Other books that might interest you

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  The Power of the Texas Governor...

  Brian McCall

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  George W. Bush called it "the best job in the world," yet many would argue that the Texas governorship is a weak office. Given few enumerated powers by the Texas Constitution, the governor must build a successful relationship with the state legislature—sometimes led by a powerful lieutenant governor or speaker of the opposing party—to advance his or her policy agenda. Yet despite the limitations on the office and the power of the legislative branch, many governors have had a significant impact on major aspects of Texas's public life—government, economic development, education, and insurance reform among them. How do Texas governors gain the power to govern effectively? The Power of the Texas Governor takes a fresh look at the state's chief executives, from John Connally to George W. Bush, to discover how various governors have overcome the institutional limitations of the office. Delving into the governors' election campaigns and successes and failures in office, Brian McCall makes a convincing case that the strength of a governor's personality—in particular, his or her highly developed social skills—can translate into real political power. He shows, for example, how governors such as Ann Richards and George W. Bush forged personal relationships with individual legislators to achieve their policy goals. Filled with revealing insights and anecdotes from key players in each administration, The Power of the Texas Governor offers new perspectives on leadership and valuable lessons on the use of power.

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  American Epic - Reading the US...

  Garrett Epps

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  In 1987, E. L. Doctorow celebrated the Constitution's bicentennial by reading it. "It is five thousand words long but reads like fifty thousand," he said. Distinguished legal scholar Garrett Epps disagrees. It's about 7,500 words. And Doctorow "missed a good deal of high rhetoric, many literary tropes, and even a trace of, if not wit, at least irony," he writes.In American Epic, Epps takes us through a complete reading of the Constitution to achieve an appreciation of its power and a holistic understanding of what it says. In this book he seeks not to provide a definitive interpretation, but to listen to the language and ponder its meaning. He draws on four modes of reading: scriptural, legal, lyric, and epic. The Constitution's first three words, for example, sound spiritual—but Epps finds them to be more aspirational than prayer-like. He turns the Second Amendment into a poem to illuminate its ambiguity. He notices oddities and omissions. The Constitution lays out rules for presidential appointment of officers, for example, but not removal. Should the Senate approve each firing? Can it withdraw its "advice and consent" and force a resignation? And he challenges himself, as seen in his surprising discussion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in light of Article 4, which orders states to give "full faith and credit" to the acts of other states.

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  Illicit Flirtations - Labor...

  Rhacel Salazar Parrenas

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  An “excellent” ethnography that “reveal[s] the global implications of the US morality on international policies and migrant workers” (Cristina Firpo, International Review of Modern Sociology). 
   
  In 2004, the US State Department declared Filipina hostesses in Japan the largest group of sex trafficked persons in the world. Since receiving this global attention, the number of hostesses entering Japan has dropped by nearly 90 percent. To some, this might suggest a victory for the global anti-trafficking campaign, but Rhacel Parreñas counters that this drastic decline—which stripped thousands of migrants of their livelihoods—is a setback. Parreñas worked alongside hostesses in a working-class club in Tokyo’s red-light district, serving drinks and entertaining her customers. While the common assumption has been that these hostess bars are hotbeds of sexual trafficking, Parreñas quickly discovered a different world of working migrant women, there by choice, and, most importantly, where none were coerced into prostitution. Illicit Flirtations calls into question the US policy to broadly label these women as sex trafficked. It highlights how in imposing top-down legal constraints to solve the perceived problems—including laws that push dependence on migrant brokers and measures that criminalize undocumented migrants—many women become more vulnerable to exploitation, not less. This book gives a long overdue look into the real world of those labeled as trafficked. 
   
  “A highly readable and informative book.” —Ko-lin Chin, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books 
   
  “A nuanced portrayal. . . . Scholars and policy-makers should take note.” —Viviana A. Zelizer, Princeton University, author of Purchase of Intimacy and Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy 
   
  “An extraordinary book.” —Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, author of A Sociology of Globalization

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  There's Nothing in the Middle of...

  Jim Hightower

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  There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos is a lucid, viciously funny, downright refreshing look at the mess we're in and how we got there. It argues that government (both of the left and the right) and big business are inextricably committed to protecting each other's economic and political interests. In the bargain, of course, the common people get steamrolled. Hightower shows why neither Republicans nor Democrats have ever seriously addressed the needs of the disenfranchised.aBut Hightower is no whiner-he offers populist, grassroots solutions to the problems he sees. He demonstrates how the poor-and now the middle-class-represents a true populist majority that has channeled its anger into grassroots organizing that is already making a difference at the local level. From who really runs Washington to fixing the environment, from laying bare the dirty politics behind the new global economy to the malevolent manipulations of cyberspace, Hightower leaves no contemporary issues unscathed. There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos is sure to evoke heated opinions from all parts of the political spectrum, and to generate much critical discussion.

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  A Farewell to Justice - Jim...

  Joan Mellen

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  Working with thousands of previously unreleased documents and drawing on more than one thousand interviews, with many witnesses speaking out for the first time, Joan Mellen revisits the investigation of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the only public official to have indicted, in 1969, a suspect in President John F. Kennedy's murder.Garrison began by exposing the contradictions in the Warren Report, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was an unstable pro-Castro Marxist who acted alone in killing Kennedy. A Farewell to Justice reveals that Oswald, no Marxist, was in fact working with both the FBI and the CIA, as well as with US Customs, and that the attempts to sabotage Garrison's investigation reached the highest levels of the US government. Garrison's suspects included CIA-sponsored soldiers of fortune enlisted in assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, an anti-Castro Cuban asset, and a young runner for the conspirators, interviewed here for the first time by the author.Building upon Garrison's effort, Mellen uncovers decisive new evidence and clearly establishes the intelligence agencies' roles in both a president's assassination and its cover-up. In this revised edition, to be published in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the president's assassination, the author reveals new sources and recently uncovered documents confirming in greater detail just how involved the CIA was in the events of November 22, 1963. More than one hundred new pages add critical evidence and information into one of the most significant events in human history.

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  No One Man Should Have All That...

  Amos Barshad

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  In this exploration of shadowy, behind-the-scenes operators, “each portrait provides an incisive dissection of the acquisition and maintenance of power” (The Nation). 
   
  Journalist Amos Barshad has long been fascinated by the powerful. But not by elected officials or natural leaders—he’s interested in the dark figures who wield power from the shadows. And, as Barshad shows in No One Man Should Have All That Power, these master manipulators are not confined to political backrooms. They can be found anywhere—from Hollywood to drug cartels, recording studios, or the NFL. 
   
  In this wide-ranging, insightful exploration of the phenomenon, Barshad takes readers into the lives of more than a dozen notorious figures, starting with Grigori Rasputin himself. The Russian mystic drank, danced, and healed his way into a position of power behind the last of the tsars. 
   
  Based on interviews with well-known personalities like Scooter Braun (Justin Bieber’s manager), Alex Guerrero (Tom Brady’s trainer), and Sam Nunberg (Trump’s former aide) and original reporting on figures like Nicaragua’s powerful first lady Rosario Murillo and the Tijuana cartel boss known as “Narcomami,” Barshad investigates a variety of modern-day Raputins. He explores how they got there, how they wielded control, and what lessons we can take from them, including how to spot Rasputins in the wild.

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