Toward Wiser Public Judgment


Book Description

Polls tell us almost nothing about how people make up their minds.




The Two W's of Journalism


Book Description

In this timely volume, the authors explore public affairs journalism, a practice that lies at the core of the journalism profession. They go beyond the journalistic instruction for reporting and presenting news to reflect on why journalism works the way it does. Asking current and future journalists the critical questions, "Why do we do it?" and "What are the ways of fulfilling the goals of journalism?" their discussion stimulates the examination of contemporary practice, probing the foundations of public affairs journalism. With its detailed examination of factors influencing current journalistic practice, The Two W's of Journalism complements and expands on the skills and techniques presented in reporting, editing, and news writing textbooks. The perspectives presented here facilitate understanding of the larger role journalism has in society. As such, the volume is an excellent supplemental text for reporting and writing courses, and for introductory courses on journalism. It will also offer valuable insights to practicing journalists.




Coming to Critical Engagement


Book Description

Engagement is the label increasingly embraced by higher education to describe activities associated with serving the public interest. What had been viewed previously as service to, extension of, and outreach from is now engagement with as faculty members, students, and staff collaborate with partners in community affairs. This book describes how members of a faculty learning community have come to understand engagement as both intellectual endeavor and scholarly practice at the interface between academy and citizenry. Coming to Critical Engagement argues that the academy has a moral imperative to participate deliberately and consistently in democratic and systemic discourse with the public.




Creating a Democratic Public


Book Description

During America's Progressive Era at the beginning of the twentieth century, democracy was more alive than it is today. Social activists and intellectuals of that era formed institutions where citizens educated themselves about pressing issues and public matters. While these efforts at democratic participation have largely been forgotten, their rediscovery may represent our best hope for resolving the current crisis of democracy in the United States. Mattson explores the work of early activists like Charles Zueblin, who tried to advance adult education at the University of Chicago, and Frederic Howe, whose People's Institute sparked the nationwide forum movement. He then turns to the social centers movement, which began in Rochester, New York, in 1907 with the opening of public schools to adults in the evening as centers for debate over current issues. Mattson tells how this simple program grew into a national phenomenon and cites its achievements and political ideals, and he analyzes the political thought of activists within the movement&—notably Mary Parker Follett and Edward Ward&—to show that these intellectuals had a profound understanding of what was needed to create vigorous democratic practices. Creating a Democratic Public challenges us to reconsider how we think about democracy by bringing us into critical dialogue with the past and exploring the work of yesterday's activists. Combining historical analysis, political theory, and social criticism, Mattson analyzes experiments in grassroots democracy from the Progressive Era and explores how we might foster more public involvement in political deliberation today.




Judgment Hill


Book Description

A remarkable & complex portrait of a land & its people in transition.




Polling to Govern


Book Description

Presidents spend millions of dollars on public opinion polling while in office. Critics often point to this polling as evidence that a “permanent campaign” has taken over the White House at the expense of traditional governance. But has presidential polling truly changed the shape of presidential leadership? Diane J. Heith examines the polling practices of six presidential administrations—those of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton—dissecting the poll apparatus of each period. She contends that while White House polls significantly influence presidential messages and responses to events, they do not impact presidential decisions to the extent that observers often claim. Heith concludes that polling, and thus the campaign environment, exists in tandem with long-established governing strategies.







Trailed by a Wild Beast


Book Description




Night Comes


Book Description

When he was 23 years old, Dale Allison almost died in a car accident. That terrifying experience dramatically changed his ideas about death and the hereafter. In Night Comes Allison wrestles with a number of difficult questions concerning the last things -- such questions as What happens to us after we die? and Why does death so often frighten us? Armed with his acknowledged scholarly expertise, Allison offers an engaging, personal exploration of such themes as death and fear, resurrection and judgment, hell and heaven, in light of science, Scripture, and his own experience. As he ponders and creatively imagines -- engaging throughout with biblical texts, church fathers, rabbinic scholars, poets, and philosophers -- Allison offers fascinating fare that will captivate many a reader's heart and soul.




Judgment Days


Book Description

Opposites in almost every way, mortally suspicious of each other at first, Lyndon Baines Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., were thrust together in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Both men sensed a historic opportunity and began a delicate dance of accommodation that moved them, and the entire nation, toward the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources -- Johnson's taped telephone conversations, voluminous FBI wiretap logs, previously secret communications between the FBI and the president -- Nick Kotz gives us a dramatic narrative, rich in dialogue, that presents this momentous period with thrilling immediacy. Judgment Days offers needed perspective on a presidency too often linked solely to the tragedy of Vietnam.We watch Johnson applying the arm-twisting tactics that made him a legend in the Senate, and we follow King as he keeps the pressure on in the South through protest and passive resistance. King's pragmatism and strategic leadership and Johnson's deeply held commitment to a just society shaped the character of their alliance. Kotz traces the inexorable convergence of their paths to an intense joint effort that made civil rights a legislative reality at last, despite FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's vicious whispering campaign to destroy King.Judgment Days also reveals how this spirit of teamwork disintegrated. The two leaders parted bitterly over King's opposition to the Vietnam War. In this first full account of the working relationship between Johnson and King, Kotz offers a detailed, surprising account that significantly enriches our understanding of both men and their time.