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  Constitutional Calculus - The...

  Jeff Suzuki

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  How math can make a more stable democracy: “A breath of fresh air . . . a reaffirmation that mathematics should be used more often to make general public policy.” —MAA Reviews How should we count the population of the United States? What would happen if we replaced the electoral college with a direct popular vote? What are the consequences of allowing unlimited partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts? Can six-person juries yield verdicts consistent with the needs of justice? Is it racist to stop and frisk minorities at a higher rate than non-minorities? These and other questions have long been the subject of legal and political debate and are routinely decided by lawyers, politicians, judges, and voters, mostly through an appeal to common sense and tradition. But mathematician Jeff Suzuki asserts that common sense is not so common, and traditions developed long ago in what was a mostly rural, mostly agricultural, mostly isolated nation of three million might not apply to a mostly urban, mostly industrial, mostly global nation of three hundred million. In Constitutional Calculus, Suzuki guides us through the U.S. Constitution and American history to show how mathematics reveals our flaws, finds the answers we need, and moves us closer to our ideals. From the first presidential veto to the debate over mandatory drug testing, the NSA’s surveillance program, and the fate of death row inmates, Suzuki draws us into real-world debates and then reveals how math offers a superior compass for decision-making. Relying on iconic cases, including the convictions of the Scottsboro boys, League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, and Floyd v. City of New York, Suzuki shows that more math can lead to better justice, greater fairness, and a more stable democracy.

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  The Impossible State - North...

  Victor Cha

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  From a seasoned advisor, “a meaty, fast-paced portrait of North Korean society, economy, politics and foreign policy” (Foreign Affairs).   In The Impossible State, international-policy expert and former Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council Victor Cha pulls back the curtain on this controversial and isolated country, providing the best look yet at North Korea’s history, the rise of the Kim family dynasty, and the obsessive personality cult that empowers them. He illuminates the repressive regime's complex economy and culture, its appalling record of human-rights abuses, and its belligerent relationship with the United States, and analyzes the regime’s major security issues—from the seemingly endless war with its southern neighbor to its frightening nuclear ambitions—all in light of the destabilizing effects of Kim Jong-il's death and the pivotal and disquieting transition of power from tyrannical father to inexperienced son.   How this enigmatic nation-state—one that regularly violates its own citizens’ inalienable rights and has suffered famine, global economic sanctions, a collapsed economy, and near total isolation from the rest of the world—has continued to survive has long been a question that preoccupies the West. Cha reveals a land of contradictions, and delves into the ideology that leads an oppressed, starving populace to cling so fiercely to its failed leadership.   With rare personal anecdotes from the author’s time in Pyongyang and his tenure as an adviser in the White House, this authoritative, accessible, “engrossing” history (The Economist) offers much-needed understanding of the country’s veiled past and uncertain future.   “An up-close, insightful portrait.” —The Washington Post   “An eye-opening view of the closed, repressive dictatorship of North Korea. . . . A useful, pertinent work for understanding the human story behind the headlines.” —Kirkus Reviews

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  Chicano Movement For Beginners

  Maceo Montoya, Ilan Stavans

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  As the heyday of the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s to early '70s fades further into history and as more and more of its important figures pass on, so too does knowledge of its significance. Thus, Chicano Movement For Beginners is an important attempt to stave off historical amnesia. It seeks to shed light on the multifaceted civil rights struggle known as "El Movimiento" that galvanized the Mexican American community, from laborers to student activists, giving them not only a political voice to combat prejudice and inequality, but also a new sense of cultural awareness and ethnic pride.Beyond commemorating the past, Chicano Movement For Beginners seeks to reaffirm the goals and spirit of the Chicano Movement for the simple reason that many of the critical issues Mexican American activists first brought to the nation's attention then—educational disadvantage, endemic poverty, political exclusion, and social bias—remain as pervasive as ever almost half a century later.

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  A Slobbering Love Affair - The...

  Bernard Goldberg

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  Do the mainstream media have a liberal bias? Sure they do, says CBS veteran and New York Times bestselling author Bernard Goldberg. But the media crossed an important line in the 2008 presidential race, moving from their usual unthinking liberal bias to crass partisanship of the crudest kind, practically acting as spin doctors for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. In A Slobbering Love Affair, his most provocative book yet, Goldberg demonstrates how the media launched an unparalleled effort to ensure the election of the man they regarded as the One. From the thrill Obama sent up Chris Matthews's leg to the outrageously slanted "news" reports of the New York Times, Goldberg shows in exacting detail how the media, abandoning even the pretense of objectivity, moved from media bias to media activism. With his trademark blunt, honest insider's perspective, Goldberg reveals: -How the media ignored, downplayed, or sanitized the rantings of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's long-standing "spiritual" adviser, and the radicalism of former terrorist (and Obama associate) Bill Ayers-How the Obama campaign, while claiming to be "post-partisan," kicked reporters off Obama's plane after their newspapers endorsed McCain-Why Obama's election makes it more likely conservative talk radio will be stifled by a new "Fairness Doctrine" that has nothing to do with fairness at all-Why the liberal media preferred Obama to Hillary-What we can expect from the media's coverage of Obama's presidency-BONUS: An exclusive interview with Rush Limbaugh on the unholy alliance between Obama and the mainstream mediaA blistering takedown of the media's slavish support for Obama, A Slobbering Love Affair highlights how the mainstream media has not only surrendered its integrity and objectivity but could even endanger our democracy.

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  A Spy Like No Other - The Cuban...

  Robert Holmes

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  The arms race between the Soviet Union and the USA was the most dangerous confrontation in the history of the world. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's decision to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, and US President John F. Kennedy's willingness to call his bluff, brought the Soviet Union and the West to the edge of a cataclysmic nuclear war. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Holmes, a British diplomat in Moscow during the early 1960s, provides an answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the Cold War. Kennedy's confidence in his brinkmanship hung on the evidence provided by Oleg Penkovsky, the MI6/CIA agent inside Soviet military intelligence. While working on A Spy Like No Other, Holmes set out to tell Penkovsky's story. But, in doing so, he stumbled upon an astonishing chain of intrigue, betrayal and revenge that suggested a group of maverick Soviet intelligence officers had plotted the crime of the century. When Penkovsky's treachery was discovered, in the middle of the Missile Crisis, he was executed and his boss, General Ivan Serov (the head of Soviet military intelligence and a former head of the KGB), was subsequently dismissed. The Soviet propaganda machine then thoroughly discredited Serov and consigned him to obscurity. In this extraordinary new study, Holmes suggests Serov's anger at the West's 'victory' in Cuba and his resentment at the treachery of his protégé and his own downfall turned into an obsessive determination to gain revenge - and reveals the opportunity he had to do so by working with KGB rogue officers to enlist a young American loner, Lee Harvey Oswald, to assassinate the President.

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  A People's Guide to Capitalism -...

  Hadas Thier

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  A lively, accessible, and timely guide to Marxist economics for those who want to understand and dismantle the world of the 1%.Economists regularly promote Capitalism as the greatest system ever to grace the planet. With the same breath, they implore us to leave the job of understanding the magical powers of the market to the "experts."Despite the efforts of these mainstream commentators to convince us otherwise, many of us have begun to question why this system has produced such vast inequality and wanton disregard for its own environmental destruction. This book offers answers to exactly these questions on their own terms: in the form of a radical economic theory.

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