Other books that might interest you

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  Why Civil Resistance Works - The...

  Erica Chenoweth, Maria J. Stephan

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  For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results. 
  In this book, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption, and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters. 
  Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence is necessary to achieve certain political goals.

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  Biscuits the Dole and Nodding...

  Norman D. Brown

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  “A fascinating tour of Texas state politics during the Great Depression” from the historian and author of Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug (Keith J. Volanto, author of Texas Voices).   When the venerable historian Norman D. Brown published Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug in 1984, he earned national acclaim for revealing the audacious tactics at play in Texas politics during the Roaring Twenties, detailing the effects of the Ku Klux Klan, newly enfranchised women, and Prohibition. Shortly before his death in 2015, Brown completed Biscuits, the Dole, and Nodding Donkeys, which picks up just as the Democratic Party was poised for a bruising fight in the 1930 primary. Charting the governorships of Dan Moody, Ross Sterling, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson in her second term, and James V. Allred, this engrossing sequel takes its title from the notion that Texas politicians should give voters what they want (“When you cease to deliver the biscuits they will not be for you any longer,” said Jim “Pa” Ferguson) while remaining wary of federal assistance (the dole) in a state where the economy is fueled by oil pumpjacks (nodding donkeys).   Taking readers to an era when a self-serving group of Texas politicians operated in a system that was closed to anyone outside the state’s white, wealthy echelons, Brown unearths a riveting, little-known history whose impact continues to ripple at the capitol.  “Rich in personal detail, and general audiences and aficionados of Texana will enjoy the colorful portraits of James and Miriam Ferguson, Ross Sterling, Tom Love, John Nance Garner, and others.” —History: Reviews of New Books

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  Groundwork - Local Black Freedom...

  Jeanne Theoharis, Charles M....

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  Pathbreaking essays on the power of local activism on the broader Civil Rights movementOver the last several years, the traditional narrative of the civil rights movement as largely a southern phenomenon, organized primarily by male leaders, that roughly began with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and ended with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has been complicated by studies that root the movement in smaller communities across the country. These local movements had varying agendas and organizational development, geared to the particular circumstances, resources, and regions in which they operated. Local civil rights activists frequently worked in tandem with the national civil rights movement but often functioned autonomously from—and sometimes even at odds with—the national movement.Together, the pathbreaking essays in Groundwork teach us that local civil rights activity was a vibrant component of the larger civil rights movement, and contributed greatly to its national successes. Individually, the pieces offer dramatic new insights about the civil rights movement, such as the fact that a militant black youth organization in Milwaukee was led by a white Catholic priest and in Cambridge, Maryland, by a middle-aged black woman; that a group of middle-class, professional black women spearheaded Jackson, Mississippi's movement for racial justice and made possible the continuation of the Freedom Rides, and that, despite protests from national headquarters, the Brooklyn chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality staged a dramatic act of civil disobedience at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York.No previous volume has enabled readers to examine several different local movements together, and in so doing, Groundwork forges a far more comprehensive vision of the black freedom movement.

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  King Rules - Ten Truths for You...

  Alveda King

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  In King Rules, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shares that message in a deeply personal collection of hard-learned lessons, timeless truths, and foundational principles. 
  Dr. Alveda King’s words are lovingly crafted yet refreshingly blunt at a time when bluntness is needed to counter the forces of moral drift and empty relativism. 
  Beginning with a vulnerable admission of her own wounds and wanderings, Alveda unfolds eleven core values that have guided her family through generations of triumph and tragedy—and have played a pivotal role in fostering revolutionary change in society. 
  Out of a heart of compassion, she dispenses wise meditations on bedrock subjects including faith and family, peace and justice, education and civic life. With thoughtful conviction she also boldly tackles topics considered divisive in our postmodern world, from abortion and sexuality to gun control and marriage laws.  
  The King Rules is a page-turning narrative that blends eyewitness history with grandmotherly wisdom. And as J. C. Watts writes in the Foreword, the book is “more than Alveda’s story, it’s an account of the beliefs that redirected the course of a nation, that left us a legacy, and that hopefully will guide us again.”

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  Let the People Rule - How Direct...

  John G. Matsusaka

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  How referendums can diffuse populist tensions by putting power back into the hands of the people 
  Propelled by the belief that government has slipped out of the hands of ordinary citizens, a surging wave of populism is destabilizing democracies around the world. As John Matsusaka reveals in Let the People Rule, this belief is based in fact. Over the past century, while democratic governments have become more efficient, they have also become more disconnected from the people they purport to represent. The solution Matsusaka advances is familiar but surprisingly underused: direct democracy, in the form of referendums.Drawing on examples from around the world, Matsusaka shows how direct democracy can bring policies back in line with the will of the people (and provide other benefits, like curbing corruption). Taking lessons from failed processes like Brexit, he also describes what issues are best suited to referendums and how they should be designed, and he tackles questions that have long vexed direct democracy: can voters be trusted to choose reasonable policies, and can minority rights survive majority decisions? The result is one of the most comprehensive examinations of direct democracy to date—coupled with concrete, nonpartisan proposals for how countries can make the most of the powerful tools that referendums offer.

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  Women Who Invented the Sixties -...

  Steve Golin

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  Women Who Invented the Sixties tells the story of how four women helped define the 1960s and made a lasting impression for decades to follow.In 1960, Ella Baker played the key role in the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which became an essential organization for students during the civil rights movement and the model for the antiwar and women's movements. In 1961, Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities, changing the shape of urban planning irrevocably. In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, creating the modern environmental movement. And in 1963, Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, which sparked second-wave feminism and created lasting changes for women. Their four separate interventions helped, together, to end the 1950s and invent the 1960s.Women Who Invented the Sixties situates each of these four women in the 1950s—Baker's early activism with the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Jacobs's work with Architectural Forum and her growing involvement in neighborhood protest, Carson's conservation efforts and publications, and Friedan's work as a labor journalist and the discrimination she faced—before exploring their contributions to the 1960s and the movements they each helped shape.

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