"...a major work by a major writer, a superb re-creation of the twelve crucial months that opened the Civil War."--The New York Times.

    This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as "a prodigious achievement."Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures--whether they be PTA, church, or political parties--have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe.Like defining works from the past, such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society, and like the works of C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam's Bowling Alone has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do.

    The book is divided into three sections: differing approaches to the study of security; the broadening and deepening of security; and a range of traditional and non-traditional issues that have emerged on the security agenda.The study of international security has undergone dramatic changes since the end of the Cold War. While war and the threat to use force is part of the security equation it is not exclusively so. Security studies encompasses dangers that range from pandemics, such as HIV/AIDS, and environmental degradation through to the more readily associated security concerns of direct violence, such as terrorism and inter-state armed conflict.Accessible and easy to use, Contemporary Security Studies is essential reading for all students new to international security.The book is accompanied by an Online Resource Center.Student resources:Case studies on the Iraq War, Zimbabwe, migration and North Korea Web links Multiple Choice Questions Flashcard glossaryLecturer resources:PowerPoint slides

    But we are pulled in the other direction too by the anxiety that a violent response to violence makes us morally indistinguishable from our enemies. There is perhaps no greater political challenge today than trying to win the war against terror without losing our democratic souls. Michael Ignatieff confronts this challenge head-on, with the combination of hard-headed idealism, historical sensitivity, and political judgment that has made him one of the most influential voices in international affairs today.Ignatieff argues that we must not shrink from the use of violence--that far from undermining liberal democracy, force can be necessary for its survival. But its use must be measured, not a program of torture and revenge. And we must not fool ourselves that whatever we do in the name of freedom and democracy is good. We may need to kill to fight the greater evil of terrorism, but we must never pretend that doing so is anything better than a lesser evil.In making this case, Ignatieff traces the modern history of terrorism and counter-terrorism, from the nihilists of Czarist Russia and the militias of Weimar Germany to the IRA and the unprecedented menace of Al Qaeda, with its suicidal agents bent on mass destruction. He shows how the most potent response to terror has been force, decisive and direct, but--just as important--restrained. The public scrutiny and political ethics that motivate restraint also give democracy its strongest weapon: the moral power to endure when the furies of vengeance and hatred are spent.The book is based on the Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 2003.

    Alan Taylor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history. The American Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain’s colonies, fueled by local conditions and resistant to control. Emerging from the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, the revolution pivoted on western expansion as well as seaboard resistance to British taxes. When war erupted, Patriot crowds harassed Loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. The war exploded in set battles like Saratoga and Yorktown and spread through continuing frontier violence.The discord smoldering within the fragile new nation called forth a movement to concentrate power through a Federal Constitution. Assuming the mantle of “We the People,” the advocates of national power ratified the new frame of government. But it was Jefferson’s expansive “empire of liberty” that carried the revolution forward, propelling white settlement and slavery west, preparing the ground for a new conflagration.

    Most are loathe to admit that the United States has any imperial pretensions. But history tells a different story as filmmaker Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick reveal in this riveting account of the rise and decline of the American empire.Aided by the latest archival findings and recently declassified documents and building on the research of the world’s best scholars, Stone and Kuznick construct an often shocking but meticulously documented “People’s History of the American Empire” that offers startling context to the Bush-Cheney policies that put us at war in two Muslim countries and show us why the Obama administration has had such a difficult time cleaving a new path.Stone and Kuznick will introduce readers to a pantheon of heroes and villains as they show not only how far the United States has drifted from its democratic traditions, but the powerful forces that have struggled to get us back on track.The authors reveal that:· The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and morally indefensible.· The United States, not the Soviet Union, bore the lion’s share of responsibility for perpetuating the Cold War.· The U.S. love affair with right-wing dictators has gone as far as overthrowing elected leaders, arming and training murderous military officers, and forcing millions of people into poverty.· U.S.-funded Islamist fundamentalists, who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, have blown back to threaten the interests of the U.S. and its allies.· U.S. presidents, especially in wartime, have frequently trampled on the constitution and international law.· The United States has brandished nuclear threats repeatedly and come terrifyingly close to nuclear war.American leaders often believe they are unbound by history, yet Stone and Kuznick argue that we must face our troubling history honestly and forthrightly in order to set a new course for the twenty-first century. Their conclusions will challenge even experts, but there is one question only readers can answer: Is it too late for America to change?

    For some, it was never enough. The real thrill came after their victims were dead.In this shocking anthology, true crime journalist Nigel Blundell brings together more than two dozen chilling profiles of the world's most unforgettable fiends, including: Ed Gein, the Plainfield necrophile and inspiration for The Silence of the Lambs; Andrei Chikatilo, the "Rostov Ripper", whose uncontrollable hunger was satiated by more that fifty victims; Dennis Nilsen, whose London house of horrors so overflowed with body parts that they blocked the drains; Germany's Fritz Haarmann who killed and consumed more than two dozen men, then peddled the left-over meat on the black market; Hungarian countess Elizabeth B�thory whose lust for the blood of virgins--a body count estimated to be in the hundreds--has branded her the most prolific female serial killer in world history; and many more human monsters whose appetites are still the stuff of nightmares.

    Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer's Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the Iliad was written twenty-seven centuries ago it has much to teach about combat trauma, as do the more recent, compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets.

    Pekka Hämäläinen explores the Lakotas’ roots as marginal hunter-gatherers and reveals how they reinvented themselves twice: first as a river people who dominated the Missouri Valley, America’s great commercial artery, and then—in what was America’s first sweeping westward expansion—as a horse people who ruled supreme on the vast high plains. The Lakotas are imprinted in American historical memory. Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull are iconic figures in the American imagination, but in this groundbreaking book they emerge as something different: the architects of Lakota America, an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations. Hämäläinen’s deeply researched and engagingly written history places the Lakotas at the center of American history, and the results are revelatory.

    In a balanced treatment of the Court's power and curbs on its power, O'Brien (government and foreign affairs, U. of Virginia) expands discussion of how changes in the Court's compos

    Drawing on extensive original Russian sources, Marcel H. Van Herpen analyzes in detail how Putin's wars were prepared and conducted and why they led to allegations of war crimes and genocide. He shows how the conflicts functioned to consolidate and legitimate Putin's regime and explores how they were connected to a third, hidden, "internal war" waged by the Kremlin against the opposition. The author convincingly argues that the Kremlin--relying on the secret services, the Orthodox Church, the Kremlin youth "Nashi," and the rehabilitated Cossacks--is preparing for an imperial revival, most recently in the form of a "Eurasian Union." An essential book for understanding the dynamics of Putin's regime, this study digs deep into the Kremlin's secret long-term strategies. Readable and clearly argued, it makes a compelling case that Putin's regime emulates an established Russian paradigm in which empire building and despotic rule are mutually reinforcing. As the first comprehensive exploration of the historical antecedents and political continuity of the Kremlin's contemporary policies, Van Herpen's work will make a valuable contribution to the literature on post-Soviet Russia, and his arguments will stimulate vigorous debate.

    Friedman), The Endgame is Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor’s most ambitious and news-breaking book to date. A peerless work of investigative journalism and historical recreation ranging from 2003 to 2012, it gives us the first comprehensive, inside account of arguably the most widely reported yet least understood war in American history—from the occupation of Iraq to the withdrawal of American troops. Prodigiously researched, The Endgame is not only based on an abundance of highly classified, still-secret government documents but is also brilliantly informed by access to key figures in the White House, the military, the State and Defense departments, the intelligence community, and, most strikingly, by extensive interviews with both Sunni and Shiite leaders, key Kurdish politicians, tribal sheikhs, former insurgents, Sadrists, and senior Iraqi military officers, whose insights about critical turning points and previously unknown decisions made during the war have heretofore been conspicuously missing from the media’s coverage of it. The Endgame is riveting as a blow-by-blow chronicle of the fighting. It is also relentlessly revealing, as it deftly pieces together the puzzle of the prosecution of American, Iraqi, and Iranian objectives, and the diplomatic intrigue and political struggle within Iraq since the American invasion.

    Stone delineates the consistent suppression of free speech in six historical periods from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Vietnam War, and ends with a coda that examines the state of civil liberties in the Bush era. Full of fresh legal and historical insight, Perilous Times magisterially presents a dramatic cast of characters who influenced the course of history over a two-hundred-year period: from the presidents—Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Nixon—to the Supreme Court justices—Taney, Holmes, Brandeis, Black, and Warren—to the resisters—Clement Vallandingham, Emma Goldman, Fred Korematsu, and David Dellinger. Filled with dozens of rare photographs, posters, and historical illustrations, Perilous Times is resonant in its call for a new approach in our response to grave crises.

    The author evaluates the casualties of the war on terror in this story of pre-emptive imprisonment for an act of terrorism never committed, of a terrorist cell that may not even have been a cell.

    Why do parachute jumpers yell "Geronimo"?Is it aerodynamically impossible for bumblebees to fly?Will watching too much TV ruin your eyes?Fresh from the popular newspaper column by CECIL ADAMS!WHAT IS CECIL ADAMS'S IQ?"Do you want it in scientific notation? Little Ed, get out the slide rule."--Cecil AdamsFor more than a quarter of a century Cecil Adams has been courageously attempting to lift the veil of ignorance surrounding the modern world.  Now, in his fifth book, he takes yet another stab, dissecting such classic conundrums as--If you swim less than an hour after eating, will you get cramps and die?--What's the difference between a Looney Tune and a Merrie Melody?--Can you see a Munchkin committing suicide in The Wizard of Oz?--Was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre based on actual events?--Did medieval lords really have "the right of the first night"?And much more!THE CRITICS: STILL RAVING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!"Trenchant, witty answers to the great imponderables."--Denver Post