Other books that might interest you

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  How to Interpret the Constitution

  Cass R. Sunstein

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  From New York Times bestselling author Cass Sunstein, a timely and powerful argument for rethinking how the U.S. Constitution is interpretedThe U.S. Supreme Court has eliminated the right to abortion and is revisiting other fundamental questions today—about voting rights, affirmative action, gun laws, and much more. Once-arcane theories of constitutional interpretation are profoundly affecting the lives of all Americans. In this brief and urgent book, Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein provides a lively introduction to competing approaches to interpreting the Constitution—and argues that the only way to choose one is to ask whether it would change American life for the better or worse. If a method of interpretation would eliminate the right of privacy, allow racial segregation, or obliterate free speech, it would be unacceptable for that reason.But some Supreme Court justices are committed to “originalism,” arguing that the meaning of the Constitution is settled by how it was publicly understood when it was ratified. Originalists insist that their approach is dictated by the Constitution. That, Sunstein argues, is a big mistake. The Constitution doesn’t contain instructions for its own interpretation. Any approach to constitutional interpretation needs to be defended in terms of its broad effects—what it does to our rights and our institutions. It must respect those rights and institutions—and safeguard the conditions for democracy itself.Passionate and compelling, How to Interpret the Constitution is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about how the Supreme Court is changing the rights and lives of Americans today.

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  The Chile Project - The Story of...

  Sebastian Edwards

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  In The Chile Project, Sebastian Edwards tells the story of how the neoliberal economic model came to an end in 2021, when Gabriel Boric was elected president, vowing that "If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave." More than a story about one Latin American country, The Chile Project is a behind-the-scenes history of the spread and consequences of the free-market thinking that dominated economic policymaking around the world in the second half of the twentieth century—but is now on the retreat.In 1955, the United States State Department launched the "Chile Project" to train Chilean economists at the University of Chicago. After General Augusto Pinochet overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973, Chile's "Chicago Boys" implemented the purest neoliberal model for the next seventeen years, undertaking a package of privatization and deregulation, creating a modern capitalist economy, and sparking talk of a "Chilean miracle." But under the veneer of success, a profound dissatisfaction with the inequalities caused by neoliberalism was growing. In 2019, protests erupted throughout the country, and in 2022 Boric began his presidency with a clear mandate: to end neoliberalismo.The Chile Project provides an important new perspective on the history of neoliberalism and its global decline today.

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  The Last Supper - The Plight of...

  Klaus Wivel

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  “A compelling story of the ethnic cleansing of Christian communities caught in the crossfire of the Middle East at war . . . Urgent and passionate” (Kirkus Reviews).   In 2013, alarmed by scant attention paid to the hardships endured by the 7.5 million Christians in the Middle East, journalist Klaus Wivel—who practices no religion himself—traveled to Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories on a quest to learn more about their fate. He found an oppressed minority, constantly under threat of death and humiliation, increasingly desperate in the face of rising Islamic extremism and without hope that their situation would improve, or anyone would come to their aid.   Wivel spoke with priests whose churches have been burned, citizens who feel like strangers in their own countries, and entire communities whose only hope for survival may be fleeing into exile. With the increase of religious violence in recent years, The Last Supper is a prescient and unsettling account of a severely beleaguered religious group living, so it seems, on borrowed time. In this book, Wivel recounts this humanitarian crisis in detail and asks why we have we not done more to protect these people.

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  The Integration Policies of...

  Victoria Leukavets

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  The escalating rivalry between the EU and Russia in their shared neighborhood creates important economic, political, and legal challenges for the lands in between. Belarus and Ukraine have received proposals of integration from both the EU and Russia. However, the extents to which they accepted these offers differ and result from a multitude of factors as well as their interplay affecting the policy choices of their governments. International integration is a foreign policy question, but it has a strong domestic dimension too. Explaining various integration stances demands considering a country’s foreign and internal affairs. 
  
  Alla Leukavets applies here Putnam’s two-level game-theoretical approach in combination with findings from comparative neighborhood Europeanization and democracy promotion studies, as well as Levitsky/Way’s linkages-and-leverage-model. She develops various actor-centered and structural explanatory variables and applies them in the subsequent empirical analysis. Her research results benefit from triangulation through primary documents analysis and semi-structured interviews with elites and experts in Minsk, Moscow, Brussels, and Washington, DC. 
  
  The book analyses how the simultaneity of European and Eurasian integration challenged the two countries to make a major strategic integration choice. The study sheds light on the reasons for and genesis of the Ukraine Crisis, and on how external actors, such as the EU, can succeed in facilitating domestic reforms in Eastern Partnership countries.

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  The Misinformation Age - How...

  James Owen Weatherall, Cailin...

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  “Empowering and thoroughly researched, this book offers useful contemporary analysis and possible solutions to one of the greatest threats to democracy.” —Kirkus Reviews 
   
  Editors’ choice, The New York Times Book Review 
   
  Recommended reading, Scientific American 
   
  Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them? 
   
  Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not? 
   
  The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, shows convincingly that what you believe depends on who you know. If social forces explain the persistence of false belief, we must understand how those forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively. 
   
  “[The authors] deftly apply sociological models to examine how misinformation spreads among people and how scientific results get misrepresented in the public sphere.” —Andrea Gawrylewski, Scientific American 
   
   
   
  “A notable new volume . . . The Misinformation Age explains systematically how facts are determined and changed—whether it is concerning the effects of vaccination on children or the Russian attack on the integrity of the electoral process.” —Roger I. Abrams, New York Journal of Books

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  Revolting New York - How 400...

  Neil Smith, Don Mitchell,...

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  A comprehensive guide to New York City’s historical geography of social and political movements. Occupy Wall Street did not come from nowhere. It was part of a long history of uprising that has shaped New York City. From the earliest European colonization to the present, New Yorkers have been revolting. Hard hitting, revealing, and insightful, Revolting New York tells the story of New York’s evolution through revolution, a story of near-continuous popular (and sometimes not-so-popular) uprising. Richly illustrated with more than ninety historical and contemporary images, historical maps, and maps drawn especially for the book, Revolting New York provides the first comprehensive account of the historical geography of revolt in New York, from the earliest uprisings of the Munsee against the Dutch occupation of Manhattan in the seventeenth century to the Black Lives Matter movement and the unrest of the Trump era. Through this rich narrative, editors Neil Smith and Don Mitchell reveal a continuous, if varied and punctuated, history of rebellion in New York that is as vital as the more standard histories of formal politics, planning, economic growth, and restructuring that largely define our consciousness of New York’s story.Contributors: Marnie Brady, Kathleen Dunn, Zultán Gluck, Rachel Goffe, Harmony Goldberg, Amanda Huron, Malav Kanuga, Esteban Kelly, Manissa McCleave Maharawal, Don Mitchell, Justin Sean Myers, Brendan P. O’Malley, Raymond Pettit, Miguelina Rodriguez, Jenjoy Roybal, McNair Scott, Erin Siodmak, Neil Smith, Peter Waldman, and Nicole Watson.“The writing is first-rate, with ample illustrations and many contemporary and historical images. Fast paced and fascinating, like the city it profiles.”—Library Journal

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