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The Yemen Model: Why U.S. Policy Has Failed in the Middle East
By Alexandra Stark. 2024
A close look at failed U.S. policies in the Middle East, offering a fresh perspective on how best to reorient…
goals in the region In this book Alexandra Stark argues that the U.S. approach to Yemen offers insights into the failures of American foreign policy throughout the Middle East. Stark makes the case that despite often being drawn into conflicts within Yemen, the United States has not achieved its policy goals because it has narrowly focused on counterterrorism and regional geopolitical competition rather than on the well-being of Yemenis themselves. She offers recommendations designed to reorient U.S. policy in the Middle East in pursuit of U.S. national security interests and to support the people of these countries in their efforts to make their own communities safe, secure, and prosperous.Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis (Politics and Culture)
By James Davison Hunter. 2024
The long-developing cultural divisions beneath our present political crisis Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a…
noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality that, tragically, has seldom been realized in practice. While these contradictions have caused dissent and even violence, there was always an underlying and evolving solidarity drawn from the cultural resources of America&’s &“hybrid Enlightenment.&” James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of &“culture wars&” thirty years ago, tells us in this new book that those historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved. While a deepening political polarization is the most obvious sign of this, the true problem is not polarization per se but the absence of cultural resources to work through what divides us. The destructive logic that has filled the void only makes bridging our differences more challenging. In the end, all political regimes require some level of unity. If it cannot be generated organically, it will be imposed by force. Can America&’s political crisis be fixed? Can an Enlightenment-era institution—liberal democracy—survive and thrive in a post-Enlightenment world? If, for some, salvaging the older sources of national solidarity is neither possible sociologically, nor desirable politically or ethically, what cultural resources will support liberal democracy in the future?In Only a Few Blocks to Cuba, Mauricio Castro shows how the U.S. government came to view Cuban migration to…
Miami as a strategic asset during the Cold War, in the process investing heavily in the city’s development and shaping its future as a global metropolis.When Cuban refugees fleeing Communist revolution began to arrive in Miami in 1959, the city was faced with a humanitarian crisis it was ill-equipped to handle and sought to have the federal government solve what local politicians clearly viewed as a Cold War geopolitical problem. In response, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, and their successors, provided an unprecedented level of federal largesse and freedom of transit to these refugees. The changes to the city this investment wrought were as impactful and permanent as they were unintended. What was meant to be a short-term geopolitical stratagem instead became a new reality in South Florida. A growing and increasingly powerful Cuban community contested their place in Miami and navigated challenges like bilingualism, internal political disputes, socioeconomic polarization, and ongoing struggles and negotiations with Washington and Havana in the decades that followed. This contested process, argues Mauricio Castro, not only transformed South Florida, but American foreign policy and the calculus of national politics.Castro uses extensive archival research in local and national sources to demonstrate that the Cuban diaspora and Cold War refugee policy made South Florida a key space to understanding the shifting landscape of the late twentieth century. In this way, Miami serves as an example of both the lived effects of defense spending in urban spaces and of how local communities can shape national politics and international relations. American politics, foreign relations, immigration policy, and urban development all intersected on the streets of Miami.Drawing on evidence from eight case studies from across three Asian subregions, this volume highlights the distinctive features of Asian…
populism in comparison with Western experiences. In contrast to the latter, populist practices in Asia tend to exhibit an ambiguous nature, often characterized by ad hoc and mixed ideological add-ons.The case studies shed light on the cultural dimension of populism, an aspect that has been largely overlooked in Western contexts. Empirical evidence shows that political culture and identity politics exert an influence on populist practices in Asia. In the meantime, populist attitudes towards the role of politicians, the popular will and the relationship between the elite and the people can serve as an explanatory variable for political outcomes. The relationship between populism and democracy in Asia is observed to be more intricate than that in Western contexts. Populism is not necessarily endogenous to democracy, and thus its emergence may not solely be a response to the crisis of democracy.The book presents a valuable resource for scholars and students of Asian politics and those looking at the phenomenon of populism through a comparative lens.Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City
By Richard E. Ocejo. 2024
An unvarnished portrait of gentrification in an underprivileged, majority-minority small cityNewburgh is a small postindustrial city of some twenty-eight thousand…
people located sixty miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley. Like many other similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents. Sixty Miles Upriver tells the story of how Newburgh started gentrifying, describing what happens when White creative professionals seek out racially diverse and working-class communities and revealing how gentrification is increasingly happening outside large city centers in places where it unfolds in new ways.As New York City&’s housing market becomes too expensive for even the middle class, many urbanites are bypassing the suburbs and moving to smaller cities like Newburgh, where housing is affordable and historic. Richard Ocejo takes readers into the lives of these newcomers, examining the different ways they navigate racial difference and inequality among Newburgh&’s much less privileged local residents, and showing how stakeholders in the city&’s revitalization reframe themselves and gentrification to cast the displacement they cause to minority groups in a positive light.An intimate exploration of the moral dilemma at the heart of gentrification, Sixty Miles Upriver explains how progressive White gentrifiers justify controversial urban changes as morally good, and how their actions carry profound and lasting consequences for vulnerable residents of color.Sound and Silence: My Experience with China and Literature (Sinotheory)
By Lianke Yan. 2024
Yan Lianke is a world-renowned author of novels, short stories, and essays whose provocative and nuanced writing explores the reality…
of everyday life in contemporary China. In Sound and Silence, Yan compares his literary project to a blind man carrying a flashlight whose role is to help others perceive the darkness that surrounds them. Often described as China’s most censored author, Yan reflects candidly on literary censorship in contemporary China. He outlines the Chinese state’s project of national amnesia that suppresses memories of past crises and social traumas. Although being banned in China is often a selling point in foreign markets, Yan argues that there is no requisite correlation between censorship and literary quality. Among other topics, Yan also examines the impact of American literature on Chinese literature in the 1980s and 1990s. Encapsulating his perspectives on life, writing, and literary history, Sound and Silence includes an introduction by translator Carlos Rojas and an afterword by Yan.Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises
By Jonathan S. Blake, Nils Gilman. 2024
A clear-eyed and urgent vision for a new system of political governance to manage planetary issues and their local consequences.…
Deadly viruses, climate-changing carbon molecules, and harmful pollutants cross the globe unimpeded by national borders. While the consequences of these flows range across scales, from the planetary to the local, the authority and resources to manage them are concentrated mainly at one level: the nation-state. This profound mismatch between the scale of planetary challenges and the institutions tasked with governing them is leading to cascading systemic failures. In the groundbreaking Children of a Modest Star, Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman not only challenge dominant ways of thinking about humanity's relationship to the planet and the political forms that presently govern it, but also present a new, innovative framework that corresponds to our inherently planetary condition. Drawing on intellectual history, political philosophy, and the holistic findings of Earth system science, Blake and Gilman argue that it is essential to reimagine our governing institutions in light of the fact that we can only thrive if the multi-species ecosystems we inhabit are also flourishing. Aware of the interlocking challenges we face, it is no longer adequate merely to critique our existing systems or the modernist assumptions that helped create them. Blake and Gilman propose a bold, original architecture for global governance—what they call planetary subsidiarity—designed to enable the enduring habitability of the Earth for humans and non-humans alike. Children of a Modest Star offers a clear-eyed and urgent vision for constructing a system capable of stabilizing a planet in crisis.Other books remind us of what we already know—that privacy is under great pressure. James Rule provides a step-by-step plan…
to create a significantly more private and authentically democratic world. Taking Privacy Seriously offers both a concise, hard-hitting assessment of the origins of today’s privacy-eroding practices and a roadmap for creating robust new individual rights over our personal data. Rule proposes eleven key reforms in the control and use of personal information, all aimed at redressing the balance of power between ordinary citizens and data-hungry corporate and government institutions. What a privacy-deprived America needs most is not less technology, Rule argues, but profound political realignment. His eleven proposed reforms range from launching a major public-works investment consisting of a series of websites publicly documenting the personal data uses of nearly all government and private institutions; to instating a right for any citizen to withdraw from any personal data system not required by law; to creating a universal property right over commercial exploitation of data on oneself—so that no company or other organization could profit from use or sale of such data without permission. Succinct and compelling, Taking Privacy Seriously explains how we can refashion information technologies so that they serve human needs, not the other way around.The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics
By Curtis Chang, Nancy French. 2024
For the exhausted, the hurting, and the faithful, The After Party helps reframe our political identity away from the "what" of political…
positions and toward the "how" being centered on Jesus.This paradigm-shifting book complements The After Party Project--a six-part, video-based, highly interactive curriculum that provides churches, small groups, and individuals with an on-the-ground, biblically based approach to a very complex topic.The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics helps readers who feel despair about political divisiveness:Engage with others across political differencesLearn specific steps to reframe political identity outside of partisan dividesFocus on how we relate to one another as Jesus teaches before moving to the what of political topicsThe After Party is ideal for:Republicans, Democrats, and Independents looking for renewed hope and humility for our nationLocal leaders seeking to counter animosity toward political opponents, susceptibility to lies, and other practices that threaten the common goodCongregations, classes, and small groups watching The After Party video seriesPastors who want to encourage their congregants to trade their partisan mindsets for the mind of ChristIt's not too late. In today's political environment, faithfulness to a biblical how of political engagement shines as a radical challenge to both the Right and the Left. If you worry about what politics is doing to your community, your family, and your own well-being, The After Party will transform your political imagination.It's time for us to go beyond party politics and--as Christians--believe in the true "party" yet to come.Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture in the United States: Future Directions for a New Ethic in City Building (Urban Agriculture)
By Samina Raja, Marcia Caton Campbell, Alexandra Judelsohn, Branden Born, Alfonso Morales. 2023
This open access book, building on the legacy of food systems scholar and advocate, Jerome Kaufman, examines the potential and…
pitfalls of planning for urban agriculture (UA) in the United States, especially in how questions of ethics and equity are addressed. The book is organized into six sections. Written by a team of scholars and practitioners, the book covers a comprehensive array of topics ranging from theory to practice of planning for equitable urban agriculture. Section 1 makes the case for re-imagining agriculture as central to urban landscapes, and unpacks why, how, and when planning should support UA, and more broadly food systems. Section 2, written by early career and seasoned scholars, provides a theoretical foundation for the book. Section 3, written by teams of scholars and community partners, examines how civic agriculture is unfolding across urban landscapes, led largely by community organizations. Section 4, written by planning practitionersand scholars, documents local government planning tied to urban agriculture, focusing especially on how they address questions of equity. Section 5 explores UA as a locus of pedagogy of equity. Section 6 places the UA movement in the US within a global context, and concludes with ideas and challenges for the future. The book concludes with a call for planning as public nurturance – an approach that can be illustrated through urban agriculture. Planning as public nurturance is a value-explicit process that centers an ethics of care, especially protecting the interests of publics that are marginalized. It builds the capacity of marginalized groups to authentically co-design and participate in planning/policy processes. Such a planning approach requires that progress toward equitable outcomes is consistently evaluated through accountability measures. And, finally, such an approach requires attention to structural and institutional inequities. Addressing these four elements is more likelyto create a condition under which urban agriculture may be used as a lever in the planning and development of more just and equitable cities. This is an open access book.This is an open access book.The Politicisation of the European Commission’s Presidency: Spitzenkandidaten and Beyond (European Administrative Governance)
By Matilde Ceron, Thomas Christiansen, Dionyssis G. Dimitrakopoulos. 2024
This book is the first systematic effort to investigate the ramifications of the introduction of the Spitzenkandidaten process for the…
appointment of the President of the European Commission. It does so by examining the first two applications of the Spitzenkandidaten process from an historical, legal and political perspective. Although this process has spurred vibrant debate regarding its impact on EU elections and the EU political system, it has yet to be comprehensively analysed by scholars. Addressing this important gap, the book provides a conceptual framework for analysing the impact of the Spitzenkandidaten process, takes stock of its internal, inter-institutional and constitutional repercussions, and assesses its future prospects. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book touches on several important themes, including European elections, EU policy making, leadership, legitimacy, supranationalism and European integration. Published to coincide with the 2024 European Parliament election, it will appeal to scholars and students of the politics of European integration, public administration, governance, European politics and EU constitutional law.Ten Years to Save the West
By Liz Truss. 2024
Can the West Be Saved? Liz Truss, the former Conservative prime minister of Great Britain, thinks that&’s an open question.During…
her ten years at the highest levels of the British government, she often found that she was the only conservative in the room. She witnessed, first-hand, the machinations of globalists who would like nothing more than to impose corporate state-socialism on the world. Freedom is at risk, she warns, and the Conservative Party in Britain—and the Republican Party in the United States—are ill-equipped to defend it. The problem? Conservatives have accepted too many of the left&’s taking points, allowed the left to set the political agenda, and capitulated endlessly whenever the left has sought to impose bigger government and curtail individual freedoms. The dictatorial excesses during the Covid-19 lockdowns should have been a stark warning because they are a precursor of things to come if conservatives continue to waffle on principle, surrender on policy, and fail with the electorate. In Ten Years to Save the West, Liz Truss reveals:Why socialism—despite its endless record of failure—remains popular, both with global elites and with the next generationThe clear and present danger of the ever-expanding &“administrative state&”How conservative parties are complicit in policies of &“managed decline&”Why we cannot ignore the threat of an aggressive ChinaWhy Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher should remain the guiding lights for conservatives on both sides of the AtlanticUrgent, detailed, and full of insights gleaned from the highest levels of politics, Liz Truss&’s warning to the West cannot be ignored.The Story of Brexit (Ladybirds for Grown-Ups)
By Jason Hazeley, Joel Morris. 2018
As Brexit reaches its final stretch, find a way to laugh through the pain and or celebrate the end with…
Ladybird's hilarious and essential guide, The Story of Brexit.'Hilarious' STYLIST________'"Leaving was the will of the people" sighs Angelica's father. He voted to leave.Angelica voted to remain, but she feels the same way. "It is the will of the people," she sighs.They stare at the ducks. They like the ducks. Ducks are better than people.'________'Brexit gave us lots of exciting new words, like brextremist, remoaner, bremoaner, remaybe, breprehensible, remaintenance, brexorcist, remaidstone, brex-girlfriend, remange, brextortion, remayhem and bregret.The new words make it harder for foreigners to understand what we are saying.In a tough, new international business world, small advantages such as this can be crucial.'________This delightful book is the latest in the series of Ladybird books which have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them.The large clear script, the careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. Featuring original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text.'The latest offering in the hilarious Ladybird for Grown Ups series is a funny mickey-take of the Brexit debate (and boy, do we need some fun)' Sunday PostThe State We're In: (Revised Edition)
By Will Hutton. 1995
The number one bestseller on the hardback list for more than six months, The State We're In is the most…
explosive analysis of British society to have been published for over thirty years. It is now updated for the paperback edition.The State and Revolution
By Vladimir Lenin. 1992
In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year,…
the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed masterwork The State and Revolution. This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the dictatorship of the proletariat. As both historical document and political statement, its importance can hardly be exaggerated.Translated and edited with an introduction by Robert Service'I cannot think of a better biography of a spy chief'Richard Davenport-Hines, The SpectatorSir Maurice Oldfield was one of the…
most important British spies of the Cold War era. _________A farmer’s son from a provincial grammar school who found himself accidentally plunged into the world of espionage, Sir Maurice was the first Chief of MI6 who didn’t come to the role via the traditional public school and Oxbridge route. Oldfield was the voice of British Intelligence in Washington at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of JFK, and was largely responsible for keeping the UK out of the Vietnam War. Working his way to the top of the secret service, he took on the job of rebuilding confidence in the British Secret Service in the wake of the Philby, Burgess and Maclean spy scandals.This is the fascinating life story, told in detail for the first time, of a complex, likeable character as well as a formidable intelligence chief.Spills and Spin: The Inside Story of BP
By Tom Bergin. 2011
In April 2010, the world watched in alarm as BP's Macondo well suffered a fatal explosion and a catastrophic leak.…
Over the next three months, amid tense scenes of corporate and political finger-pointing, millions of barrels of crude oil dispersed across the Gulf of Mexico in what became one of the worst oil spills in history.But there is more to BP's story than this. Tom Bergin, an oil broker turned Reuters reporter, watched the 'two-pipeline company' of the early 1980s grow into a dynamic oil giant and PR machine by the turn of the twenty-first century. His unique access to key figures before, during and after the spill - including former CEO Tony Hayward - has enabled him to piece together this compelling account of a corporation in crisis, and to examine how crucial decisions made during BP's remarkable turnaround paved the way for its darkest hour.Speak for Britain!: A New History of the Labour Party
By Martin Pugh. 2010
Written at a critical juncture in the history of the Labour Party, Speak for Britain! is a thought-provoking and highly…
original interpretation of the party's evolution, from its trade union origins to its status as a national governing party. It charts Labour's rise to power by re-examining the impact of the First World War, the general strike of 1926, Labour's breakthrough at the 1945 general election, the influence of post-war affluence and consumerism on the fortunes and character of the party, and its revival after the defeats of the Thatcher era.Controversially, Pugh argues that Labour never entirely succeeded in becoming 'the party of the working class'; many of its influential recruits - from Oswald Mosley to Hugh Gaitskell to Tony Blair - were from middle and upper-class Conservative backgrounds and rather than converting the working class to socialism, Labour adapted itself to local and regional political cultures.Social Mobility: And Its Enemies (Pelican Books)
By Lee Elliot Major, Stephen Machin. 2018
What are the effects of decreasing social mobility?How does education help - and hinder - us in improving our life…
chances?Why are so many of us stuck on the same social rung as our parents? Apart from the USA, Britain has the lowest social mobility in the Western world. The lack of movement in who gets where in society - particularly when people are stuck at the bottom and the top - costs the nation dear, both in terms of the unfulfilled talents of those left behind and an increasingly detached elite, disinterested in improvements that benefit the rest of society.This book analyses cutting-edge research into how social mobility has changed in Britain over the years, the shifting role of schools and universities in creating a fairer future, and the key to what makes some countries and regions so much richer in opportunities, bringing a clearer understanding of what works and how we can better shape our future.The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain
By Darren McGarvey. 2022
*A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK**SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION**LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE*'An Orwell…
for today's poor' - The Times'The standout, authentic voice of a generation' Herald'McGarvey is a rarity: a working-class writer who has fought to make the middle-class world hear what he has to say' Nick Cohen, GuardianWhy are the rich getting richer while the poor only get poorer? How is it possible that in a wealthy, civilised democracy cruelty and inequality are perpetuated by our own public services? And how come, if all the best people are in all the top jobs, Britain is such an unmitigated bin fire?Join Darren McGarvey on a journey through a divided Britain in search of answers. Here, our latter-day Orwell exposes the true scale of Britain's social ills and reveals why our current political class, those tasked with bringing solutions, are so distanced from our lived experience that they are the last people you'd want fighting your corner.Praise for Darren McGarvey:'Utterly compelling' Ian Rankin, New Statesman'Brilliant' Russell Brand'An absolutely fascinating individual' Owen Jones'Offer[s] an antidote to populist anger that transcends left and right... articulate and emotional' Financial Times