Publisher: Bauer Books
Herland is a utopian novel written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women, who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order: free of war, conflict, and domination.
Extreme polarization in American politics is perhaps the most confounding political phenomenon of our time. This book binds together polarization in Congress and polarization in the electorate within an ever-expanding feedback loop. This loop is powered by the discipline exerted by the respective political parties on their Congressional members and district candidates and endorsed by the voters in each Congressional district who must choose between the alternatives offered. Tight national party discipline produces party delegations in Congress that are widely separated from one another but each ideologically narrowly distributed.As district constituencies become more polarized and are egged on by activists, parties are further motivated to appeal to their respective bases rather than to voters in the ideological center. America has indeed acquired parties with clear platforms—once thought to be a desirable goal—but these parties are now feuding camps. What resolution might there be? Just as the progressive movement slowly replaced the Gilded Age, might a new reform effort replace the current squabble? Or could an asymmetry develop in the partisan constraints that would lead to ascendancy of the center, or might a new and over-riding issue generate a cross-cutting dimension, opening the door to a new politics? Only the future will tell.Show book
“In his searing new book . . . Engelhardt has composed a requiem for a nation turned upside down by the relentless pursuit of global power” (Karen J. Greenberg, author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State). As veteran author Tom Engelhardt argues, despite having a more massive, technologically advanced, and better-funded military than any other power on the planet, in the last decade and a half of constant war across the greater Middle East and parts of Africa, the United States has won nothing. Its unending wars, in fact, have only contributed to a world growing more chaotic by the second. “The violence, destruction, and suffering resulting from the imperial arrogance of Bush, Cheney, and cohorts have proceeded on their shocking course while most Americans, Tom Engelhardt writes, were ‘only half paying attention.’ Regular readers of his incisive, lucid, and brutally informative columns could not fail to pay attention and to be appalled at what was revealed. Their impact is all the more forceful in this collection, which casts a brilliant and horrifying light on a sordid chapter of history, far from closed.” —Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hopes and Prospects “No one has had a keener eye for American militarism, hypocrisy, and flat-out folly than Tom Engelhardt.” —John W. Dower, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering “The mainstream media call it the ‘Age of Trump.’ Tom Engelhardt knows better: It’s the ‘Era of America Unhinged.’ This new collection of essays gives us Engelhardt at his very best: incisive, impassioned, and funny even, in a time of great darkness.” —Andrew J. Bacevich, New York Times–bestselling author “Tom Engelhardt is a tireless analyst of the miseries of American Empire . . . [an] indispensable book.” —Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of MichiganShow book
How do you get away with the murder of 11 million people? The answer is simple—and disturbing. You lie to them. Learn how you can become an informed, passionate citizen who demands honesty and integrity from your leaders in this updated and expanded edition of the original New York Times bestselling book. In this updated and expanded nonpartisan New York Times bestselling book, Andy Andrews emphasizes that seeking and discerning the truth is of critical importance, and that believing lies is the most dangerous thing you can do. You’ll be challenged to become a more careful student of the past, seeking accurate, factual accounts of events that illuminate choices our world faces now. By considering how the Nazi German regime was able to carry out over eleven million institutional killings between 1933 and 1945, Andrews advocates for an informed population that demands honesty and integrity from its leaders and from each other. This thought-provoking book poses questions like:What happens to a society in which truth is absent?How are we supposed to tell the difference between the “good guys" and the “bad guys”?How does the answer to this question affect our country, families, faith, and values?Does it matter that millions of ordinary citizens aren't participating in the decisions that shape the future of our country? Which is more dangerous: politicians with ill intent, or the too-trusting population that allows such people to lead them? This is a wake-up call: we must become informed, passionate citizens or suffer the consequences of our own ignorance and apathy. We can no longer measure a leader’s worth by the yardsticks provided by the left or the right. Instead, we must use an unchanging standard: the pure, unvarnished truth.Show book
As chief archivist of the KGB’s foreign branch, Vasili Mitrokhin had virtually unfettered access to its most closely held secrets. But his government’s relentless repression of dissidents at home and abroad and its bungled Afghan war policy disillusioned him. Determined to preserve the truth, Mitrokhin secretly compiled a detailed record of the feared agency’s operations abroad. Written with historian Christopher Andrew and backed with meticulous supporting research, what emerges is a chilling chronicle of murder and treachery, slander and corruption, paranoia and purges. KGB placed agents high within British intelligence agencies and American defense contractors; yet they failed to discredit Martin Luther King, Jr., J. Edgar Hoover, Senator Scoop Jackson or President Ronald Reagan. And their massive information gathering brought them no international advantages; to the end Soviet officials remained baffled by the West. The Sword and the Shield is a compelling—and historically significant—narrative destined to cast new light on the Soviet era.Show book
Presidential Leadership in Political Time has greatly expanded our understanding of and debates over the politics of leadership. It clarifies the typical political problems that presidents confront in political time, as well as the likely effects of their working through them, and considers contemporary innovations in our political system that bear on the leadership patterns from the more distant past. Drawing out parallels in the politics of leadership between Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt and between James Polk and John Kennedy, it develops a new and revealing perspective on the presidential leadership of Clinton, Bush, and Obama. In this edition, Skowronek devotes a new chapter to Obama's presidency and its prospects for becoming transformational—like the presidencies of Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, and Reagan, all of whom succeeded to varying degrees in reconstructing the playing field of national politics. Along the way, he wonders if this kind of leadership is still even possible, given the current divided state of the American polity. He also takes a fresh look at the impact of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, of a more disciplined and homogeneous Republican party, of conservative advocacy of the "unitary theory" of the executive, and of progressive disillusionment with the presidency as an institution.Show book
The activist and author of A People’s History of the United States records an in-depth and personal account of the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, students of Spelman College, a black liberal arts college for women, were drawn into the historic protests occurring across Atlanta. At the time, Howard Zinn was a history professor at Spelman and served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Zinn mentored many of Spelman’s students fighting for civil rights at the time, including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. Zinn’s involvement with the Atlanta student movement and his closeness to Spelman’s leading activists gave him an insider’s view of the political and intellectual world of Spelman, Atlanta University, and the SNCC. He recorded his many insights and observations of the time in his Spelman College diary. Robert Cohen presents Zinn’s diary in full along with a thorough historical overview and helpful contextual notes. It is a fascinating historical document of the free speech, academic freedom, and student rights battles that rocked Spelman and led to Zinn’s dismissal from the college in 1963 for supporting the student movement.Show book
