Book picks similar to
Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (and Win Elections) by Jeffrey Feldman
politics
nonfiction
rhetoric
history-biography-memoir
Strategic Mindset : A 7-Day Plan to Identify What Matters and Create a Strategy that Works (Productivity Series Book 4)
Thibaut Meurisse - 2021
The Case for Goliath: How American Acts as the World's Government in the Twenty-First Century
Michael Mandelbaum - 2005
Mandelbaum explains how this role came about despite the fact that neither the United States nor any other country sought to establish it. He describes the contributions that American power makes to global security and prosperity, the shortcomings of American foreign policy, and how other countries have come to accept, resent, and exert influence on America's global role. And he assesses the prospects for the continuation of this role, which depends most importantly on whether the American public is willing to pay for it.Written with Mandelbaum's characteristic blend of clarity, wit, and profound understanding of America and the world, The Case for Goliath offers a fresh and surprising approach to an issue that obsesses citizens and policymakers the world over, as well as a major statement on the foreign policy issues confronting the American people today.
How to Think Politically: Sages, Scholars and Statesmen Whose Ideas Have Shaped the World
James Bernard Murphy - 2019
This book goes beyond the surface headlines, the fake news and the hysteria to explore the timeless questions posed and answers offered by a diverse group of the 30 greatest political thinkers who have ever lived.Are we political, economic, or religious animals? Should we live in small city-states, nations, or multinational empires? What values should politics promote? Should wealth be owned privately or in common? Do animals also have rights? There is no idea too radical for this global assortment of thinkers, which includes: Confucius; Plato; Augustine; Machiavelli; Burke; Wollstonecraft; Marx; Nietzsche; Gandhi; Qutb; Arendt; Nussbaum, Naess and Rawls.In each brief chapter, the authors paint a vivid portrait of these often prescient, always compelling political thinkers, showing how their ideas grew out of their own dramatic lives and times and evolved beyond them. Now more than ever we need to be reminded that politics can be a noble, inspiring and civilising art. And if we want to understand today's political world, we need to understand the foundations of politics and its architects. This is the perfect guide to both.
Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme
Calvin Trillin - 2008
And it carries through to the vote that made Barack Obama the forty-fourth president of the United States.
Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language
Norman Fairclough - 1995
This text covers four main areas: Language, Ideology and Power; Discourse and Sociocultural Change; Textual Analysis in Social Research; and Critical Language Awareness.
Enemy of the People: Trump's War on the Press, the New McCarthyism, and the Threat to American Democracy
Marvin Kalb - 2018
Twentieth-century dictators--notably, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao--had all denounced their critics, especially the press, as "enemies of the people." Their goal was to delegitimize the work of the press as "fake news" and create confusion in the public mind about what's real and what isn't; what can be trusted and what can't be.That, it seems, is also Trump's goal. In Enemy of the People, Marvin Kalb, an award-winning American journalist with more than six decades of experience both as a journalist and media observer, writes with passion about why we should fear for the future of American democracy because of the unrelenting attacks by the Trump administration on the press.As his new book shows, the press has been a bulwark in the defense of democracy. Kalb writes about Edward R. Murrow's courageous reporting on Senator Joseph McCarthy's "red scare" theatrics in the early 1950s, which led to McCarthy's demise. He reminds us of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's reporting in the early 1970s that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.Today, because of revolutionary changes in journalism, no Murrow is ready at the battlements. Journalism has been severely weakened. Yet, without a virile, strong press, democracy is in peril.Kalb's book is a frightening indictment of President Trump's efforts to delegitimize the American press--and put the future of our democracy in question.
Rape and Sexual Power in Early America
Sharon Block - 2006
Block analyzes the legal, social, and cultural implications of more than nine hundred documented incidents of sexual coercion and hundreds more extralegal commentaries found in almanacs, newspapers, broadsides, and other print and manuscript sources. Highlighting the gap between reports of coerced sex and incidents that were publicly classified as rape, Block demonstrates that public definitions of rape were based less on what actually happened than on who was involved. She challenges conventional narratives that claim sexual relations between white women and black men became racially charged only in the late nineteenth century. Her analysis extends racial ties to rape back into the colonial period and beyond the boundaries of the southern slave-labor system. Early Americans' treatment of rape, Block argues, both enacted and helped to sustain the social, racial, gender, and political hierarchies of a New World and a new nation.
Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry
John Stauber - 1995
Common Courage’s number one seller blows the lid off of today's multi-billion-dollar propaganda-for-hire PR industry, revealing how public relations wizards concoct and spin the news, organize phony "grassroots" front groups, spy on citizens and conspire with lobbyists and politicians.
Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe
Arianna Huffington - 2008
The editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post tackles the issues at the heart of the 2008 presidential election with her trademark passion, intelligence, and devastating wit.
The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups
Mancur Olson - 1965
Applying economic analysis to the subjects of the political scientist, sociologist, and economist, Mancur Olson examines the extent to which the individuals that share a common interest find it in their individual interest to bear the costs of the organizational effort.The theory shows that most organizations produce what the economist calls "public goods"--goods or services that are available to every member, whether or not he has borne any of the costs of providing them. Economists have long understood that defense, law, and order were public goods that could not be marketed to individuals, and that taxation was necessary. They have not, however, taken account of the fact that private as well as governmental organizations produce public goods.The services the labor union provides for the worker it represents, or the benefits a lobby obtains for the group it represents, are public goods: they automatically go to every individual in the group, whether or not he helped bear the costs. It follows that, just as governments require compulsory taxation, many large private organizations require special (and sometimes coercive) devices to obtain the resources they need. This is not true of smaller organizations for, as this book shows, small and large organizations support themselves in entirely different ways. The theory indicates that, though small groups can act to further their interest much more easily than large ones, they will tend to devote too few resources to the satisfaction of their common interests, and that there is a surprising tendency for the "lesser" members of the small group to exploit the "greater" members by making them bear a disproportionate share of the burden of any group action.All of the theory in the book is in Chapter 1; the remaining chapters contain empirical and historical evidence of the theory's relevance to labor unions, pressure groups, corporations, and Marxian class action.
Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising
Judith Williamson - 1978
The overt economic function of this appeal is to make us buy things. Its ideological function, however, is to involve us as 'individuals' in perpetuating the ideas which endorse the economic basis of our society. If it is economic conditions which make ideology necessary, it is ideology which makes those conditions seem necessary.If society is to be changed, this vicious circle of necessity and ideas must be broken. Decoding Advertisements is an attempt to undo one link in the chain which we ourselves help to forge, in our acceptance not only of the images and values of advertising, but of the 'transparent' forms and structures in which they are embodied. It provides not an answer, but a set of tools which we can use to alter our own perceptions of one of society's subtlest and most complex forms of propaganda.Other books by Judith Williamson published by Marion Boyars are Consuming Passions: the Dynamics of Popular Culture and Deadline at Dawn: Film Criticism 1980-1990.
Crucial Conversations Skills (Crucial Conversations & Crucial Accountability)
Kerry Patterson - 2011
But more often than not, we end up dealing with people who come across as disagreeable, stubborn, or even obstructive. And emotions flare up. The only way to get things done is to step up to the plate . . . by stepping back from our emotions.Written by a team of experts from the world-renowned training firm VitalSmarts, these two books provide the skills you need to make every interaction fruitful and productive in even the most emotional situations.eBook package includes:"CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS" The "New York Times" bestselling "Crucial Conversations" has sparked a revolution in how people communicate to achieve common goals. Now, the revised second edition builds on this decade-long legacy of success to get professionals at every level and in all professions talking "with" partners, bosses, employees, clients--not "at" them.Learn proven methods for turning the focus of hot-button discussions--job performance, customer satisfaction, interpersonal matters--away from subjective points of view and toward productive, mutually beneficial conclusions."CRUCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY" Hold anyone accountable. Master performance discussions. Get RESULTS.Broken promises, missed deadlines, poor behavior--they don't just make others' lives miserable; they can sap up to 50 percent of organizational performance and account for the vast majority of divorces. "Crucial Accountability" offers the tools for improving relationships in the workplace and in life and for resolving all these problems--permanently.