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The Politics of Fear: The Peculiar Persistence of American Paranoia
From the author of Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies, a probing exploration of the bizarre and dangerous conspiracies that have roiled America over the past decade and captured the minds of so many Americans Some of the conspiracy theories now gripping American politics contend that Joe Biden was executed and replaced by a clone and that John F. Kennedy Jr., faked his death and will one day return to slay Trump's enemies. But who is susceptible to them, and what makes them so politically potent? Investigating the historical roots of our peculiar brand of political paranoia, Arthur Goldwag helps us make sense of the senseless and, in so doing, uncovers three uncomfortable truths: that it is older than Trumpism and will outlast it; that theocratic authoritarianism is as hardwired in our American heritage as the principles of the Enlightenment; and that the fear that our system is "rigged" is not altogether unfounded. A probing, surprising, and critical examination of America's paranoid style, The Politics of Fear sheds new light on the age-old question: What exactly are we so afraid of? -
The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters
Building on his enormously successful first edition, Tom Nichols confirms his thesis that events, such as the COVID pandemic, prove that the assault on expertise has only intensified. Fully updated chapters continue to address how technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Over the past several years, the rise of populism and conspiracy theories have taken this to new levels. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise, Second Edition, follows up on how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, and importantly, the election of Donald Trump. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both. -
Chasing Hillary: On the Trail of the First Woman President Who Wasn't
New York Times Bestseller
Now in paperback, the dishy, rollicking, and deeply personal story of what really happened in the 2016 election and since, as seen through the eyes of the New York Times reporter who gave eight years of her life to covering the First Woman President who wasn't.
"The Devil Wears Prada meets The Boys on the Bus."--New York Times
For nearly a decade, award-winning New York Times journalist Amy Chozick chronicled Hillary Clinton's pursuit of the presidency. Chozick's assignments, covering Clinton's imploding 2008 campaign and then her front-row seat to the 2016 election on "The Hillary Beat," set off a years-long journey in which the author's formative twenties and thirties became, both personally and professionally, intrinsically intertwined with Clinton's presidential ambitions. As Mrs. Clinton tried, and twice failed, to shatter "that highest, hardest glass ceiling," Chozick was herself trying, with various fits and starts, to scale the highest echelons of American journalism.In this rollicking, hilarious narrative, Chozick takes us through the high- (and low-) lights of the most noxious and dramatic presidential race in American history. Chozick's candor and clear-eyed perspective--from her seat on the Hillary bus and reporting from inside the campaign's Brooklyn headquarters to her run-ins with Donald J. Trump--provide fresh intrigue and insights into the story we thought we all knew. This is the real story of what happened, with the kind of dishy, inside details that repeatedly surprise and enlighten.
But Chasing Hillary is also the unusually personal and moving memoir of how Chozick came to understand Clinton not as an unknowable enigma and political animal, but as a complete, complex person full of contradictions and forged in the crucible of political battles that had long predated Chozick's years covering her. And as Chozick gets engaged, married, buys an apartment, climbs the professional ladder, and inquires about freezing her eggs so she can have children after the 2016 campaign, she dives deeper into decisions Mrs. Clinton had made at similar points in her early career. In the process, Chozick develops an intimate understanding of what drives Clinton, how she accomplished what no woman had before, and why she ultimately failed.
Clinton's shocking defeat would mark the end of the almost imperial hold she'd had on Chozick for most of her professional life. But the results also make Chozick question everything she'd worked so hard for in the first place. Illuminating, poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, Chasing Hillary is a campaign book unlike any other that reads like a fast-moving political novel.
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Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream
A powerful illustrated history of the Great Migration and its sweeping impact on Black and American culture, from Reconstruction to the rise of hip hop. Over the course of six decades, an unprecedented wave of Black Americans left the South and spread across the nation in search of a better life--a migration that sparked stunning demographic and cultural changes in twentieth-century America. Through gripping and accessible historical narrative paired with illustrations, author and activist Blair Imani examines the largely overlooked impact of The Great Migration and how it affected--and continues to affect--Black identity and America as a whole. Making Our Way Home explores issues like voting rights, domestic terrorism, discrimination, and segregation alongside the flourishing of arts and culture, activism, and civil rights. Imani shows how these influences shaped America's workforce and wealth distribution by featuring the stories of notable people and events, relevant data, and family histories. The experiences of prominent figures such as James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X), Ella Baker, and others are woven into the larger historical and cultural narratives of the Great Migration to create a truly singular record of this powerful journey.Sold out -
From Blue to Red: The Rise of the GOP in Arkansas
On the morning of Election Day 2010, Democrats occupied three of the four Arkansas seats in the US House of Representatives, both US Senate seats, all state constitutional offices, and decisive majorities in both chambers of the Arkansas General Assembly. By the time votes were counted that evening, it was clear that the balance of power had shifted. Within five years, Arkansas Republicans would hold all six US congressional positions and every state constitutional seat and claim growing supermajorities in both state chambers. Since then, Republicans have enjoyed robust electoral success in Arkansas--formerly the last remaining state of the "Solid South" held by Democrats. John C. Davis's From Blue to Red: The Rise of the GOP in Arkansas provides a rigorous yet accessible study of this partisan shift, tracking changes in voter preference at the top of the ticket in the 1960s, generational replacement in Arkansas' political power structure in the 1990s, and the emergence of a more nationalized and polarized electorate in the 2000s, among other developments. From Blue to Red is a fascinating look at how Arkansas went from being one of the country's most solidly Democratic states to one of its most ardently Republican in just a few years.
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The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion
"Beautifully written, The Eighth Moon uses a very light touch to probe the most essential, unresolvable questions of belief, kinship, fidelity, history, and identity."--Chris Kraus"1845. The sky is blue, yet all is brown. I picture the scene from overhead: a silvered steel of violence, blood, beer, whiskey, and mutton. High, skidding clouds skip with excitement, eager to see what unfolds below. They cheer on the scene where men in dresses march."A rebellion, guns, and murder. When Jennifer Kabat moves to the Catskills in 2005, she has no idea it was the site of the Anti-Rent War, an early episode of American rural populism. Prompted to leave London following a mysterious illness that seems to be caused by life in the city itself, she finds in these ancient mountains--at once the northernmost part of Appalachia and a longtime refuge for New Yorkers--a place "where the land itself holds time."She forges friendships with her new neighbors and explores the countryside on logging roads and rutted lanes, finding meadows dotted with milkweed in bloom, saffron salamanders, a blood moon rising over Munsee, Oneida, and Mohawk land. As the Great Recession sets in and a housing crisis looms, she supports herself with freelance work and adjunct teaching, slowly learning of the 1840s uprising, when poor tenant farmers fought to redistribute their landlords' vast estates. In the farmers' socialist dreams, she discovers connections to her parents' collectivist values, as well as to our current moment. Threaded with historical documents, the natural world, and the work of writers like Adrienne Rich and Elizabeth Hardwick, Kabat weaves a capacious memoir, where the past comes alive in the present.Rich with unexpected correspondences and discoveries, this visionary and deeply compassionate debut gives us a new way of seeing and being in place--one in which everything is intertwined and all at once. -
Sold outRenewable and Alternative Energy
With the extreme weather events caused by climate change becoming increasingly common and many natural resources used for energy becoming increasingly rare, scientists, politicians, and corporate leaders alike have made an effort to find renewable forms of energy that will be available indefinitely and have less of a negative environmental impact. However, not all renewable and alternative energy sources are created equal, and some argue that it will never be possible for renewable and alternative energy sources to generate enough power at an affordable price. But many acknowledge the urgency of reevaluating our energy sources and consumption practices. The viewpoints in this volume will consider the issue of renewable and alternative energy from a variety of environmental, political, and economic perspectives.Sold out -
Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal
A groundbreaking look at the hidden role of bankruptcy in perpetuating inequality in America, from an expert in the fieldBankruptcy is the busiest federal court in America. In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially.
In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and class inequality in America. When cities go bankrupt, for example, police unions enjoy added leverage while police brutality victims are denied a seat at the negotiating table; the system is more forgiving of civil rights abuses than of the parking tickets disproportionately distributed in African American neighborhoods. Across a broad range of crucial issues, Unjust Debts reveals the hidden mechanisms by which bankruptcy impacts everything from sexual harassment to health care, police violence to employment discrimination, and the opioid crisis to gun violence.
In the tradition of Matthew Desmond's groundbreaking Evicted, Unjust Debts is a riveting and original work of accessible scholarship with huge implications for ordinary people and will set the terms of debate for this vital subject.
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We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth
With a new afterword by the authors
A powerful, intimate collection of conversations with Indigenous Americans on the climate crisis and the Earth's futureAlthough for a great many people, the human impact on the Earth--countless species becoming extinct, pandemics claiming millions of lives, and climate crisis causing worldwide social and environmental upheaval--was not apparent until recently, this is not the case for all people or cultures. For the Indigenous people of the world, radical alteration of the planet, and of life itself, is a story that is many generations long. They have had to adapt, to persevere, and to be courageous and resourceful in the face of genocide and destruction--and their experience has given them a unique understanding of civilizational devastation.
An American Library Association Notable Book, We Are the Middle of Forever places Indigenous voices at the center of conversations about today's environmental crisis. The book draws on interviews with people from different North American Indigenous cultures and communities, generations, and geographic regions, who share their knowledge and experience, their questions, their observations, and their dreams of maintaining the best relationship possible to all of life. A welcome antidote to the despair arising from the climate crisis, We Are the Middle of Forever will be an indispensable aid to those looking for new and different ideas and responses to the challenges we face.
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The Handy Civics Answer Book: How to Be a Good Citizen
Citizenship Unleashed: Nurturing Democracy and Strengthening America! Delve into the essence of citizenship and the part we play in the functioning of our government with this enlightening guide! From rights and responsibilities to creating the Constitution and the shape of the government, citizens have a central role in the governance of the United States. A vital guide that explores the duties and responsibilities of an American citizen, The Handy Civics Answer Book: How to Be a Good Citizen also explains the three branches of government and the political processes that influence their functioning. From intriguing historical tidbits to the intricate inner workings of the law, this book is a treasure trove of civics knowledge. This illuminating book answers more than 600 of the most intriguing questions about civics, citizenship, and the government, including ...- What does the Declaration of Independence say?
- What were the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation?
- How did the Constitutional Convention delegates deal with the issue of slavery?
- Who actually wrote the U.S. Constitution?
- What were the Federalist Papers?
- What are the Powers of Congress?
- Why did the Framers want to limit the powers of Congress?
- What are the duties of the president of the United States?
- What is the presidential oath?
- How was the U.S. Supreme Court created?
- Can Supreme Court justices be impeached?
- What is the Bill of Rights?
- What rights do citizens possess?
- What are some leading civic responsibilities?
- What legal duties may only citizens perform?
- What does a citizen need to do to vote?
- How does one become a U.S. citizen?
- What is the Oath of Allegiance?
- What does the U.S. Constitution say about state government?
- Who funds public schooling in the United States?
- Do state governments have police powers? Whether through the vote, exercising our free speech rights, defending our country, serving on a jury, respecting laws, staying informed, or respecting the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others, The Handy Civics Answer Book will arm you with the knowledge you need to be an informed and active participant in the democratic process. This compelling resource to Washington, governance, and civic duties is ideal for anyone interested in American politics and government or who is simply seeking to become a more engaged citizen. With more than 120 photos, this tome is richly illustrated. It's helpful bibliography provides sources for further exploration, and an extensive index adds to its usefulness.
- What does the Declaration of Independence say?
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The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War
"The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere offers a lucid, dynamic, and highly readable history of Japan's attempt to usher in a new order in Asia during World War II."
― Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture ReviewIn The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy A. Yellen exposes the history, politics, and intrigue that characterized the era when Japan's "total empire" met the total war of World War II. He illuminates the ways in which the imperial center and its individual colonies understood the concept of the Sphere, offering two sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, and always intertwined visions--one from Japan, the other from Burma and the Philippines.
Yellen argues that, from 1940 to 1945, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere epitomized two concurrent wars for Asia's future: the first was for a new type of empire in Asia, and the second was a political war, waged by nationalist elites in the colonial capitals of Rangoon and Manila. Exploring Japanese visions for international order in the face of an ever-changing geopolitical situation, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere explores wartime Japan's desire to shape and control its imperial future while its colonies attempted to do the same. At Japan's zenith as an imperial power, the Sphere represented a plan for regional domination; by the end of the war, it had been recast as the epitome of cooperative internationalism. In the end, the Sphere could not survive wartime defeat, and Yellen's lucidly written account reveals much about the desires of Japan as an imperial and colonial power, as well as the ways in which the subdued colonies in Burma and the Philippines jockeyed for agency and a say in the future of the region.
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The Air They Breathe: A Pediatrician on the Frontlines of Climate Change
A timely, revelatory first look into the impact climate change has on children--the greatest moral crisis humanity faces today--by a pediatrician in the fastest warming city in America. Wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves make headlines. But what is happening in Debra Hendrickson's clinic tells another story of this strange and unsettling time. Hendrickson is a pediatrician in Reno, Nevada--the fastest warming city in the United States, where ash falls like snow during summer wildfires. In The Air They Breathe, Dr. Hendrickson recounts patients she's seen who were harmed by worsening smoke, smog, and pollen; two boys in Arizona, stricken by record-setting heat while hiking; children who fled for their lives from Hurricane Harvey and the Tubbs Fire; and a little girl whose life was forever altered by the Zika virus outbreak in 2016. The climate crisis is a health crisis, and it is a health crisis, first and foremost, for children. Children's bodies are interwoven with and shaped by their surroundings. As the planet warms and their environment changes, children's health is at risk. The youngest are especially vulnerable because their brain, lungs, and other organs are forming and growing every day, and because their physiology is so different from that of adults. Childhood has always been a risky period of life; throughout history, babies and children have met peril, from polio to famine, from cyclones to war. Yet they have never quite had to face, in quite this way, the potential loss of the future itself. The Air They Breathe is not just about the health impacts of global warming, but something more: a soul-stirring reminder of our moral responsibility to our children, and their profound connections to this unique and irreplaceable world. -
Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe
Bestselling author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera explores the global legacy of the British Empire, and the ways it continues to influence economics, politics, and culture around the world. 2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound: from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to the shaping international law. Even today, 1 in 3 people drive on the left hand side of the road, an artifact of the British empire. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. Following in the footsteps of his bestselling book Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, Empireworld explores the ways in which British Empire has come to shape the modern world Sanghera visits Barbados, where he uncovers how Caribbean nations are still struggling to emerge from the disadvantages sown by transatlantic slavery. He examines how large charities--like Save the Children and the World Bank--still see the world through the imperial eyes of their colonial founders, and how the political instability of nations, such as Nigeria, for instance, can be traced back to tensions seeded in their colonial foundations. And from the British Empire's role in the transportation of 12.5 million Africans during the Atlantic slave trade, to the 35 million Indians who died due to famine caused by British policy, the British Empire, as Sanghera reveals, was responsible for some of the largest demographic changes in human history. Economic, legal and political systems across the world continue to function along the lines originally drawn by the British Empire, and cultural, sexual, psychological, linguistic, demographic, and educational norms originally established by imperial Britons continue to shape our lives. British Empire may have peaked a century ago, and it may have been mostly dismantled by 1997, but in this major new work, Sathnam Sanghera ultimately shows how the largest empire in world history still exerts influence over planet Earth in all sorts of silent and unsilent ways.Sold out -
One Year in Uvalde: A Story of Hope and Resilience
From award-winning journalists John Quiñones and María Elena Salinas comes One Year in Uvalde, a narrative that builds on year-long ABC News reporting from Uvalde, Texas, chronicling how the community is forging on through grief with hope and activism in the shadow of tragedy. Uvalde: 365 was a continuing ABC News series led by the network's Investigative Unit. As part of the initiative, ABC News opened a local satellite news bureau in Uvalde, Texas, in the aftermath of the tragic mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, that hosted a rotating crew of correspondents, producers, writers, and technical staff. Their gripping, vital reporting has been featured across all programs and platforms, from Good Morning America to World News Tonight with David Muir. Award-winning journalists John Quiñones and María Elena Salinas became immersed in the Uvalde community, as their field reporting brought them ever closer to the people of this Texas city. Quiñones, Salinas, and other ABC reporters and producers on the ground documented the lives of victims' families; covered local community events; followed city council, school board, and Texas Legislature meetings; and attended congressional hearings in Washington, D.C., where victims' families have been advocating for gun reform. One Year in Uvalde synthesizes this year-long story into a timely, humane, and important look at a community's activism and resiliency, as it follows several families and residents while events continue to unfold in the community. The intimate, sensitive reporting of Quiñones, Salinas, and the ABC News team examines a specific time and place in American life, thereby highlighting challenges that we face as a nation. The authors will be making donations to the following charities that serve the Uvalde community:
*The Uvalde CISD Moving Forward Foundation (https: //UvaldeCISDMovingForward.org/)
*The Uvalde Forever Fund of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country (www.CommunityFoundation.net)
*Uvalde High School Athletic Department (https: //Athletics.UCISD.net)Sold out -
After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy
This book is a comprehensive study of cooperation among the advanced capitalist countries. Can cooperation persist without the dominance of a single power, such as the United States after World War II? To answer this pressing question, Robert Keohane analyzes the institutions, or "international regimes," through which cooperation has taken place in the world political economy and describes the evolution of these regimes as American hegemony has eroded. Refuting the idea that the decline of hegemony makes cooperation impossible, he views international regimes not as weak substitutes for world government but as devices for facilitating decentralized cooperation among egoistic actors. In the preface the author addresses the issue of cooperation after the end of the Soviet empire and with the renewed dominance of the United States, in security matters, as well as recent scholarship on cooperation.
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The Condition of the Working Class in England
This, the first book written by Engels during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844, is the best known and in many ways the most astute study of the working class in Victorian England. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature of his insights, and his talent for mordant satire all combiine to make Engels's account of the lives of the victims of early industrial change an undeniable classic. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
