Other books that might interest you

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  Sustaining the League of Women...

  Maria Hoyt Cashin

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  A look at the decline of civic engagement, and how nonpartisan organizations like the League of Women Voters can help save and promote democracy. 
   
  Throughout our history, civic associations have enabled democracy through citizen training, education, and responsible advocacy. But Americans have increasingly withdrawn from such civic activity, and most associations that remain lack public accountability, local presence, and active membership.  
   
  In the absence of other engagement vehicles, a fundamental requirement for viable American democratic culture is lacking. To consider whether democracy and associations can still be positively linked, Maria Hoyt Cashin considers lessons drawn from the League of Women Voters. Worldwide, few associations have shown the durability, success, or democratic impact of the League over its long history. Yet its numbers are gradually declining. Forecasting the League’s uncertain future, Cashin suggests it may be time to give such civic associations a public boost.  
   
  “Deftly combining contemporary political theory with empirical analysis, Cashin’s work reminds us that good models of democratic association, such as the League of Women Voters, can reconnect our practices and our principles.” —Emily Howden Hoechst, Adjunct Professor, Department of Government, Georgetown University  
   
  “Cashin makes excellent use of both theory and practice to argue persuasively that civic associations are necessary if democracy is to thrive.” —Thomas M. Kerch, Adjunct Professor, Department of Government and Graduate Liberal Studies Program, Georgetown University  
   
  “A welcome story and needed message. Molly Cashin reminds us nonpartisan civic activism is still possible. Numbers count, but so do values, and the League is a sterling example.” —Charles Yonkers, Adjunct Professor, Graduate Liberal Studies Program, Georgetown University

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  Youth Politics in Putin's Russia...

  Julie Hemment

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  Julie Hemment provides a fresh perspective on the controversial nationalist youth projects that have proliferated in Russia in the Putin era, examining them from the point of view of their participants and offering provocative insights into their origins and significance. The pro-Kremlin organization Nashi ("Ours") and other state-run initiatives to mobilize Russian youth have been widely reviled in the West, seen as Soviet throwbacks and evidence of Russia's authoritarian turn. By contrast, Hemment's detailed ethnographic analysis finds an astute global awareness and a paradoxical kinship with the international democracy-promoting interventions of the 1990s. Drawing on Soviet political forms but responding to 21st-century disenchantments with the neoliberal state, these projects seek to produce not only patriots, but also volunteers, entrepreneurs, and activists.

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  FUBAR - America's Right-Wing...

  Sam Seder, Stephen Sherrill,...

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  The United States has survived clueless presidential administrations before. But no matter how enormous the crisis -- the Great Depression, Vietnam, Watergate, Monica Lewinsky's thong -- America's always come out looking like, well, America.This time, however, something's different. Things aren't just screwed up; they're f&#!$d up beyond all recognition. Wel-come to F.U.B.A.R., a hilarious and scathing satire of the American Right's bad behavior, by the creators of Air America's Majority Report. If you're a liberal who's somehow not panicked over the state of our Union, or if you're a Republican who's just having voter's remorse, or if you think what's happening to the country is just politics as usual, F.U.B.A.R. will open your eyes to our current national nightmare. With completely unfair and unbalanced analysis, authors Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill take readers on a whirlwind tour of what's left of the United States, exposing the truth about the Right's blueprint for total domination -- over your money, your mind, your sex life, and even your place in the afterlife (yes, they have a plan for that, too).Along the way, they'll answer your most pressing questions, like:I'm gay. Can I still be a Republican?Do I need to own my own congressman, or is a time share okay?Is New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman's  mustache, in fact, the sign of the Beast?I thought we ran the media. What happened?Finally, Seder and Sherrill offer a helpful and hopeful vision for a future that remarkably doesn't look like a cross between the Matrix and Mayberry. F.U.B.A.R. is the wake-up call America has been waiting to receive -- and it will probably be wiretapped.

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  The Major Political Writings of...

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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  This “fresh new rendition of Rousseau’s major political writings is a boon for scholars and students alike”—with a critical introduction by the translator (Richard Boyd, Georgetown University). 
   
  Individualist and communitarian. Anarchist and totalitarian. Progressive and reactionary. Since the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been called all of these things. Few philosophers have been the subject of such intense debate, yet almost everyone agrees that Rousseau is among the most important political thinkers in history. Renowned Rousseau scholar John T. Scott highlights his enduring influence with this superb new edition of his major political writings. 
   
  This volume includes authoritative and lucid new translations of the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, and On the Social Contract. The two Discourses show Rousseau developing his well-known conception of the natural goodness of man and the problems posed by life in society. With the Social Contract, Rousseau became the first major thinker to argue that democracy is the only legitimate form of political organization.  
   
  Scott’s extensive introduction enhances our understanding of these foundational writings, providing background information, social and historical context, and guidance for interpreting the works. Throughout, translation and editorial notes clarify ideas and terms that might not be immediately familiar to most readers.

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  Love Your Enemies - How Decent...

  Arthur C. Brooks

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  To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right? 
  Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American. 
  Meanwhile, one in six Americans have stopped talking to close friends and family members over politics. Millions are organizing their social lives and curating their news and information to avoid hearing viewpoints differing from their own. Ideological polarization is at higher levels than at any time since the Civil War. 
  America has developed a “culture of contempt”—a habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect or misguided, but as worthless. Maybe you dislike it—more than nine out of ten Americans say they are tired of how divided we have become as a country. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right? 
  Wrong.  
  In Love Your Enemies, New York Times bestselling author and social scientist Arthur C. Brooks shows that treating others with contempt and out-outraging the other side is not a formula for lasting success. Blending cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks, Love Your Enemies offers a new way to lead based not on attacking others, but on bridging national divides and mending personal relationships. 
  Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, he argues, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act. 
  Love Your Enemies is not just a guide to being a better person. It offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. And most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.

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  Beating the Nazi Invader -...

  Neil R Storey

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  “A compelling examination of an aspect of World War II that always has a rapt audience: espionage . . . With a cast of colorful characters.” —Library Journal (starred review) 
   
  Beating the Nazi Invader is a revealing and disturbing exploration of the darker history of Nazis, spies and “Fifth Columnist” saboteurs in Britain, and the extensive top-secret countermeasures taken before and during the real threat of invasion in 1940. 
   
  The author’s research describes the Nazi Party organization in Britain and reveals the existence of the Gestapo headquarters in central London. The reader gains vivid insights into Nazi agents and terrorist cells, the Special Branch and MI5 teams who hunted them and investigated murders believed to have been committed by Third Reich agents on British soil. 
   
  Accessing a host of recently declassified files the book explores the highly classified measures taken for the protection of the Royal Family, national treasures and gold reserves. The British government made extensive plans for the continuation of government in the event of invasion including the creation of all-powerful Regional Commissioners, “Black Lists” of suspected collaborators and a British resistance organization. We also learn of the Nazis’ own occupation measures for suborning the population and the infamous Sonderfahndungsliste G.B, the Nazi “Special Wanted List.” 
   
  The result is a fascinating insight into the measures and actions taken to ensure that Great Britain did not succumb to the gravest threat of enemy invasion and occupation for centuries. 
   
  “Provides fresh and incisive answers to some intriguing 80-year-old mysteries about wartime espionage.” —Britain at War 
   
  “A truly engrossing work.” —History of War Magazine

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