-mapped the nation both by creating new categories of racial difference and by emphasizing as never before the nation's contiguous land borders and their patrol. This yielded the illegal alien, a new legal and political subject whose inclusion in the nation was a social reality but a legal impossibility--a subject without rights and excluded from citizenship. Questions of fundamental legal status created new challenges for liberal democratic society and have directly informed the politics of multiculturalism and national belonging in our time.Ngai's analysis is based on extensive archival research, including previously unstudied records of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Service. Contributing to American history, legal history, and ethnic studies, Impossible Subjects is a major reconsideration of U.S. immigration in the 20th century.

    Hardly oppressed like women and minorities, business corporations, too, have fought since the nation’s earliest days to gain equal rights under the Constitution—and today have nearly all the same rights as ordinary people.Exposing the historical origins of Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, Adam Winkler explains how those controversial Supreme Court decisions extending free speech and religious liberty to corporations were the capstone of a centuries-long struggle over corporate personhood and constitutional protections for business. Beginning his account in the colonial era, Winkler reveals the profound influence corporations had on the birth of democracy and on the shape of the Constitution itself. Once the Constitution was ratified, corporations quickly sought to gain the rights it guaranteed. The first Supreme Court case on the rights of corporations was decided in 1809, a half-century before the first comparable cases on the rights of African Americans or women. Ever since corporations have waged a persistent and remarkably fruitful campaign to win an ever-greater share of individual rights.Although corporations never marched on Washington, they employed many of the same strategies of more familiar civil rights struggles: civil disobedience, test cases, and novel legal claims made in a purposeful effort to reshape the law. Indeed, corporations have often been unheralded innovators in constitutional law, and several of the individual rights Americans hold most dear were first secured in lawsuits brought by businesses.Winkler enlivens his narrative with a flair for storytelling and a colorful cast of characters: among others, Daniel Webster, America’s greatest advocate, who argued some of the earliest corporate rights cases on behalf of his business clients; Roger Taney, the reviled Chief Justice, who surprisingly fought to limit protections for corporations—in part to protect slavery; and Roscoe Conkling, a renowned politician who deceived the Supreme Court in a brazen effort to win for corporations the rights added to the Constitution for the freed slaves. Alexander Hamilton, Teddy Roosevelt, Huey Long, Ralph Nader, Louis Brandeis, and even Thurgood Marshall all played starring roles in the story of the corporate rights movement.In this heated political age, nothing can be timelier than Winkler’s tour de force, which shows how America’s most powerful corporations won our most fundamental rights and turned the Constitution into a weapon to impede the regulation of big business.

    The freedom theme is explored in the words of well-known historical figures and ordinary Americans. Each document is accompanied by an introductory headnote and study questions.

    Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, came to the young nation to investigate the functioning of American democracy & the social, political & economic life of its citizens, publishing his observations in 1835 & 1840. Brilliantly written, vividly illustrated with vignettes & portraits, Democracy in America is far more than a trenchant analysis of one society at a particular point in time. What will most intrigue modern readers is how many of the observations still hold true: on the mixed advantages of a free press, the strained relations among the races & the threats posed to democracies by consumerism & corruption. So uncanny is Tocqueville’s insight & so accurate are his predictions, that it seems as tho he were not merely describing the American identity but actually helping to create it.

    Balancing social and cultural history with traditional political and diplomatic themes, it tells the story of the diversity and complexity of the United States and the forces that have enabled it to survive and flourish despite division. This fifth edition of Volume 1 includes coverage of events and developments through the year 1877 and features two new essays.

    College level text for art appreciation.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Elected conventions in at least nine of the thirteen states would have to ratify it before it could take effect. There was reason to doubt whether that would happen. The document we revere today as the foundation of our country’s laws, the cornerstone of our legal system, was hotly disputed at the time. Some Americans denounced the Constitution for threatening the liberty that Americans had won at great cost in the Revolutionary War. One group of fiercely patriotic opponents even burned the document in a raucous public demonstration on the Fourth of July.In this splendid new history, Pauline Maier tells the dramatic story of the yearlong battle over ratification that brought such famous founders as Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and Henry together with less well-known Americans who sometimes eloquently and always passionately expressed their hopes and fears for their new country. Men argued in taverns and coffeehouses; women joined the debate in their parlors; broadsides and newspaper stories advocated various points of view and excoriated others. In small towns and counties across the country people read the document carefully and knew it well. Americans seized the opportunity to play a role in shaping the new nation. Then the ratifying conventions chosen by "We the People" scrutinized and debated the Constitution clause by clause.Although many books have been written about the Constitutional Convention, this is the first major history of ratification. It draws on a vast new collection of documents and tells the story with masterful attention to detail in a dynamic narrative. Each state’s experience was different, and Maier gives each its due even as she focuses on the four critical states of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, whose approval of the Constitution was crucial to its success.The New Yorker Gilbert Livingston called his participation in the ratification convention the greatest transaction of his life. The hundreds of delegates to the ratifying conventions took their responsibility seriously, and their careful inspection of the Constitution can tell us much today about a document whose meaning continues to be subject to interpretation. Ratification is the story of the founding drama of our nation, superbly told in a history that transports readers back more than two centuries to reveal the convictions and aspirations on which our country was built.

    A highly readable and beautifully illustrated re-telling of the most famous stories from Greek mythology.