Other books that might interest you

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  Why Parties? - A Second Look

  John H. Aldrich

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  Since its first appearance fifteen years ago, Why Parties? has become essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the nature of American political parties. In the interim, the party system has undergone some radical changes. In this landmark book, now rewritten for the new millennium, John H. Aldrich goes beyond the clamor of arguments over whether American political parties are in resurgence or decline and undertakes a wholesale reexamination of the foundations of the American party system.Surveying critical episodes in the development of American political parties—from their formation in the 1790s to the Civil War—Aldrich shows how they serve to combat three fundamental problems of democracy: how to regulate the number of people seeking public office, how to mobilize voters, and how to achieve and maintain the majorities needed to accomplish goals once in office. Aldrich brings this innovative account up to the present by looking at the profound changes in the character of political parties since World War II, especially in light of ongoing contemporary transformations, including the rise of the Republican Party in the South, and what those changes accomplish, such as the Obama Health Care plan. Finally, Why Parties? A Second Look offers a fuller consideration of party systems in general, especially the two-party system in the United States, and explains why this system is necessary for effective democracy.

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  The Gettysburg Address & The...

  Abraham Lincoln

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  While the conflict over slavery was a factor in the Civil War, the abolition of slavery did not become a stated objective until President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863. Freeing the slaves held in the still Confederate controlled states, it is heralded as one of America's most significant documents. Likewise, The Gettysburg Address, delivered by Lincoln on November 19, 1863 in the aftermath of a Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg, is considered one of the greatest speeches in American history.

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  The Myth of the Rational Voter -...

  Bryan Caplan

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  The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening audiobook. Caplan, a self-described libertarian/anarchist, argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand. 
  Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of Americans' voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse. Caplan lays out several bold ways to make democratic government work better—for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular misconceptions and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack. 
  The Myth of the Rational Voter takes an unflinching look at how people who vote under the influence of false beliefs ultimately end up with government that delivers lousy results. With the upcoming presidential election season drawing nearer, this thought-provoking book is sure to spark a long-overdue reappraisal of our elective system.

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  American Ground - Unbuilding the...

  William Langewiesche

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  An unrestricted look at Manhattan’s Ground Zero during the post-9/11 cleanup and those involved in the recovery efforts. 
   
  Selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Sun-Times 
   
  Within days after September 11, 2001, William Langewiesche had secured unique, unrestricted, around-the-clock access to the World Trade Center site. American Ground is a tour of this intense, ephemeral world and those who improvised the recovery effort day by day, and in the process reinvented themselves, discovering unknown strengths and weaknesses. In all of its aspects—emotionalism, impulsiveness, opportunism, territoriality, resourcefulness, and fundamental, cacophonous democracy—Langewiesche reveals the unbuilding to be uniquely American and oddly inspiring, an exercise in resilience and ingenuity in the face of disaster. 
   
  “A genuinely monumental story, told without melodrama, an intimate depiction of ordinary Americans reacting to grand-scale tragedy at their best-and sometimes their worst.” —Publishers Weekly 
   
  “One of the gifts of American Ground [is] truth, unclouded by sentiment. This book’s other gift is its capacity to surprise: it is a work of original reporting, and its pages are filled with astonishing observations.” —The New York Times Book Review 
   
  “One of the most compelling, dramatic, and uplifting pieces of writing you are likely ever to read. . . . American Ground will make you proud of the ground you walk on.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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  Duct-tape Community - Hope for...

  Jim Herbst

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  In a country of critics and where shouting and snarky tweets dominate public communication, neighborliness is in short supply.  Duct-tape Community - Hope for Neighborliness in an Unequal World finds it in the most unexpected places, from public housing janitors to farmers in overalls. Hope for better community can be found from the inspiring stories of the seemingly powerless and unknown. Duct-tape Community is a declaration that community takes two resolves: one to make the world a fairer place and a second to be neighborly in one that isn't.

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  Blackout Wars - State...

  Dr. Peter Vincent Pry

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  Blackout Wars is about the historically unprecedented threat to our electronic civilization from its dependence on the electric power grid. Most Americans have experienced temporary blackouts, and regard them as merely an inconvenience. Some Americans have experienced more protracted local and regional blackouts, as in the aftermaths of Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, and may be better able to imagine the consequences of a nationwide blackout lasting months or years, that plunges the entire United States into the dark. 
   
   
   
  In such a nightmare blackout, the entire population of the United States could be at risk. There would be no food. No water. Communications, transportation, industry, business, and finance—all of the critical infrastructures that support modern civilization and the lives of the American people would be paralyzed by collapse of the electric power grid. 
   
   
   
  Millions could die. 
   
   
   
  How could a catastrophic blackout happen? Threats to the electric power grid are posed by cyber attack, sabotage, a geomagnetic super-storm, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon. 
   
   
   
  Blackout Wars warns that terrorists and rogue states are developing a revolutionary new military strategy that could exploit all of these threats in combination, including exploiting the opportunity of severe weather or a geo-storm, to collapse the national electric grid and all the critical infrastructures. It would be the fall of American civilization. 
   
    
   
  For the first time in history, the most dysfunctional societies, like North Korea that cannot even feed its own people, or even non-state actors like terrorists, could destroy the most successful societies on Earth—by means of a Blackout War. Attacking the electric grid enables an adversary to strike at the technological and societal Achilles Heel of U.S. military and economic power. 
   
    
   
  Blackout Wars likens this new Revolution in Military Affairs to Nazi Germany's Blitzkrieg strategy, secretly developed and tested in low-profile experiments during the 1930s, sprung upon the Allies in 1939–1941 in a series of surprise attacks that nearly enabled the Third Reich to win World War II. Just as the West was asleep to the threat from the Blitzkrieg, so today U.S. and Western elites are blind to the looming threat from a Blackout War.

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