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The U.S. Navy and the Rise of Great Power Competition: Looking Beyond the Western Pacific (Cass Series: Naval Policy and History)
By James J. Wirtz, Jeffrey E. Kline, James A. Russell. 2024
This volume describes how technological and geo-political trends are rapidly transforming maritime affairs. A mix of original and previously published…
material, this volume describes how the 21st-century great power competition is changing the face of naval operations in general, and U.S. Navy operations in the Western Pacific in particular. The rise of an assertive China and its new anti-access and area-denial capabilities threaten the aircraft carrier-based maritime dominance of the U.S. Navy. Military and political trends in the Western Pacific and beyond suggest that the world is encountering a pivotal moment when existing weapons, tactics, and operations might be rendered obsolete by techno-strategic change. This volume considers these developments from three perspectives by describing: (1) the techno-strategic setting; (2) the institutional constraints that impede the ability of the U.S. Navy to respond to these changes; and (3) a new approach to naval force planning and strategy to cope with these developments. The volume culminates in a discussion of sophisticated strategies and operational concepts that position the U.S. Navy and its maritime allies and partners to prevail in today’s techno-strategic churn. This book will be of much interest to students of naval policy, strategic studies, Asia-Pacific politics, and International Relations.Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society
By Philip K. Howard. 2024
Something basic is missing in our culture. Americans know it. Nothing much works as it should. Simple daily choices seem…
impossible, or fraught with peril. In the workplace, we walk on eggshells. Big projects—say, modernizing infrastructure—get stalled in years of review. Endemic social problems such as homelessness become, well, more endemic.Everyday Freedom offers a radical reinterpretation of the corrosion of American culture. The assault on authority after the 1960s, aimed at enhancing freedom, instead created a plague of powerlessness. The teacher in the classroom, the principal in a school, the nurse in the hospital, the official in Washington, the parent on a field trip, the head of a local charity or church…all have their hands tied. Things don&’t work, and Americans have lost the freedom to be themselves. That&’s the main reason America is in a downward spiral of alienation and extremism. Who has a vision to revive hope and action? Not political leaders, who are picking the scab of resentment. Social media gets rich selling distrust. Stop the Steal! Defund the Police!Everyday Freedom, in the tradition of Thomas Paine&’s Common Sense, offers a radical vision for change: Re-empower Americans in their everyday choices. The massive legal structures erected since the 1960s were based on flawed notions that human judgment could be replaced by elaborate dictates. Area by area, these failed structures must be replaced with simpler frameworks activated by human responsibility and accountability. Nothing will work sensibly until Americans are free to draw on their skills, intuitions and values when confronting daily challenges. This is the only cure to alienation. This is also the only way to deliver good government. Philip Howard&’s understanding of the essential role of human agency has been embraced by some of America&’s leading economists, jurists, social psychologists and philosophers.In the last decade, we have witnessed the return of one of the most controversial terms in the political lexicon:…
totalitarianism. What are we talking about when we define a totalitarian political and social situation? When did we start using the word as both adjective and noun? And, what totalitarian ghosts haunt the present? Philosopher Simona Forti seeks to answer these questions by reconstructing not only the genealogy of the concept, but also by clarifying its motives, misunderstandings, and the controversies that have animated its current resurgence. Taking into account political theories and historical discussions, Totalitarianism especially focuses on philosophical reflections, from the question of totalitarian biopolitics to the alleged totalitarian drifts of neoliberalism. The work invites the relentless formulation of a radical question about the democratic age: the possibilities it has opened up, the voids it leaves behind, the mechanisms it activates, and the "voluntary servitude" it produces. Forti argues that totalitarianism cannot be considered an external threat to democracy, but rather as one of the possible answers to those questions posed by modernity which democracies have not been able to solve. Her investigation of the uses and abuses of totalitarianism as one of the fundamental categories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries promises to provoke much-needed discussion and debate among those in philosophy, politics, ethics, and beyond.Busting the Bankers' Club: Finance for the Rest of Us
By Gerald Epstein. 2024
An eye-opening account of the failures of our financial system, the sources of its staying power, and the path to…
meaningful economic reform. Bankers brought the global economic system to its knees in 2007 and nearly did the same in 2020. Both times, the US government bailed out the banks and left them in control. How can we end this cycle of trillion-dollar bailouts and make finance work for the rest of us? Busting the Bankers' Club confronts the powerful people and institutions that benefit from our broken financial system—and the struggle to create an alternative. Drawing from decades of research on the history, economics, and politics of banking, economist Gerald Epstein shows that any meaningful reform will require breaking up this club of politicians, economists, lawyers, and CEOs who sustain the status quo. Thankfully, there are thousands of activists, experts, and public officials who are working to do just that. Clear-eyed and hopeful, Busting the Bankers' Club centers the individuals and groups fighting for a financial system that will better serve the needs of the marginalized and support important transitions to a greener, fairer economy.Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education: A Labor History (Working Class in American History)
By Eric Fure-Slocum, Claire Goldstene, Gary Rhoades, Elizabeth Hohl, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Joe Berry, Helena Worthen, Gwendolyn Alker, Sue Doe, Steven Shulman, Aimee Loiselle, Claire Raymond, Diane Angell, Miguel Juarez, Erin Hatton, Maria C Maisto, Anne Wiegard, William A Herbert, Joseph van der Naald, Jeff Schuhrke, Anne McLeer, Trevor Griffey, Steven Parfitt, Naomi R Williams, Jiyoon Park. 2024
An educational crisis from its origins to present-day experiences In the United States today, almost three-quarters of the people teaching…
in two- and four-year colleges and universities work as contingent faculty. They share the hardships endemic in the gig economy: lack of job security and health care, professional disrespect, and poverty wages that require them to juggle multiple jobs. This collection draws on a wide range of perspectives to examine the realities of the contingent faculty system through the lens of labor history. Essayists investigate structural changes that have caused the use of contingent faculty to skyrocket and illuminate how precarity shapes day-to-day experiences in the academic workplace. Other essays delve into the ways contingent faculty engage in collective action and other means to resist austerity measures, improve their working conditions, and instigate reforms in higher education. By challenging contingency, this volume issues a clear call to reclaim higher education’s public purpose. Interdisciplinary in approach and multifaceted in perspective, Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education surveys the adjunct system and its costs. Contributors: Gwendolyn Alker, Diane Angell, Joe Berry, Sue Doe, Eric Fure-Slocum, Claire Goldstene, Trevor Griffey, Erin Hatton, William A. Herbert, Elizabeth Hohl, Miguel Juárez, Aimee Loiselle, Maria C. Maisto, Anne McLeer, Steven Parfitt, Jiyoon Park, Claire Raymond, Gary Rhoades, Jeff Schuhrke, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Steven Shulman, Joseph van der Naald, Anne Wiegard, Naomi R Williams, and Helena WorthenThe untold history of an American catastrophe The ultrawealthy largely own and guide the newspaper system in the United States.…
Through entities like hedge funds and private equity firms, this investor class continues to dismantle the one institution meant to give voice to average citizens in a democracy. Margot Susca reveals the little-known history of how private investment took over the newspaper industry. Drawing on a political economy of media, Susca’s analysis uses in-depth interviews and documentary evidence to examine issues surrounding ownership and power. Susca also traces the scorched-earth policies of layoffs, debt, cash-outs, and wholesale newspaper closings left behind by private investors and the effects of the devastation on the future of news and information. Throughout, Susca reveals an industry rocked less by external forces like lost ad revenue and more by ownership and management obsessed with profit and beholden to private fund interests that feel no responsibility toward journalism or the public it is meant to serve.Cultural Landscapes of Israel
By Aviad Sar Shalom, Yuval Peled, Rachel Singer, Irit Amit-Cohen, Rafi Rich, Avraham Avi Sasson, Elissa Rosenberg. 2023
This book introduces an inventory of proposed cultural landscapes in Israel, which have been identified, researched and mapped by the…
Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The categories as defined by the Operational Guidelines of the World Heritage Convention are used to classify the cultural landscapes and provide a framework to determine their significance on a global, regional and local scale. This volume explains the local planning framework and highlights the present complexities in a local context. A number of innovative case studies on the management of sites illustrate how it is possible to bring a range of stakeholders together with public participation, ensuring that appropriate decisions are made regarding the steps necessary for the future of cultural landscapes in Israel. This book appeals to planners and heritage conservationists equally as to students and post graduates in the fields of landscape planning and architecture, geography, archaeology and many related areas.Die Wirtschaft des Subjekts
By Raphael Beer. 2024
Mit dem Subjektbegriff wird auf eine logisch nicht hintergehbare Entität verwiesen, die sich aus den Überlegungen einer konstruktivistischen Erkenntnistheorie ableiten…
lässt. Gewonnen wird damit aber zunächst nur die Idee einer reinen Subjektivität, die nicht unmittelbar für gesellschaftstheoretische Fragen fruchtbar ist. Dies soll mit dem Fokus auf die Wirtschaft korrigiert werden. Die zentralen Fragen sind, wie sich die Wirtschaft auf der Grundlage einer radikalen Subjekttheorie konzipieren lässt, und welchen Beitrag eine solche Konzeption für die Entwicklung einer Gesellschaftstheorie leisten kann. Das übergeordnete Ziel dieser Überlegungen ist das Projekt einer Kritischen Theorie der Gesellschaft, zu dem der Subjektbegriff den Maßstab der Kritik beisteuern soll.Decoloniality in the Grassroots and The Re-emergence of the Black Organic Intellectual (Palgrave Studies in Decolonisation and Grassroots Black Organic Intellectualism)
By Ornette D. Clennon, Claudia Sampaio. 2023
This book explores the relationship between "the roles of the Black “organic intellectual” and the PoC academic scholar, and outlines…
how important partnerships are emerging from these sometimes-contrasting decolonial praxes. By blending the decolonial processes of Indigenous rights via a liberation Psychology lens, Brazilian critical race scholarship and UK African diasporic collective consciousness via intersectional critical race studies, the authors provide a clear theoretical framework to show how a decolonised multi-layered community epistemology can be produced by the community for the community that in praxis form, can be employed for the fight for social justice within those communities.The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability
By Peter Kornbluh. 2003
Revised and updated: the definitive primary-source history of US involvement in General Pinochet&’s Chilean coup—&“the evidence is overwhelming&” (The New…
Yorker). Published to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet&’s infamous September 11, 1973, military coup in Chile, this updated edition of The Pinochet File reveals the shocking, formerly secret record of the US government&’s complicity with atrocity in a foreign country. The book now completes the file on Pinochet&’s story, detailing his multiple indictments between 2004 and his death on December 10, 2006, including the Riggs Bank scandal that revealed how the dictator had illegally squirreled away over $26 million in ill-begotten wealth in secret American bank accounts. When it was first released in hardcover, The Pinochet File contributed to the international campaign to hold Pinochet accountable for murder, torture, and terrorism. A new afterword tells the extraordinary story of Henry Kissinger&’s attempt to undercut the book&’s reception—efforts that generated a major scandal that led to a high-level resignation at the Council on Foreign Relations, illustrating the continued ability of the book to speak truth to power. &“The Pinochet File should be considered the long awaited book of record on U.S. intervention in Chile . . . A crisp compelling narrative, almost a political thriller.&” —Los Angeles TimesThe Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future
By Victor Cha. 2012
From a seasoned advisor, &“a meaty, fast-paced portrait of North Korean society, economy, politics and foreign policy&” (Foreign Affairs). …
In The Impossible State, international-policy expert and former Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council Victor Cha pulls back the curtain on this controversial and isolated country, providing the best look yet at North Korea&’s history, the rise of the Kim family dynasty, and the obsessive personality cult that empowers them. He illuminates the repressive regime's complex economy and culture, its appalling record of human-rights abuses, and its belligerent relationship with the United States, and analyzes the regime&’s major security issues—from the seemingly endless war with its southern neighbor to its frightening nuclear ambitions—all in light of the destabilizing effects of Kim Jong-il's death and the pivotal and disquieting transition of power from tyrannical father to inexperienced son. How this enigmatic nation-state—one that regularly violates its own citizens&’ inalienable rights and has suffered famine, global economic sanctions, a collapsed economy, and near total isolation from the rest of the world—has continued to survive has long been a question that preoccupies the West. Cha reveals a land of contradictions, and delves into the ideology that leads an oppressed, starving populace to cling so fiercely to its failed leadership. With rare personal anecdotes from the author&’s time in Pyongyang and his tenure as an adviser in the White House, this authoritative, accessible, &“engrossing&” history (The Economist) offers much-needed understanding of the country&’s veiled past and uncertain future. &“An up-close, insightful portrait.&” —The Washington Post &“An eye-opening view of the closed, repressive dictatorship of North Korea. . . . A useful, pertinent work for understanding the human story behind the headlines.&” —Kirkus ReviewsThe Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread
By Cailin O'Connor, James Owen Weatherall. 2019
“Empowering and thoroughly researched, this book offers useful contemporary analysis and possible solutions to one of the greatest threats to…
democracy.” —Kirkus ReviewsEditors’ choice, The New York Times Book ReviewRecommended reading, Scientific AmericanWhy 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 BooksFoodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America
By Wenonah Hauter. 2012
&“A meticulously researched tour de force&” on politics, big agriculture, and the need to go beyond farmers&’ markets to find…
fixes (Publishers Weekly). Wenonah Hauter owns an organic family farm that provides healthy vegetables to hundreds of families as part of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. Yet, as a leading healthy-food advocate, Hauter believes that the local food movement is not enough to solve America&’s food crisis and the public health debacle it has created. In Foodopoly, she takes aim at the real culprit: the control of food production by a handful of large corporations—backed by political clout—that prevents farmers from raising healthy crops and limits the choices people can make in the grocery store. Blending history, reporting, and a deep understanding of farming and food production, Foodopoly is a shocking, revealing account of the business behind the meat, vegetables, grains, and milk most Americans eat every day, including some of our favorite and most respected organic and health-conscious brands. Hauter also pulls the curtain back from the little-understood but vital realm of agricultural policy, showing how it has been hijacked by lobbyists, driving out independent farmers and food processors in favor of the likes of Cargill, Tyson, Kraft, and ConAgra. Foodopoly shows how the impacts ripple far and wide, from economic stagnation in rural communities to famines overseas, and argues that solving this crisis will require a complete structural shift—a change that is about politics, not just personal choice.A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency
By William P. Bundy. 1998
An authoritative historical assessment of American foreign policy in a crucial postwar decade. William Bundy's magisterial book focuses on the…
controversial record of Richard Nixon's and Henry Kissinger's often overpraised foreign policy of 1969 to 1973, an era that has rightly been described as the hinge on which the last half of the century turned. Bundy's principled, clear-eyed assessment in effect pulls together all the major issues and events of the thirty-year span from the 1940s to the end of the Vietnam War, and makes it clear just how dangerous the consequences of Nixon and Kissinger's deceptive modus operandi were.Women, Life, Freedom: Our Fight for Human Rights and Equality in Iran (Brown Democracy Medal)
By Nasrin Sotoudeh. 2023
The Laurence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal, presented by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, recognizes outstanding individuals,…
groups, and organizations that produce innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world.Nasrin Sotoudeh is an Iranian lawyer and human rights activist who has been called "Iran's Nelson Mandela." Sotoudeh is a longtime opponent of the death penalty, advocate of improving imprisonment health conditions, and an activist dedicated to fighting for the rights of women, children, religious and ethnic minorities, journalists and artists, and those facing execution. As a result of her advocacy, Sotoudeh has been repeatedly imprisoned by the Iranian government for crimes against the state; she served one sentence from 2010 to 2013 and was sentenced again in 2018 to thirty-eight years and six months in prison and 148 lashes. Her work has been featured in the 2020 documentary Nasrin, by filmmakers Jeff Kaufman and Marcia S. Ross. For this important work, she is the recipient of the 2023 Brown Democracy Medal from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, marking the award's tenth year.The Statesman's Yearbook 2024: The Politics, Cultures and Economies of the World (The Statesman's Yearbook)
By Springer Nature Limited, Published annually since 1864. 2023
Now in its 159th edition, The Statesman's Yearbook continues to be the reference work of choice for accurate and reliable…
information on every country in the world. Covering political, economic, social and cultural aspects, the Yearbook is also available online for subscribing institutions.The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic
By Mike Duncan. 2017
The creator of the award-winning podcast series The History of Rome and Revolutions brings to life the bloody battles, political…
machinations, and human drama that set the stage for the fall of the Roman Republic. The Roman Republic was one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. Beginning as a small city-state in central Italy, Rome gradually expanded into a wider world filled with petty tyrants, barbarian chieftains, and despotic kings. Through the centuries, Rome's model of cooperative and participatory government remained remarkably durable and unmatched in the history of the ancient world. In 146 BC, Rome finally emerged as the strongest power in the Mediterranean. But the very success of the Republic proved to be its undoing. The republican system was unable to cope with the vast empire Rome now ruled: rising economic inequality disrupted traditional ways of life, endemic social and ethnic prejudice led to clashes over citizenship and voting rights, and rampant corruption and ruthless ambition sparked violent political clashes that cracked the once indestructible foundations of the Republic. Chronicling the years 146-78 BC, The Storm Before the Storm dives headlong into the first generation to face this treacherous new political environment. Abandoning the ancient principles of their forbearers, men like Marius, Sulla, and the Gracchi brothers set dangerous new precedents that would start the Republic on the road to destruction and provide a stark warning about what can happen to a civilization that has lost its way.On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union
By Daisy Pitkin. 2022
&“Riveting and intimate. It is hard to imagine a more humanizing portrait of the American labor movement. A remarkable debut.&” …
—Francisco Cantú, New York Times bestselling author of The Line Becomes a River On the Line takes readers inside a bold five-year campaign to bring a union to the dangerous industrial laundry factories of Phoenix, Arizona. Workers here wash hospital, hotel, and restaurant linens and face harsh conditions: routine exposure to biohazardous waste, injuries from surgical tools left in hospital sheets, and burns from overheated machinery. Broken U.S. labor law makes it nearly impossible for them to fight back. The drive to unionize is led by two women: author Daisy Pitkin, a young labor organizer, who addresses this exhilarating narrative to Alma Gomez García, a second-shift immigrant worker, who risks her livelihood to join the struggle and convinces her fellow workers to take a stand. Forged in the flames of a grueling legal battle and the company&’s vicious anti-union crusade, including the retaliatory firing of Alma, the relationships that grow between Daisy, Alma, and the rest of the factory workers show how a union, at its best, can reach beyond the workplace and form a solidarity so powerful that it can transcend friendship and transform communities. But when political strife divides the union, and her friendship with Alma along with it, Daisy must reflect on her own position of privilege and the complicated nature of union hierarchies and top-down organizing. Daisy Pitkin looks back to uncover the forgotten roles immigrant women have played in the U.S. labor movement and points the way forward. As we experience one of the largest labor upheavals in decades, On the Line shows how difficult it is to bring about social change, and why we can&’t afford to stop trying.Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media
By Jacob Mchangama. 2022
&“The best history of free speech ever written and the best defense of free speech ever made.&” —P.J. O&’RourkeHailed as…
the &“first freedom,&” free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat.In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of this idea. Through captivating stories of free speech&’s many defenders—from the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes and the ninth-century freethinker al-Rāzī, to the anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and modern-day digital activists—Mchangama reveals how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech, too, is a constant, and he explores how even its champions can be led down this path when the rise of new and contrarian voices challenge power and privilege of all stripes.Meticulously researched and deeply humane, Free Speech demonstrates how much we have gained from this principle—and how much we stand to lose without it.THE JANUARY 6 REPORT: Findings from the Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the U.S. Capitol with Reporting, Analysis and Visuals by The New York Times
By The January 6 Select Committee, The New York Times. 2022
With exclusive reporting, eyewitness accounts and analysis from the Pulitzer Prize-winning staff of The New York Times, this edition of THE…
JANUARY 6 REPORT offers the definitive record of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Read the report from the select committee&’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, with accompanying insights from New York Times reporters who&’ve covered the story from the beginning. This edition from The New York Times and Twelve Books contains: • THE JANUARY 6 REPORT from the Select Committee • Reporting and analysis from The New York Times that puts the committee&’s findings in context • A timeline of key events • Photos and illustrations, including detailed maps that show the paths insurrectionists took to breach the Capitol • Interviews, transcripts and documents that complement the Committee&’s investigation • A list of key participants from the Jan. 6 hearings A critical examination of the facts and circumstances surrounding that dark day, THE JANUARY 6 REPORT promises to be the definitive account of what happened, with recommendations from the committee about how to safeguard the future of American democracy.