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Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down
By Dave Zirin. 2013
&“Enlightening&” essays on athletes, activism, and the important role sports plays in our society (Publishers Weekly). Sportscaster Howard Cosell…
dubbed it &“rule number one of the jockocracy&”: sports and politics just don&’t mix. But in truth, some of our most important debates about class, race, religion, sex, and the raw quest for political power are played out both on and off the field. From the NFL lockout and the role of soccer in the Arab Spring to the Penn State sexual abuse scandals and Tim Tebow&’s on-field genuflections, this timely and hard-hitting new book from the &“conscience of American sports writing&” offers new insights and analysis of headline-grabbing sports controversies (The Washington Post). It explores the shady side of the NCAA; the explosive 2011 MLB All-Star Game; and why the Dodgers crashed and burned. It covers the fascinating struggles of gay and lesbian athletes to gain acceptance, female athletes to be more than sex symbols, and athletes everywhere to assert their collective bargaining rights as union members. Dave Zirin also illustrates the ways that athletes are once again using their exalted platforms to speak out and reclaim sports from the corporate interests that have taken it hostage. In Game Over, he cheers the victories—but also reflects on how far we have yet to go. &“A book that no thinking sports fan can afford to miss.&” —Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is BurningForgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America
By Michael Reid. 2017
The bestselling primer on the social, political, and economic challenges facing Central and South America—now fully revised and updated. …
Ten years after its first publication, Michael Reid&’s bestselling survey of the state of contemporary Latin America has been wholly updated to reflect the new realities of the &“Forgotten Continent.&” The former Americas editor for the Economist, Reid suggests that much of Central and South America, though less poor, less unequal, and better educated than before, faces harder economic times now that the commodities boom of the 2000s is over. His revised, in-depth account of the region reveals dynamic societies more concerned about corruption and climate change, the uncertainties of a Donald Trump-led United States, and a political cycle that, in many cases, is turning from left-wing populism to center-right governments. This essential new edition provides important insights into the sweeping changes that have occurred in Latin America in recent years and indicates priorities for the future. &“[A] comprehensive and erudite assessment of the region . . . While the social and economic face of Latin America is becoming more attractive, political life remains ugly and, in some countries, is getting even uglier.&”—The Washington Post &“Excellent . . . a comprehensive primer on the history, politics, and culture of the hemisphere.&”—Francis Fukuyama, New York Times bestselling author &“Reid&’s book offers something valuable to both specialists and the general reading public . . . He writes of Latin America with great empathy, intelligence, and insight.&”—Hispanic American Historical ReviewThe Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents
By John Dinges. 2004
A &“compelling and shocking account&” of a brutal campaign of repression in Latin America, based on interviews and previously secret…
documents (The Miami Herald). Throughout the 1970s, six Latin American governments, led by Chile, formed a military alliance called Operation Condor to carry out kidnappings, torture, and political assassinations across three continents. It was an early &“war on terror&” initially encouraged by the CIA—which later backfired on the United States. Hailed by Foreign Affairs as &“remarkable&” and &“a major contribution to the historical record,&” The Condor Years uncovers the unsettling facts about the secret US relationship with the dictators who created this terrorist organization. Written by award-winning journalist John Dinges and updated to include later developments in the prosecution of Pinochet, the book is a chilling yet dispassionately told history of one of Latin America&’s darkest eras. Dinges, himself interrogated in a Chilean torture camp, interviewed participants on both sides and examined thousands of previously secret documents to take the reader inside this underground world of military operatives and diplomats, right-wing spies and left-wing revolutionaries. &“Scrupulous, well-documented.&” —The Washington Post &“Nobody knows what went wrong inside Chile like John Dinges.&” —Seymour HershShah of Shahs
By Ryszard Kapuscinski. 1985
This journalist&’s portrait of life in Iran just after the Revolution is &“a book of great economy and power [with]…
a supreme sense of the absurd&” (New Republic). Iran, 1980: the revolutionaries have taken charge. In a deserted Teheran hotel, Ryszard Kapuściński tries to make journalistic and human sense out of the mass of notes, tapes, and photographs he had accumulated during his extended stay in Iran. Just what happened and how? What did Khomeini have to offer that the Shah, who promised to &“create a second America within a generation,&” did not? Where did the revolution come from, and where is it going? After all this blood has been spilled, what has it given its people or the world? &“We have given [the world] poetry, the miniature, and carpets,&” says a rug merchant in Teheran. &“We have given the world this miraculous, Unique uselessness.&” Kapuściński tells a rich story that combines factual reporting with his own impressions and reflections. Always engrossing and frequently revelatory, it is a unique portrait of the psychological state of a country in revolution.A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism
By Jeffrey D. Sachs. 2018
In this sobering analysis of American foreign policy under Trump, the award-winning economist calls for a new approach to international…
engagement. The American Century began in 1941 and ended in 2017, on the day of President Trump&’s inauguration. The subsequent turn toward nationalism and &“America first&” unilateralism did not made America great. It announced the abdication of our responsibilities in the face of environmental crises, political upheaval, mass migration, and other global challenges. As a result, America no longer dominates geopolitics or the world economy as it once did. In this incisive and passionate book, Jeffrey D. Sachs provides the blueprint for a new foreign policy that embraces global cooperation, international law, and aspirations for worldwide prosperity. He argues that America&’s approach to the world must shift from military might and wars of choice to a commitment to shared objectives of sustainable development. A New Foreign Policy explores both the danger of the &“America first&” mindset and the possibilities for a new way forward, proposing timely and achievable plans to foster global economic growth, reconfigure the United Nations for the twenty-first century, and build a multipolar world that is prosperous, peaceful, fair, and resilient.Israel, Palestine and Peace: Essays
By Amos Oz. 1995
&“Powerful&” essays from a founder of the Peace Now movement and advocate for a two-state solution (Library Journal). The haunting…
poetry of [Oz's] prose and the stunning logic of his testimony make a potent mixture." —Washington Post Book World Amos Oz was one of the first voices of conscience to advocate for a two-state solution. As a founding member of the Peace Now movement, Oz has spent over thirty-five years speaking out on this issue, and these powerful essays and speeches span an important and formative period for understanding today's tension and crises. Whether he is discoursing on the role of writers in society or recalling his grandmother's death in the context of the language's veracity; examining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a tragicomedy or questioning the Zionist dream, Oz remains trenchant and unflinching in this moving portrait of a divided land. "[Oz is] the modern prophet of Israel." —Sunday Telegraph (UK)Republic of Palau: Selected Issues (Imf Staff Country Reports #Country Report No. 14/111)
By International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept. 2023
If we lose the Earth, we lose our souls
By Bruno Latour. 2024
In this book Bruno Latour calls upon Christians to join the struggle to avert a climate catastrophe. First and foremost,…
Christians need to overcome their lack of interest in “earthly things” and pay attention to the Earth at a time when it is being neglected. He also urges Christians to renew their understanding of their faith in the context of the new image of the world that has emerged from earth system science – that of a world in which the myriad of beings that inhabit the world are interdependent and living in close proximity on a slender, fragile membrane on the surface of the planet. This new image of the world cannot fail to have an impact on the sciences, on politics, and on religion, just as, in earlier centuries, the cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo upset the old order. Latour sees the ecological crisis, and the cosmological mutation that it entails, as an opportunity to convey anew, to the largest possible audience, the tradition of Christianity as it has never been appreciated before, by bringing to bear the lessons of eschatology on the great crisis that looms before us all.The South European Right in the 21st Century: Italy, France and Spain (South European Society and Politics)
By Jocelyn A. J. Evans. 2008
Since the European-wide domination of social democratic governments during the mid- to late-1990s, Right-wing parties have returned to power in…
the three largest Mediterranean democracies – Italy, France and Spain. This alternation has been symptomatic of growing majoritarianism in Southern Europe, a trend which has gone against much of the rest of the continent, and of a decline in clientelist effectiveness also traditionally seen as the Southern ‘norm’. This volume assesses the subsequent periods of incumbency of these three governments, considering the salient features of each in their reaction to winning government and implementing policy, given their divergent historical roots and paths to power. In particular, it focuses on the evolving role of perceived extremist elements on the Right, and adaptation to a European arena which imposes a level of continuity on incumbents of whatever hue, attempts to defend national interests notwithstanding. Lastly, it considers the extent to which the swing to the Right has already reached its peak, given the evidence of recent national and regional elections in France and Spain.Conservatism and Ideology
By Matthew Johnson, Mark Garnett and David Walker. 2016
Michael Oakshott described conservatism as a non-ideological preference for the familiar, tried, actual, limited, near, sufficient, convenient and present. Historically,…
conservatives have been associated with attempts to sustain social harmony between classes and groups within an organic, hierarchical order grounded in collective history and cultural values. Yet, in recent decades, conservatism throughout the English-speaking world has been associated with radical social and economic policy, often championing free-market models which substitute the free movement of labour and forms of competition and social mobility for organic hierarchy and noblesse oblige. The radical changes associated with such policies call into question the extent to which contemporary conservatism is conservative, rather than ideological. This book seeks to explore contemporary conservative political thought with regard to such topics as, ‘One Nation’ politics and Big Society, sovereignty, multiculturalism and international blocs, paternalism and negative liberty with regard to narcotics, pornography and education, regional and international development, and public faith, establishment and religious diversity.This book will be published as a special issue of Global Discourse.Debating Regime Legitimacy in Contemporary China: Popular Protests and Regime Performances
By Suisheng Zhao. 2017
This comprehensive volume is a three-part study of whether the Chinese political system has maintained a significant degree of regime…
legitimacy in the context of rising domestic discontent, in particular the popular protests against socio-economic inequality and environment degradation. Part I presents the scholarly debate on the theoretical refinement and empirical measurement of regime legitimacy in contemporary China. Part II focuses on the challenges to regime legitimacy of the increasingly widespread popular protests and civil activism. Part III examines the regime’s responses to these challenges, including coercive repression, adaptation, and economic performance. This book finds that, while repression can hardly stop popular protests – and often backfires – economic performance legitimacy is increasingly difficult to be maintained. The only way out is the adaptation to the changing domestic and international environment. The chapters in this collection were originally published in the Journal of Contemporary China.One Party Dominance: Fianna F� and Irish Politics 1926�2016
By Sean McGraw and Eoin O’Malley. 2018
Fianna Fáil was for most of the 20th century the democratic world’s most successful political party. It dominated the politics…
of Ireland from 1932, when it first took power, until 2011 when it became a prominent electoral victim of the Great Recession. This book provides original research that explains how Fianna Fáil became dominant and managed its coalitions of support to maintain that position for eight decades. It gathers prominent political scientists who focus on a variety of factors including its ideological flexibility, control of state resources and the venue for decision making, the party’s leadership, its organisation and communications strategies. In addition the book takes a comparative approach to understanding the position of dominant parties in democratic countries, and uses empirical data to understand the sources of its support and decline.It is a book that will be of interest not only to scholars of Ireland, but also to those who wish to understand the sources of power of dominant political parties and the impact of the Great Recession on democratic politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of Irish Political Studies.Children, Families and Leisure
By Heike Schänzel, Neil Carr. 2016
This book aims to further academic debate within the leisure and tourism studies community about the role of ‘families’ in…
contemporary life and the experiences of families and their children in the leisure environment. It is based on the recognition of the diverse nature of the family in the contemporary era and the position of children in families and society in general as active and knowing social agents rather than as passive objects. The family is on the one hand our first community with its own special kind of human attachment and on the other a little world on which the larger society is modelled. Families form the closest and most important emotional bond in humans. This relationship is what drives humanity and society, and positions families at the centre of leisure activities. This international and multi-disciplinary compilation of recent research into children and families examines progress made and challenges ahead for leisure studies. It extends the academic discourse to a wider understanding of what families, children and their leisure behaviour mean in today’s societies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Annals of Leisure Research.The Nature of Belief Systems Reconsidered
By Jeffrey Friedman and Shterna Friedman. 2012
In the foundational document of modern public-opinion research, Philip E. Converse’s "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics" (1964)…
established the U.S. public’s startling political ignorance. This volume makes Converse’s long out-of-print article available again and brings together a variety of scholars, including Converse himself, to reflect on Converse’s findings after nearly half a century of further research. Some chapters update findings on public ignorance. Others outline relevant research agendas not only in public-opinion and voter-behavior studies, but in American political development, "state theory," and normative theory. Three chapters grapple with whether voter ignorance is "rational." Several chapters consider the implications of Converse’s findings for the democratic ideal of a well-informed public; others focus on the political "elite," who are better informed but quite possibly more dogmatic than members of the general public. Contributors include Scott Althaus, Stephen Earl Bennett, Philip E. Converse, Samuel DeCanio, James S. Fishkin, Jeffrey Friedman, Doris A. Graber, Russell Hardin, Donald Kinder, Arthur Lupia, Samuel L. Popkin, Ilya Somin, and Gregory W. Wawro.This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society.The European Union and the New Trade Politics (ISSN)
By John Peterson & Alasdair R. Young. 2007
The politics of international trade have changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Advances in technology have spurred a new…
kind of 'trade' involving transfers of components and materials across borders but within firms. Trade in services, foreign direct investment and sales by affiliates of foreign-owed companies have grown more rapidly than trade in goods, making national rules and regulations more significant barriers to trade. The effects of 'non-trade' policies on trade have engaged new actors in trade politics, not least in the European Union (EU). The emergence of a more active bloc of developing countries alongside a vibrant international civil society, including environmental and consumer groups and ministries, have made trade politics increasingly lively, complex, and challenging for the EU. Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization has become not only a primary focus for EU trade policy but also a lightning rod for protest, a powerful 'legaliser' of trade diplomacy, and an arena where it is often difficult, even impossible, to separate private from public interests.The European Union and the New Trade Politics provides a state of the art analysis of how the EU shapes and is shaped by the 'new' trade politics. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Journal of European Public Policy.Attitudes, Poverty and Agency in Russia and Ukraine
By Ann-Mari Sätre and Ildikó Asztalos Morell. 2016
One of the main ideas behind this book was to trace continuities from the Soviet time to post-Soviet Russia. There…
are many similarities between Russia and Ukraine, indicating such a continuation. Russia and Ukraine had a lot in common in terms of culture, language and history, partly also because of their common origin. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, the two independent countries chose different routes of development. This makes it possible to distinguish between the effects of politics/reforms on the one hand, and the impacts from the Soviet system on the other. After some more or less chaotic development paths in the 1990s, showing clear differences between the two countries, and before the contemporary conflict broke out in Eastern Ukraine (2013), they had once again more similarities in terms of political leadership and policies in general. The chapters in this book focus on Ukraine and on two regions in Russia: Nizhny Novgorod and Archangelsk. Contributors look at attitudes towards poverty and poor people; strategies of the poor; and policies against poverty. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.Migration and Divided Societies (ISSN)
By Chris Gilligan, Susan Ball. 2014
The study of 'divided societies' has focused, historically, on either ethnic divides in colonial (or post-colonial) societies or on developed…
Western democracies which have ethnic power-sharing Government structures. The study of divided societies emerged historically at a moment when there was a growing interest in the study of immigration and inter-ethnic relations in developed industrial nations. These two sets of literature―on divided societies and on immigration and inter-ethnic relations―have developed largely in isolation from each other. Both sets of literature have also tended to focus on inter-ethnic relations, and have paid much less attention to migration. This edited collection sets out to fill this gap in the literature through examining migration and ethnic division. The case studies examined include developed industrial nations (Canada and Norway), a post-colonial country (Kenya) and three cases which feature regularly in the 'divided societies' literature (Bosnia, Northern Ireland and Israel). Taken together, these case-studies suggest ways in which migration intersects with and complicates ethnic divides in 'divided societies'. This book was published as a special issue of Ethnopolitics.Nigeria at Fifty: The Nation in Narration
By Ebenezer Obadare, Wale Adebanwi. 2011
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous and biggest democracy, celebrates her fiftieth year as an independent nation in October 2010. As the…
cliché states, ‘As Nigeria goes, so goes Africa’. This book frames the socio-historical and political trajectory of Nigeria while examining the many dimensions of the critical choices that she has made as an independent nation. How does the social composition of interest and power illuminate the actualities and narratives of the Nigerian crisis? How have the choices made by Nigerian leaders structured, and/or have been structured by, the character of the Nigerian state and state-society relations? In what ways is Nigeria’s mono-product, debt-ridden, dependent economy fed by ‘the politics of plunder’? And what are the implications of these questions for the structural relationships of production, reproduction and consumption?This book confronts these questions by making state-centric approaches to understanding African countries speak to relevant social theories that pluralize and complicate our understanding of the specific challenges of a prototypical postcolonial state.This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.Legislative Lobbying in Context: The Policy and Polity Determinants of Interest Group Politics in the European Union (ISSN)
By Jan Beyers, Caelesta Braun and Heike Klüver. 2016
The lack of previous research into political interest groups and taking into account policy-specific and institutional context characteristics is largely…
due to research designs that have been primarily focused on a small number of policy debates, with the result that contextual characteristics were largely held constant. This book brings together articles from different modules that are part of a larger European Collaborative Research Project, INTEREURO, carried out by research teams in nine different countries under the auspices of the European Science Foundation. The main goal of the book is to analyse strategies, framing and influence processes for a set of 125 legislative proposals submitted by the European Commission, in an effort to better understand the involvement of interest organizations in the decision-making process of the EU. Contributors draw on sophisticated and innovative policy-driven samples of interest group mobilization, allowing them to account systematically for how policy-specific and institutional context factors shape mobilization, lobbying strategies and influence of interest groups on public policy debates in the EU. In this way, the book makes an important contribution to the study of interest groups in the EU and represents the breadth of positions taken in the current literature. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.Agency Governance in the EU (ISSN)
By Berthold Rittberger and Arndt Wonka. 2012
The rapid proliferation of EU agencies represents one of the most significant changes to the EU’s organisational set-up in past…
decades. At the same time, this development has significantly affected regulatory policy-making in the EU.This volume assembles the most renowned scholars in the field to address the key themes and challenges that agency governance in the EU poses to effective and legitimate policy-making. The first theme addresses the causes and dynamics of the creation and design of regulatory bodies in EU governance, focusing not only on EU agencies but also on alternatives to the agency format, such as regulatory networks. Second, once agencies are established, the book goes on to explore the consequences and trajectories of agency governance. How effective and autonomous are EU agencies? How does EU agency governance transform existing patterns of executive governance in the EU? Third, the book addresses the design of EU agencies as independent, non-majoritarian institutions poses pressing questions with a view to their legitimacy and accountability.The volume appeals to scholars and practitioners interested in the development and transformation of executive governance in the EU.This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.