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  Reconciliation - Islam Democracy...

  Benazir Bhutto

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  Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October 2007, after eight years of exile, hopeful that she could be a catalyst for change. Upon a tumultuous reception, she survived a suicide-bomb attack that killed nearly two hundred of her countrymen. But she continued to forge ahead, with more courage and conviction than ever, since she knew that time was running out—for the future of her nation, and for her life.In Reconciliation, Bhutto recounts in gripping detail her final months in Pakistan and offers a bold new agenda for how to stem the tide of Islamic radicalism and to rediscover the values of tolerance and justice that lie at the heart of her religion. With extremist Islam on the rise throughout the world, the peaceful, pluralistic message of Islam has been exploited and manipulated by fanatics. Bhutto persuasively argues that America and Britain are fueling this turn toward radicalization by supporting groups that serve only short-term interests. She believed that by enabling dictators, the West was actually contributing to the frustration and extremism that lead to terrorism. With her experience governing Pakistan and living and studying in the West, Benazir Bhutto was versed in the complexities of the conflict from both sides. She was a renaissance woman who offered a way out.In this riveting and deeply insightful book, Bhutto explores the complicated history between the Middle East and the West. She traces the roots of international terrorism across the world, including American support for Pakistani general Zia-ul-Haq, who destroyed political parties, eliminated an independent judiciary, marginalized NGOs, suspended the protection of human rights, and aligned Pakistani intelligence agencies with the most radical elements of the Afghan mujahideen. She speaks out not just to the West, but to the Muslims across the globe who are at a crossroads between the past and the future, between education and ignorance, between peace and terrorism, and between dictatorship and democracy. Democracy and Islam are not incompatible, and the clash between Islam and the West is not inevitable. Bhutto presents an image of modern Islam that defies the negative caricatures often seen in the West. After reading this book, it will become even clearer what the world has lost by her assassination.

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  Invisible Hands - The Making of...

  Kim Phillips-Fein

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  Starting in the mid-1930s, a handful of prominent American businessmen forged alliances with the aim of rescuing America-and their profit margins-from socialism and the "nanny state." Long before the "culture wars" usually associated with the rise of conservative politics, these driven individuals funded think tanks, fought labor unions, and formed organizations to market their views. These nearly unknown, larger-than-life, and sometimes eccentric personalities-such as General Electric's zealous, silver-tongued Lemuel Ricketts Boulware and the self-described "revolutionary" Jasper Crane of DuPont-make for a fascinating, behind-the-scenes view of American history.The winner of a prestigious academic award for her original research on this book, Kim Phillips-Fein is already being heralded as an important new young American historian. Her meticulous research and narrative gifts reveal the dramatic story of a pragmatic, step-by-step, check-by-check campaign to promote an ideological revolution-one that ultimately helped propel conservative ideas to electoral triumph.

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  The Supremes' Greatest Hits -...

  Michael G. Trachtman

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  Take a deep dive into rulings during the Obama presidency which laid the groundwork for today’s questions over the Supreme Court’s legitimacy. 
   
  Can the government seize your house to build a shopping mall? Can it determine what control you have over your own body? Can police search your cellphone? The answers to those questions come from the Supreme Court, whose rulings have shaped American life and justice and allowed Americans to retain basic freedoms such as privacy, free speech, and the right to a fair trial.  
   
  Especially relevant in light of recent controversial nominations and rulings, the revised and updated edition of Michael G. Trachtman’s page-turner includes ten important cases from 2010 to 2015. In addition, a special section features analyses of the term rulings that were planned for June 2016. 
   
    
   
  The cases include: 
   
  Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which restricts the right of governments to limit campaign contributions by corporations and unions; Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), which allows a religious exemption from the Affordable Care Act requirement that corporations pay for contraceptive coverage for their employees; Riley v. California (2014), which ruled that police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest; and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which ruled that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. 
   
  “You can turn to any page . . . and have an ‘Aha! So that’s how this shakes out’ moment . . . Trachtman is terrific at explaining complex issues in plain language.” —San Diego Union Tribune

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  A Macat Analysis of Kenneth N...

  Riley Quinn, Bryan R. Gibson

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  Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics created a “scientific revolution” in international relations, starting two major debates. In the 1980s it defined the controversy between the neorealists, who believed that competition between states was inevitable, and the neoliberals, who believed that states could co-operate with each other. As the debate wound down with the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, a more fundamental, second debate began: Is it possible to treat international relations as a science?
  
  Waltz aimed to answer the question: “If changes in international outcomes are linked directly to changes in actors, how can one account for similarities of outcome that persist or recur even as actors vary?” Taking a unique approach, Waltz did not look at any one unit within the system—avoiding discussions of any particular state or political leader. Instead, he examined the system itself.

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  Politics without Vision -...

  Tracy B. Strong

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  “Magisterial…a frequently surprising treatment of major political thinkers.”—Perspectives on Politics    From Plato through the nineteenth century, the West could draw on comprehensive political visions to guide government and society. Now, for the first time in more than two thousand years, Tracy B. Strong contends, we have lost our foundational supports. In the words of Hannah Arendt, the state of political thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has left us effectively thinking without a banister.  Politics without Vision takes up the thought of seven influential thinkers, each of whom attempted to construct a political solution to this problem: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lenin, Schmitt, Heidegger, and Arendt. None of these theorists were liberals; nor, excepting possibly Arendt, were they democrats—and some might even be said to have served as handmaidens to totalitarianism. And all, to a greater or lesser extent, shared the common conviction that the institutions and practices of liberalism are inadequate to the demands and stresses of the present times. In examining their thought, Strong acknowledges the political evil that some of their ideas served to foster but argues that these were not necessarily the only paths their explorations could have taken. By uncovering the turning points in their thought—and the paths not taken—Strong strives to develop a political theory that can avoid, and perhaps help explain, the mistakes of the past while furthering the democratic impulse.   Confronting the widespread belief that political thought is on the decline, Strong puts forth a brilliant and provocative counterargument that in fact it has endured—without the benefit of outside support. A compelling rendering of contemporary political theory, Politics without Vision is sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields.

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  Facing Reality - Two Truths...

  Charles Murray

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  Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and hiring and promotions in the workplace ignore the ways in which the problems that prompt the allegations of systemic racism are driven by these two realities. What good can come of bringing them into the open? America’s most precious ideal is what used to be known as the American Creed: people are not to be judged by where they came from, what social class they come from, or by race, color, or creed. They must be judged as individuals. The prevailing progressive ideology repudiates that ideal, demanding instead that the state should judge people by their race, social origins, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. We on the center left and center right who are the American Creed’s natural defenders have painted ourselves into a corner. We have been unwilling to say openly that different groups have significant group differences. Since we have not been willing to say that, we have been left defenseless against the claims that racism is to blame. What else could it be? We have been afraid to answer. We must. Facing Reality is a step in that direction.

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