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  Tramps & Trade Union Travelers -...

  Kim Moody

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  From the author of On New Terrain, a historical examination of why American workers never organized in early industrial America and what it means today. Why has there been no viable, independent labor party in the United States? Many people assert “American exceptionalist” arguments, which state a lack of class-consciousness and union tradition among American workers is to blame. While the racial, ethnic, and gender divisions within the American working class have created organizational challenges for the working class, Moody uses archival research to argue that despite their divisions, workers of all ethnic and racial groups in the Gilded Age often displayed high levels of class consciousness and political radicalism. In place of “American exceptionalism,” Moody contends that high levels of internal migration during the late 1800s created instability in the union and political organizations of workers. Because of the tumultuous conditions brought on by the uneven industrialization of early American capitalism, millions of workers became migrants, moving from state to state and city to city. The organizational weakness that resulted undermined efforts by American workers to build independent labor-based parties in the 1880s and 1890s. Using detailed research and primary sources, Moody traces how it was that “pure-and-simple” unionism would triumph by the end of the century despite the existence of a significant socialist minority in organized labor at that time.“Terrific . . . An entirely original take on . . . why American labor was virtually unique in failing to build its own political party. But there’s much more: in investigating labor migration and the ‘tramp’ phenomenon in the Gilded Age, he discovers fascinating parallels with today's struggles of immigrant workers.” —Mike Davis, author of Prisoners of the American Dream

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  The Fattening of America - How...

  Eric A. Finkelstein, Laurie...

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  A guide to how America became the fattest nation, and how the food industry and the government keep it that way. In The Fattening of America, renowned health economist Eric Finkelstein, along with business writer Laurie Zuckerman, reveal how the US economy has become the driving force behind our expanding waistlines. Blending theory, research, and engaging personal anecdotes, the authors discuss how declining food costs—especially for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods—and an increasing usage of technology, which make Americans more sedentary, has essentially led us to eat more calories than we burn off. Praise for The Fattening of America“[Finkelstein and Zuckerman] show that our entire society profits from making people fat and then either keeping them fat or making them thin again. When you understand how these powerful forces work, you can do a better job of resisting them—and staying healthy.” —Jack Challem, bestselling author of The Food-Mood Solution and Stop Prediabetes Now“Everyone who eats food in America must read this book. It is a comprehensive guide to how we’ve become the fattest nation on the planet and how the food industry, in cahoots with the government, makes us one of the least healthy nations.” —Fred Pescatore, MD, MPH, CCN, author of The Hamptons Diet“The authors have done an excellent job talking to mainstream America about obesity. It brings together all of the latest research and packages it in a way that is engaging for the average person. I very much enjoyed the book and would recommend it for anyone interested in obesity. Well done.” —James O. Hill, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and author of The Step Diet: Count Steps, Not Calories to Lose Weight and Keep It Off Forever“An important book for everyone interested in gaining a better understanding of the underlying causes behind the obesity epidemic and options for addressing it.” —Barry Popkin, Carla Smith Chamblee Distinguished Professor of Global Nutrition at the University of North Carolina

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  Presidential Leadership in...

  Stephen Skowronek

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  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.

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  The Demagogue's Playbook - The...

  Eric A. Posner

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  A New York Times Book Review Editor's Pick 
  What happens to democracy when a demagogue comes to power? 
  What—and who—is a demagogue? How did America's Founders envision the presidency? What should a constitutional democracy look like—and how can it be fixed when it appears to be broken? 
  Something is definitely wrong with Donald Trump's presidency, but what exactly? The extraordinary negative reaction to Trump's election—by conservative intellectuals, liberals, Democrats, and global leaders alike—goes beyond ordinary partisan and policy disagreements. It reflects genuine fear about the vitality of our constitutional system. The Founders, reaching back to classical precedents, feared that their experiment in mass self-government could produce a demagogue: a charismatic ruler who would gain and hold on to power by manipulating the public rather than by advancing the public good. 
  President Trump, who has played to the mob and attacked institutions from the judiciary to the press, appears to embody these ideas. How can we move past his rhetoric and maintain faith in our great nation? 
  In The Demagogue's Playbook, acclaimed legal scholar Eric A. Posner offers a blueprint for how America can prevent the rise of another demagogue and protect the features of a democracy that help it thrive—and restore national greatness, for one and all.

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  National Security Through a...

  Steve A. Yetiv

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  A study examining how poor decision-making based on mental errors or cognitive biases hurts American foreign policy and national security. 
   
  Author Steve A. Yetiv draws on four decades of psychological, historical, and political science research on cognitive biases to illuminate some of the key pitfalls in our leaders’ decision-making processes and some of the mental errors we make in perceiving ourselves and the world. 
   
  Tracing five U.S. national security episodes?the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan; the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration; the rise of al-Qaeda, leading to the 9/11 attacks; the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq; and the development of U.S. energy policy?Yetiv reveals how a dozen cognitive biases have been more influential in impacting U.S. national security than commonly believed or understood. 
   
  Identifying a primary bias in each episode?disconnect of perception versus reality, tunnel vision (“focus feature”), distorted perception (“cockeyed lens”), overconfidence, and short-term thinking?Yetiv explains how each bias drove the decision-making process and what the outcomes were for the various actors. His concluding chapter examines a range of debiasing techniques, exploring how they can improve decision making. 
   
  Praise for National Security through a Cockeyed Lens 
   
  “Yetiv’s volume could be one of the key books for presidents and their advisers to read before they begin making decisions.” —William W. Newmann, H-Diplo 
   
  “The principles in this book deserve wide recognition. Yetiv places necessary focus on lapses in decision making that are important to acknowledge.” —James Lebovic, Political Science Quarterly

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  Bad Stories - What the Hell Just...

  Steve Almond

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  Like a lot of Americans, Steve Almond spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn't just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency.Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is Almond's effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices―from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin―to help explain the roots of our moral erosion as a people.The book argues that Trumpism is a bad outcome arising directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. To understand how we got here, we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody, the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism.Bad Stories is a lamentation aimed at providing clarity. It's the book you can pass along to an anguished fellow traveler with the promise, This will help you understand what the hell happened to our country.

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