New Arrivals: JK 1 - JK 1879.9999
Showing 1 - 25 of 36 new items.
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© 2017,#1 New York Times bestseller The fiery U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and bestselling author offers a passionate, inspiring book about why our middle class is under siege and how we can win the fight to save it Senator Elizabeth Warren has long been an outspoken champion of America's middle class, and by the time the people of Massachusetts elected her in 2012, she had become one of the country's leading progressive voices. Now, at a perilous moment for our nation, she has written a book that is at once an illuminating account of how we built the strongest middle class in history, a scathing indictment of those who have spent the past thirty-five years undermining working families, and a rousing call to action. Warren grew up in Oklahoma, and she's never forgotten how difficult it was for her mother and father to hold on at the ragged edge of the middle class. An educational system that offered opportunities for all made it possible for her to achieve her dream of going to college, becoming a teacher, and, later, attending law school. But now, for many, these kinds of opportunities are gone, and a government that once looked out for working families is instead captive to the rich and powerful. Seventy-five years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal ushered in an age of widespread prosperity; in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan reversed course and sold the country on the disastrous fiction called trickle-down economics. Now, with the election of Donald Trump--a con artist who promised to drain the swamp of special interests and then surrounded himself with billionaires and lobbyists--the middle class is being pushed ever closer to collapse. Written in the candid, high-spirited voice that is Warren's trademark, This Fight Is Our Fight tells eye-opening stories about her battles in the Senate and vividly describes the experiences of hard-working Americans who have too often been given the short end of the stick. Elizabeth Warren has had enough of phony promises and a government that no longer serves its people--she won't sit down, she won't be silenced, and she will fight back. -
© 2017,"The first in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the White House Chiefs of Staff, whose actions--and inactions--have defined the course of our country What do Dick Cheney and Rahm Emanuel have in common? Aside from polarizing personalities, both served as chief of staff to the president of the United States--as did Donald Rumsfeld, Leon Panetta, and a relative handful of others. The chiefs of staff, often referred to as "the gatekeepers," wield tremendous power in Washington and beyond; they decide who is allowed to see the president, negotiate with Congress to push POTUS's agenda, and--most crucially--enjoy unparalleled access to the leader of the free world. Each chief can make or break an administration, and each president reveals himself by the chief he picks. Through extensive, intimate interviews with all seventeenliving chiefs and two former presidents, award-winning journalist and producer Chris Whipple pulls back the curtain on this unique fraternity. In doing so, he revises our understanding of presidential history, showing us how James Baker's expert managing of the White House, the press, and Capitol Hill paved the way for the Reagan Revolution--and, conversely, how Watergate, the Iraq War, and even the bungled Obamacare rollout mighthave been prevented by a more effective chief. Filled with shrewd analysis and never-before-reported details,The Gatekeepersoffers an essential portrait of the toughest job in Washington"-- -
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© 2017,NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Dispatches from the 2016 election that provide an eerily prescient take on our democracy's uncertain future, by the country's most perceptive and fearless political journalist. In twenty-five pieces from Rolling Stone --plus two original essays--Matt Taibbi tells the story of Western civilization's very own train wreck, from its tragicomic beginnings to its apocalyptic conclusion. Years before the clown car of candidates was fully loaded, Taibbi grasped the essential themes of the story: the power of spectacle over substance, or even truth; the absence of a shared reality; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism that would destroy what was left of the Kingian dream of a successful pluralistic society. Taibbi captures, with dead-on, real-time analysis, the failures of the right and the left, from the thwarted Bernie Sanders insurgency to the flawed and aimless Hillary Clinton campaign; the rise of the "dangerously bright" alt-right with its wall-loving identity politics and its rapturous view of the "Racial Holy War" to come; and the giant fail of a flailing, reactive political media that fed a ravenous news cycle not with reporting on political ideology, but with undigested propaganda served straight from the campaign bubble. At the center of it all stands Donald J. Trump, leading a historic revolt against his own party, "bloviating and farting his way" through the campaign, "saying outrageous things, acting like Hitler one minute and Andrew Dice Clay the next." For Taibbi, the stunning rise of Trump marks the apotheosis of the new postfactual movement. Taibbi frames the reporting with original essays that explore the seismic shift in how we perceive our national institutions, the democratic process, and the future of the country. Insane Clown President is not just a postmortem on the collapse and failure of American democracy. It offers the riveting, surreal, unique, and essential experience of seeing the future in hindsight. Praise for Matt Taibbi "Matt Taibbi is one of the few journalists in America who speaks truth to power." --Senator Bernie Sanders -
© 2016,Maureen Dowd's incendiary takes and takedowns from 2016--the most bizarre, disruptive and divisive Presidential race in modern history. Trapped between two candidates with the highest recorded unfavorables, Americans are plunged into The Year of Voting Dangerously. In this perilous and shocking campaign season, The New York Times columnist traces the psychologies and pathologies in one of the nastiest and most significant battles of the sexes ever. Dowd has covered Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton since the '90s. She was with the real estate mogul when he shyly approached his first Presidential rope line in 1999, and she won a Pulitzer prize that same year for her penetrating columns on the Clinton impeachment follies. Like her bestsellers, Bushworld and Are Men Necessary? , THE YEAR OF VOTING DANGEROUSLY will feature Dowd's trademark cocktail of wry humor and acerbic analysis in dispatches from the political madhouse. If America is on the escalator to hell, then THE YEAR OF VOTING DANGEROUSLY is the perfect guide for this surreal, insane ride.
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© 2016,AT STAKE: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA The 2016 election is truly America's Armageddon--the ultimate and decisive battle to save America, a fight to defeat Hillary Clinton and the forces seeking to flout our constitutional government and replace it with an all-powerful president backed up by an activist judiciary that answers to no one. Already President Obama has moved America far down this path, and a President Clinton will act as his "third term," institutionalizing the excesses of the past eight years. In Armageddon , bestselling author and political strategist Dick Morris provides a winning game plan to take back the White House, and America. Because this is our last chance: * Our last chance to stop socialist uniformity, corruption and executive usurpation * Our last chance to curb welfare programs that are destroying the economic and social fabric of the nation * Our last chance to secure our border and keep our sovereignty * Our last chance to stand up against ISIS and terrorism * Our last chance to protect the Second Amendment We can do it. We must. It's our last chance. Read Armageddon , or risk losing the battle to save America! On Tuesday, November 5, 2016, American voters will make a momentous decision. They will decide whether or not this great country will remain a free market, constitutional democracy. The stakes could not be higher. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, it will mean the end of the America we know and love. Armageddon , by New York Times bestselling authors Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, is a call to arms, a call to join that ultimate battle. Few know Hillary Clinton better than Dick Morris. For almost two decades he served as a special adviser to both her and her husband, Bill Clinton. He knows their strengths, their vulnerabilities, and even their deepest secrets. In Armageddon , Morris offers a manual on how to win this battle and defeat Hillary once and for all. He argues that a typical Republican campaign won't work--and that Hillary's opponent must strike her in a very unorthodox and powerful way. Morris says it's a winning strategy and voters play a critical role. A noted political strategist, Dick Morris has created winning strategies for numerous presidential campaigns in the U.S. and abroad. In this book he lays out a war plan, one the Republican nominee must use to prevent her victory: * Throw a surprising right jab: terrorism and healthcare * Throw the left hook: jobs, immigration, Wall Street * Play her game on class warfare: women, Latinos, and young voters Republicans need to stop playing by the old rules of the game. Those rules don't work--they elected Barack Obama twice. Obama has changed America in fundamental ways and Morris posits that Hillary's opponents need to grasp this and implement a strategy that can finally defeat her.
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© 2016,AT STAKE: THE FUTURE OF AMERICA The 2016 election is truly America's Armageddon--the ultimate and decisive battle to save America, a fight to defeat Hillary Clinton and the forces seeking to flout our constitutional government and replace it with an all-powerful president backed up by an activist judiciary that answers to no one. Already President Obama has moved America far down this path, and a President Clinton will act as his "third term," institutionalizing the excesses of the past eight years. In Armageddon , bestselling author and political strategist Dick Morris provides a winning game plan to take back the White House, and America. Because this is our last chance: * Our last chance to stop socialist uniformity, corruption and executive usurpation * Our last chance to curb welfare programs that are destroying the economic and social fabric of the nation * Our last chance to secure our border and keep our sovereignty * Our last chance to stand up against ISIS and terrorism * Our last chance to protect the Second Amendment We can do it. We must. It's our last chance. Read Armageddon , or risk losing the battle to save America! On Tuesday, November 5, 2016, American voters will make a momentous decision. They will decide whether or not this great country will remain a free market, constitutional democracy. The stakes could not be higher. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, it will mean the end of the America we know and love. Armageddon , by New York Times bestselling authors Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, is a call to arms, a call to join that ultimate battle. Few know Hillary Clinton better than Dick Morris. For almost two decades he served as a special adviser to both her and her husband, Bill Clinton. He knows their strengths, their vulnerabilities, and even their deepest secrets. In Armageddon , Morris offers a manual on how to win this battle and defeat Hillary once and for all. He argues that a typical Republican campaign won't work--and that Hillary's opponent must strike her in a very unorthodox and powerful way. Morris says it's a winning strategy and voters play a critical role. A noted political strategist, Dick Morris has created winning strategies for numerous presidential campaigns in the U.S. and abroad. In this book he lays out a war plan, one the Republican nominee must use to prevent her victory: * Throw a surprising right jab: terrorism and healthcare * Throw the left hook: jobs, immigration, Wall Street * Play her game on class warfare: women, Latinos, and young voters Republicans need to stop playing by the old rules of the game. Those rules don't work--they elected Barack Obama twice. Obama has changed America in fundamental ways and Morris posits that Hillary's opponents need to grasp this and implement a strategy that can finally defeat her.
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© 2007,American political development (APD) has claimed in recent years the attention of a growing band of political scientists, and scholars have begun to speak of "APD" as a subfield within the discipline. This book provides a justification for studying politics historically, not only for what it reveals about the roots of political affairs at the present time but what it teaches about politics as an ongoing activity. Placing the character of political institutions at the center of analysis, the authors survey past and current scholarship and outline a course of study for the future.
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© 2009,While it is obvious that America's state and local governments were consistently active during the nineteenth century, a period dominated by laissez-faire, political historians of twentieth-century America have assumed that the national government did very little during this period. A Government Out of Sight challenges this premise, chronicling the ways in which the national government intervened powerfully in the lives of nineteenth-century Americans through the law, subsidies, and the use of third parties (including state and local governments), while avoiding bureaucracy. Americans have always turned to the national government - especially for economic development and expansion - and in the nineteenth century even those who argued for a small, nonintrusive central government demanded that the national government expand its authority to meet the nation's challenges. In revising our understanding of the ways in which Americans turned to the national government throughout this period, this study fundamentally alters our perspective on American political development in the twentieth century, shedding light on contemporary debates between progressives and conservatives about the proper size of government and government programs and subsidies that even today remain "out of sight."
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© 2015,THE ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE 2016 discusses the legal, political, and financial framework in which the presidential election occurs; the process by which the parties nominate their standard bearers and position themselves for the general election; the strategies, tactics, and operations of the presidential campaigns; the news media's role; and the attitudes, opinions, and decisions of the voters and what those decisions augur for policy and government once the election is over. This edition emphasizes the changes that have revolutionized electoral politics in recent years, including the flood of money to and from Super PACs, instantaneous communications, digital campaigning, and microtargeting messaging. It also offers updates and insights on topics pertinent to every presidential election, such as the nomination and Electoral College systems, news coverage, television debates, political commercials, partisan appeals, voting patterns, and election forecasts, polls, and analysis.
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© 2014,Much has been written about the historic nature of the Obama campaign. The multi-year, multi-billion dollar operation elected the nation's first black president, raised and spent more money than any other election effort in history, and built the most sophisticated voter targeting technology ever before used on a national campaign. What is missing from most accounts of the campaign is an understanding of how Obama for America recruited, motivated, developed, and managed its formidable army of 2.2 million volunteers. Unlike previous field campaigns that drew their power from staff, consultants, and paid canvassers, the Obama campaign's capacity came from unpaid local citizens who took responsibility for organizing their own neighborhoods months--and even years--in advance of election day. In so doing, Groundbreakers argues, the campaign engaged citizens in the work of practicing democracy. How did they organize so many volunteers to produce so much valuable work for the campaign? This book describes how. Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han argue that the legacy of Obama for America extends beyond big data and micro-targeting; it also reinvigorated and expanded traditional models of field campaigning. Groundbreakers makes the case that the Obama campaign altered traditional ground games by adopting the principles and practices of community organizing. Drawing on in-depth interviews with OFA field staff and volunteers, this book also argues that a key achievement of the OFA's field organizing was its transformative effect on those who were a part of it. Obama the candidate might have inspired volunteers to join the campaign, but it was the fulfilling relationships that volunteers had with other people--and their deep belief that their work mattered for the work of democracy--that kept them active. Groundbreakers documents how the Obama campaign has inspired a new way of running field campaigns, with lessons for national and international political and civic movements.
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© 2015,Look at the state of the world right now. It's a terrible mess, and that's putting it mildly. There has never been a more dangerous time. The politicians and special interests in Washington, DC, are directly responsible for the mess we are in. So why should we continue listening to them? It's time to bring America back to its rightful owners-the American people. I'm not going to play the same game politicians have been playing for decades-all talk, no action, while special interests and lobbyists dictate our laws. I am shaking up the establishment on both sides of the political aisle because I can't be bought. I want to bring America back, to make it great and prosperous again, and to be sure we are respected by our allies and feared by our adversaries. It's time for action. Americans are fed up with politics as usual. And they should be! In this book, I outline my vision to make America great again, including: how to fix our failing economy; how to reform health care so it is more efficient, cost-effective, and doesn't alienate both doctors and patients; how to rebuild our military and start winning wars-instead of watching our enemies take over-while keeping our promises to our great veterans; how to ensure that our education system offers the resources that allow our students to compete internationally, so tomorrow's jobseekers have the tools they need to succeed; and how to immediately bring jobs back to America by closing our doors to illegal immigrants, and pressuring businesses to produce their goods at home. This book is my blueprint for how to Make America Great Again. It's not hard. We just need someone with the courage to say what needs to be said. We won't find that in Washington, DC.
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© 2015,A democracy falters when most of its citizens are uninformed or misinformed, when misinformation affects political decisions and actions, or when political actors foment misinformation--the state of affairs the United States faces today, as this timely book makes painfully clear. In Do Facts Matter? Jennifer L. Hochschild and Katherine Levine Einstein start with Thomas Jefferson's ideal citizen, who knows and uses correct information to make policy or political choices. What, then, the authors ask, are the consequences if citizens are informed but do not act on their knowledge? More serious, what if they do act, but on incorrect information? Analyzing the use, nonuse, and misuse of facts in various cases--such as the call to impeach Bill Clinton, the response to global warming, Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court, the case for invading Iraq, beliefs about Barack Obama's birthplace and religion, and the Affordable Care Act--Hochschild and Einstein argue persuasively that errors of commission (that is, acting on falsehoods) are even more troublesome than errors of omission. While citizens' inability or unwillingness to use the facts they know in their political decision making may be frustrating, their acquisition and use of incorrect "knowledge" pose a far greater threat to a democratic political system. Do Facts Matter? looks beyond individual citizens to the role that political elites play in informing, misinforming, and encouraging or discouraging the use of accurate or mistaken information or beliefs. Hochschild and Einstein show that if a well-informed electorate remains a crucial component of a successful democracy, the deliberate concealment of political facts poses its greatest threat.
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© 2015,The traditional theory of public administration is based on entrenched notions of hierarchy and authority. However, as the structure of public work has grown less hierarchical, managers have adopted a wide variety of non-authoritarian strategies. This growing gap between theoretical ideas and actual practice poses enormous challenges for front-line leaders struggling to deal with ever-larger expectations and ever-tighter budgets-and for American government in determining how best to hold public administrators accountable for their performance. The Transformation of Governance offers a new framework for reconciling effective administration with the requirements of democratic government. Instead of thinking in terms of organizational structure and management, Donald F. Kettl suggests, administrators and theorists need to focus on governance, or the links between government and its broader environment-political, social, and administrative-through which social action occurs. In this updated edition, a new epilogue shows Kettl urging political leaders to step back from the political barricades of hyperpartisanship to consider government's contemporary dilemma: Is there any practical way forward for public administrators to manage government effectively? Reinforcing the ten principles of bridge building which he developed in the original book, Kettl adds an eleventh, which lays out five transformative strategies: redefining public law to promote public accountability; re-conceptualizing government agencies as instruments of leverage; launching government leaders as boundary spanners; using information technology for building authority and trust; and incorporating performance management into processes that drive collaboration. With a new preface from Michael Nelson, editor of the Interpreting American Politics series, this award-winning book will be sought out by public policymakers eager to read a leading scholar's newest insights into the field.
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© 2015,In the wake of the New Deal, U.S. politics has been popularly imagined as an ongoing conflict between small government conservatives and big government liberals. In practice, narratives of left versus right or government versus the people do not begin to capture the dynamic ways Americans pursue civic goals while protecting individual freedoms. Brian Balogh proposes a new view of U.S. politics that illuminates how public and private actors collaborate to achieve collective goals. This "associational synthesis" treats the relationship between state and civil society as fluid and challenges interpretations that map the trajectory of American politics solely along ideological lines. Rather, both liberals and conservatives have extended the authority of the state, but have done so most successfully when state action is mediated through nongovernmental institutions, such as universities, corporations, interest groups, and other voluntary organizations. The Associational State provides a fresh perspective on the crucial role that the private sector, trade associations, and professional organizations have played in implementing public policies from the late nineteenth through the twenty-first century. Balogh examines key historical periods through the lens of political development, paying particular attention to the ways government, social movements, and intermediary institutions have organized support and resources to achieve public ends. Exposing the gap between the ideological rhetoric that both parties deploy today and their far less ideologically driven behavior over the past century and a half, The Associational State offers one solution to the partisan gridlock that currently grips the nation.
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© 2015,New York Times Bestseller Like See No Evil and At the Center of the Storm , this is a vivid and gripping account of the Central Intelligence Agency, a life of secrets, and a war in the shadows. Called the "Bob Gates of his generation" by Politico, Michael Morell was a top CIA officer who played a critical role in the most important counterterrorism events of the past two decades. Morell was by President Bush's side on 9/11/01 when terrorists struck America and in the White House Situation Room advising President Obama on 5/1/11 when America struck back-killing Usama bin Ladin. From the subway bombings in London to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Morell always seemed to find himself on the cusp of history. A superb intelligence analyst and briefer, Morell now presents THE GREAT WAR OF OUR TIME, where he uses his talents to offer an unblinking and insightful assessment of CIA's counterterrorism successes and failures of the past twenty years and, perhaps most important, shows readers that the threat of terrorism did not die with Bin Ladin in Abbottabad. Morell illuminates new, growing threats from terrorist groups that, if unaddressed, could leave the country vulnerable to attacks that would dwarf 9/11 in magnitude. He writes of secret, back-channel negotiations he conducted with foreign spymasters and regime leaders in a desperate attempt to secure a peaceful outcome to unrest launched during the "Arab Spring." Morell describes how efforts to throw off the shackles of oppression have too often resulted in broken nation states unable or unwilling to join the fight against terrorism. Along the way Morell provides intimate portraits of the leadership styles of figures ranging from Presidents Bush and Obama, CIA directors Tenet, Goss, Hayden, Petraeus, Panetta, and Brennan, and a host of others.
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© 2015,Constituents often fail to hold their representatives accountable for federal spending decisions--even though those very choices have a pervasive influence on American life. Why does this happen? Breaking new ground in the study of representation, The Impression of Influence demonstrates how legislators skillfully inform constituents with strategic communication and how this facilitates or undermines accountability. Using a massive collection of Congressional texts and innovative experiments and methods, the book shows how legislators create an impression of influence through credit claiming messages. Anticipating constituents' reactions, legislators claim credit for programs that elicit a positive response, making constituents believe their legislator is effectively representing their district. This spurs legislators to create and defend projects popular with their constituents. Yet legislators claim credit for much more--they announce projects long before they begin, deceptively imply they deserve credit for expenditures they had little role in securing, and boast about minuscule projects. Unfortunately, legislators get away with seeking credit broadly because constituents evaluate the actions that are reported, rather than the size of the expenditures. The Impression of Influence raises critical questions about how citizens hold their political representatives accountable and when deception is allowable in a democracy.
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© 2014,This book explores why some members of Congress are more effective than others at navigating the legislative process and what this means for how Congress is organized and what policies it produces. Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman develop a new metric of individual legislator effectiveness (the Legislative Effectiveness Score) that will be of interest to scholars, voters, and politicians alike. They use these scores to study party influence in Congress, the successes or failures of women and African Americans in Congress, policy gridlock, and the specific strategies that lawmakers employ to advance their agendas.
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© 2014,American democracy differs greatly from other democracies around the world. But is the American way more or less efficacious than comparable democracies in Asia, Latin America, or Europe? What if the United States had a prime minister instead of (or in addition to) a president, or if it had three or more parties in Congress instead of two? Would there be more partisan animosity and legislative gridlock or less? These are the kinds of questions that thinking about U.S. government in comparative perspective helps us to analyze. This valuable contribution to political studies takes a unique approach to a much-studied subject, looking at the U.S. government from a comparative point of view. Four distinguished scholars in the field examine the Constitution, the two-party system, the division of power between state and federal governments, and other major features of the American political system in terms of how they differ from other democracies, and they explore what those differences ultimately mean for democratic performance. By merging two important fields of study, American government and comparative political systems, this essential text offers a new and refreshingly insightful view of American exceptionalism.
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© 2014,Presidents have long invoked electoral mandates to justify the use of executive power. In Delivering the People's Message, Julia R. Azari draws on an original dataset of more than 1,500 presidential communications, as well as primary documents from six presidential libraries, to systematically examine choices made by presidents ranging from Herbert Hoover in 1928 to Barack Obama during his 2008 election. Azari argues that Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 marked a shift from the modern presidency formed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to what she identifies as a more partisan era for the presidency. This partisan model is a form of governance in which the president appears to require a popular mandate in order to manage unruly and deeply contrary elements within his own party and succeed in the face of staunch resistance from the opposition party. Azari finds that when the presidency enjoys high public esteem and party polarization is low, mandate rhetoric is less frequent and employs broad themes. By contrast, presidents turn to mandate rhetoric when the office loses legitimacy, as in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam and during periods of intense polarization. In the twenty-first century, these two factors have converged. As a result, presidents rely on mandate rhetoric to defend their choices to supporters and critics alike, simultaneously creating unrealistic expectations about the electoral promises they will be able to fulfill. -
© 2014,AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS TODAY: THE ESSENTIALS, 2013-2014 EDITION inspires readers to join the exciting process of being active, informed citizens. Unbiased, concisely organized, and updated with Election 2012 coverage and a new focus on learning outcomes, the text's fundamental theme continues to be the importance of participating in active citizenship, emphasizing continual critical thinking about political issues, and encouraging readers to become involved in the political process. With a keen understanding of the needs and interests of today's learners, the authors incorporate interesting and relevant current examples to stimulate learning and excitement. The text is completely redesigned for even greater reader appeal. -
© 2014,#1 New York Times Bestseller Is America a source of pride, as Americans have long held, or shame, as Progressives allege? Beneath an innocent exterior, are our lives complicit in a national project of theft, expropriation, oppression, and murder, or is America still the hope of the world? Dinesh D'Souza says these questions are no mere academic exercise. It is the Progressive view that is taught in our schools, that is preached by Hollywood, and that shapes the policies of the Obama administration. If America is a force for inequality and injustice in the world, its power deserves to be diminished; if traditional America is based on oppression and theft, then traditional America must be reformed-and the federal government can do the reforming. In America: Imagine a World without Her D'Souza offers a passionate and sharply reasoned defense of America, knocking down every important accusation made by Progressives against our country. Provocative in its analysis, stunning in its conclusions, Dinesh D'Souza's America will be the most talked about book of the year.