A New Vision for America


Book Description

In a lively style, peppered with self-deprecating humor, Richardson traces the evolution of his worldview from his youth at an elite prep school and his stint as a paratrooper during WWII through his foray into business as a Wall Street lawyer and an investment banker, and finally to his lengthy career in public service. A New Vision for America recounts his earlier adventures as well as his eight years as CEO of Radio Free Europe--touching on its ties to the CIA-- and his later service as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, CEO of Youth for Understanding, chair of the National Endowment for Democracy, and board member of numerous educational and service organizations.




The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality


Book Description

In a context of increased politicization led by state and federal policymakers, corporate reformers, and for-profit educational organizations, The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality explores a new vision for leading schools grounded in culturally relevant advocacy and social justice theories. This timely volume tackles the origins and implications of growing accountability for educational leaders and reconsiders the role that educational leaders should and can play in education policy and political processes. This book provides a critical perspective and analysis of today’s education policy landscape and leadership practice; explores the challenges and opportunities associated with teaching in and leading schools; and examines the structural, political, and cultural interactions among school principals, district leaders, and state and federal policy actors. An important resource for practicing and aspiring leaders, The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality shares a theoretical framework and strategies for building bridges between education researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.




New Moon Rising


Book Description

This book looks at the inside deliberations that led to President George W Bush's space exploration initiative. The author team has been granted unprecedented access to senior policy makers as the plan was assembled during 2003 and 2004. Sietzen and Cowing will give exclusive details on the meetings between President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, and senior members of the White House staff as the planning process began. In addition Sietzen and Cowing will examine how policy was translated from paper into hardware designs including the first outline of the plan's new space vehicle and how the inspiration behind the architecture once used in the Apollo program was summoned back to guide 21st century space planners. Sietzen and Cowing will describe how the Columbia accident and the political outcry for a new central goal for the US space program gave rise to what would become the most far reaching change in US space policy in a generation. Readers will have the most comprehensive look available on what this new space vision will do for human exploration of the Solar System -- and how nearly everything NASA does will change as a result. New Moon Rising: The Making of America's Space Vision and the Remaking of NASA, by Frank Sietzen, Jr. and Keith L. Cowing, to be published July 2004. The team broke the story on the space plan in the pages of the Washington Times and in the United Press International wire service. Portions of the book were serialised in the Times in a multi-part background article called "Why Some Said the Moon: The Exclusive Inside Story of the Bush Space Vision" published in January 2004.




Place, Not Race


Book Description

From a nationally recognized expert, a fresh and original argument for bettering affirmative action Race-based affirmative action had been declining as a factor in university admissions even before the recent spate of related cases arrived at the Supreme Court. Since Ward Connerly kickstarted a state-by-state political mobilization against affirmative action in the mid-1990s, the percentage of four-year public colleges that consider racial or ethnic status in admissions has fallen from 60 percent to 35 percent. Only 45 percent of private colleges still explicitly consider race, with elite schools more likely to do so, although they too have retreated. For law professor and civil rights activist Sheryll Cashin, this isn’t entirely bad news, because as she argues, affirmative action as currently practiced does little to help disadvantaged people. The truly disadvantaged—black and brown children trapped in high-poverty environs—are not getting the quality schooling they need in part because backlash and wedge politics undermine any possibility for common-sense public policies. Using place instead of race in diversity programming, she writes, will better amend the structural disadvantages endured by many children of color, while enhancing the possibility that we might one day move past the racial resentment that affirmative action engenders. In Place, Not Race, Cashin reimagines affirmative action and champions place-based policies, arguing that college applicants who have thrived despite exposure to neighborhood or school poverty are deserving of special consideration. Those blessed to have come of age in poverty-free havens are not. Sixty years since the historic decision, we’re undoubtedly far from meeting the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, but Cashin offers a new framework for true inclusion for the millions of children who live separate and unequal lives. Her proposals include making standardized tests optional, replacing merit-based financial aid with need-based financial aid, and recruiting high-achieving students from overlooked places, among other steps that encourage cross-racial alliances and social mobility. A call for action toward the long overdue promise of equality, Place, Not Race persuasively shows how the social costs of racial preferences actually outweigh any of the marginal benefits when effective race-neutral alternatives are available.




Tree


Book Description

James Balog explores the changing character of the American forest, seeking out superlative trees--the old, the massive.




Ethical Realism


Book Description

America today faces a world more complicated than ever before, but our politicians have failed to envision a foreign policy that addresses our greatest threats. Ethical Realism shows how the United States can successfully combine genuine morality with tough and practical common sense. By outlining core principles and a set of concrete proposals for tackling the terrorist threat and contend with Iran, Russia, the Middle East, and China, Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman show us how to strengthen our security, pursue our national interests, and restore American leadership in the world.




Designing the New American University


Book Description

A radical blueprint for reinventing American higher education. America’s research universities consistently dominate global rankings but may be entrenched in a model that no longer accomplishes their purposes. With their multiple roles of discovery, teaching, and public service, these institutions represent the gold standard in American higher education, but their evolution since the nineteenth century has been only incremental. The need for a new and complementary model that offers broader accessibility to an academic platform underpinned by knowledge production is critical to our well-being and economic competitiveness. Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University and an outspoken advocate for reinventing the public research university, conceived the New American University model when he moved from Columbia University to Arizona State in 2002. Following a comprehensive reconceptualization spanning more than a decade, ASU has emerged as an international academic and research powerhouse that serves as the foundational prototype for the new model. Crow has led the transformation of ASU into an egalitarian institution committed to academic excellence, inclusiveness to a broad demographic, and maximum societal impact. In Designing the New American University, Crow and coauthor William B. Dabars—a historian whose research focus is the American research university—examine the emergence of this set of institutions and the imperative for the new model, the tenets of which may be adapted by colleges and universities, both public and private. Through institutional innovation, say Crow and Dabars, universities are apt to realize unique and differentiated identities, which maximize their potential to generate the ideas, products, and processes that impact quality of life, standard of living, and national economic competitiveness. Designing the New American University will ignite a national discussion about the future evolution of the American research university.




20/20 Vision for America


Book Description




A NEW DEAL FOR THE WORLD


Book Description

In a work of sweeping scope and luminous detail, Elizabeth Borgwardt describes how a cadre of World War II American planners inaugurated the ideas and institutions that underlie our modern international human rights regime. Borgwardt finds the key in the 1941 Atlantic Charter and its Anglo-American vision of "war and peace aims." In attempting to globalize what U.S. planners heralded as domestic New Deal ideas about security, the ideology of the Atlantic Charter--buttressed by FDR’s "Four Freedoms" and the legacies of World War I--redefined human rights and America’s vision for the world. Three sets of international negotiations brought the Atlantic Charter blueprint to life--Bretton Woods, the United Nations, and the Nuremberg trials. These new institutions set up mechanisms to stabilize the international economy, promote collective security, and implement new thinking about international justice. The design of these institutions served as a concrete articulation of U.S. national interests, even as they emphasized the importance of working with allies to achieve common goals. The American architects of these charters were attempting to redefine the idea of security in the international sphere. To varying degrees, these institutions and the debates surrounding them set the foundations for the world we know today. By analyzing the interaction of ideas, individuals, and institutions that transformed American foreign policy--and Americans’ view of themselves--Borgwardt illuminates the broader history of modern human rights, trade and the global economy, collective security, and international law. This book captures a lost vision of the American role in the world.




JFK


Book Description

Published in commemoration of the centennial of President John F. Kennedy’s birth, here is the definitive compendium of JFK’s most important and brilliant speeches, accompanied by commentary and reflections by leading American and international figures—including Senator Elizabeth Warren, David McCullough, Kofi Annan, and the Dalai Lama—and edited by JFK’s nephew Stephen Kennedy Smith and renowned historian Douglas Brinkley. Combined with over seven hundred documentary photos, it tells the story, in words and pictures, of JFK’s life and presidency, and depicts his compelling vision for America. JFK brings together in one volume John F. Kennedy’s greatest speeches alongside essays by America’s top historians, analysis from leading political thinkers, and personal insights from preeminent writers and artists. Here is JFK at his best—thought-provoking, inspiring, eloquent, and wise—on a number of wide-ranging topics, including civil rights, the race to the moon, the environment, immigration, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and much more. JFK demonstrates the deep relevance of his words today and his lasting power and influence as an outstanding American leader and orator. Elegantly designed and enriched by more than 500 photographs and facsimiles of Kennedy’s marginalia on drafts of speeches, his notes from important meetings, letters, and other fascinating documents, JFK is a major contribution to American history. The august list of contributors includes Secretary John Kerry, Ambassador Samantha Power, Congressman John Lewis, Senator John McCain, Senator Elizabeth Warren, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Robert Redford, Conan O’Brien, Dave Eggers, Gloria Steinem, Don DeLillo, David McCullough, George Packer, Colum McCann, Michael Beschloss, Robert Dallek, David Kennedy, Ted Widmer, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Drew Faust, Tariq Ramadan, Pastor Rick Warren, Jonathan Alter, E. J. Dionne, Ron Suskind, Paul Krugman, Kofi Annan, Governor Jerry Brown, Paul Theroux, Jorge Domínguez, and many others.




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