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The Unraveling of America

Author : Allen J. Matusow

Publisher : University of Georgia Press

Page : 567 pages

File Size : 42,28 MB

Release : 2009

Category : History

ISBN : 0820334057

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Book Description

In a book that William E. Leuchtenburg, writing in the Atlantic, called “a work of considerable power,” Allen Matusow documents the rise and fall of 1960s liberalism. He offers deft treatments of the major topics—anticommunism, civil rights, Great Society programs, the counterculture—making the most, throughout, of his subject’s tremendous narrative potential. Matusow’s preface to the new edition explains the sometimes critical tone of his study. The Unraveling of America, he says, “was intended as a cautionary tale for liberals in the hope that when their hour struck again, they might perhaps be fortified against past error. Now that they have another chance, a look back at the 1960s might serve them well.”



Exit from Hegemony

Author : Alexander Cooley

Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA

Page : 305 pages

File Size : 45,78 MB

Release : 2020

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0190916478

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Book Description

""We live in a period of uncertainty about the fate of American global leadership and the future of international order. The 2016 election of Donald Trump led many to pronounce the death, or at least terminal decline, of liberal international order - the system of institutions, rules, and values associated with the American-dominated international system. But the truth is that the unravelling of American global order began over a decade earlier. Exit from Hegemony develops an integrated approach to understanding the rise and decline of hegemonic orders. It calls attention to three drivers of transformation in contemporary order. First, great powers, most notably Russia and China, contest existing norms and values, while simultaneously building new spheres of international order through regional institutions. Second, the loss of the "patronage monopoly" once enjoyed by the United States and its allies allows weaker states to seek alternative providers of economic and military goods - providers who do not condition their support on compliance with liberal economic and political principles. Third, transnational counter-order movements, usually in the form of illiberal and right-wing nationalists, undermine support for liberal order and the American international system, including within the United States itself. Exit from Hegemony demonstrates that these broad sources of transformation - from above, below, and within - have transformed past international orders and undermine prior hegemonic powers. It provides evidence that that all three are, in the present, mutually reinforcing one another and, therefore, that the texture of world politics may be facing major changes""--



Red Line

Author : Joby Warrick

Publisher : Doubleday

Page : 368 pages

File Size : 39,55 MB

Release : 2021-02-23

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0385544472

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Book Description

In Red Line, Joby Warrick, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Black Flags, shares the thrilling unknown story of America’s mission in Syria: to find and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons and keep them out of the hands of the Islamic State. In August 2012, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was clinging to power in a vicious civil war. When secret intelligence revealed that the dictator might resort to using chemical weapons, President Obama warned that doing so would cross “a red line.” Assad did it anyway, bombing the Damascus suburb of Ghouta with sarin gas, killing hundreds of civilians, and forcing Obama to decide if he would mire America in another unpopular war in the Middle East. When Russia offered to broker the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons, Obama leapt at the out. So began an electrifying race to find, remove, and destroy 1,300 tons of chemical weapons in the midst of a raging civil war. The extraordinary little-known effort is a triumph for the Americans, but soon Russia’s long game becomes clear: it will do anything to preserve Assad’s rule. As America’s ability to control events in Syria shrinks, the White House learns that ISIS, building its caliphate in Syria’s war-tossed territory, is seeking chemical weapons for itself, with an eye to attack the West. Drawing on astonishing original reporting, Warrick crafts a character-driven narrative that reveals how the United States embarked on a bold adventure to prevent one catastrophe but could not avoid a tragic chain of events that led to another.



The End of the American Era

Author : Charles Kupchan

Publisher : Vintage

Page : 418 pages

File Size : 21,97 MB

Release : 2007-12-18

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0307428516

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Book Description

Refuting the conventional wisdom that the end of the Cold War cleared the way for an era of peace and prosperity led solely by the United States, Charles A. Kupchan contends that the next challenge to America’s might is fast emerging. It comes not from the Islamic world or an ascendant China, but from an integrating Europe that is rising as a counterweight to the United States. Decades of strategic partnership across the Atlantic are giving way to renewed geopolitical competition. The waning of U.S. primacy will be expedited by America’s own ambivalence about remaining the globe’s guardian and by the impact of the digital age on the country’s politics and its role in the world. By deftly mining the lessons of history to cast light on the present and future, Kupchan explains how America and the world should prepare for the more complex, more unstable road ahead.



Cyber in the Age of Trump

Author : Charlie Mitchell

Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield

Page : 265 pages

File Size : 39,18 MB

Release : 2020-03-15

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 1538130696

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Book Description

In this book, one of America’s leading analysts of cybersecurity policy presents an incisive, first-time examination of how President Trump's unique, often baffling governing style has collided with the imperatives of protecting the nation's cybersecurity. Mitchell reveals how qualities that drove success in business and reality TV – impatience and unpredictability, posturing as an unassailable “strong man,” and aversion to systematic approaches – have been antithetical to effective leadership on cybersecurity. Mitchell reveals how the United States is trying to navigate through one of the most treacherous passages in history. Facing this challenge, He argues that the strategic pieces put forth by Trump do not add up to a coherent whole, or a cybersecurity legacy likely to endure past his presidency. Cyber in the Age of Trump will be required reading for both insiders and citizens concerned about American response to the wide variety of cyberthreats at home and abroad.



The Man Who Sold America

Author : Joy-Ann Reid

Publisher : HarperCollins

Page : 362 pages

File Size : 14,78 MB

Release : 2019-06-25

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0062880128

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Book Description

WITH WIT AND PIERCING INSIGHT, JOY-ANN REID CALCULATES THE TRUE PRICE OF THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY Is Donald Trump running the “longest con” in U.S. history? What will be left of America when he leaves office? Candidate Trump sold Americans a vision that was seemingly at odds with their country’s founding principles. Now in office, he’s put up a for sale sign—on the prestige of the presidency, on America’s global stature, and on our national identity. At what cost have these deals come? Joy-Ann Reid’s The Man Who Sold America delivers an urgent accounting of our national crisis from one of our foremost political commentators. Three years ago, Donald Trump pitched millions of voters on the idea that their country was broken, and that the rest of the world was playing us “for suckers.” All we needed to fix this was Donald Trump, who rebranded prejudice as patriotism, presented diversity as our weakness, and promised that money really could make the world go ’round. Trump made the sale to just enough Americans in three key swing states to win the Electoral College. As president, Trump’s raft of self-dealing, scandal, and corruption has overwhelmed the national conversation. And with prosecutors bearing down on Trump and his family business, the web of criminality is circling closer to the Oval Office. All this while Trump seemingly makes his administration a pawn for the ultimate villain: an autocratic former KGB officer in Russia who found in the untutored and eager forty-fifth president the perfect “apprentice.” How did we get here? What is the hidden impact of Trump, beyond the headlines? Joy-Ann Reid’s essential book examines why he succeeded, and whether America can undo the damage he has done. Through interviews with American and international thought leaders and in-depth analysis, Reid situates the Trump era within the context of modern history, examining the profound social changes that led us to this point. A deeply pertinent analysis, The Man Who Sold America reveals the causes and consequences of the Trump presidency and contends with the future that awaits us.



The Wayfinders

Author : Wade Davis

Publisher : House of Anansi

Page : 274 pages

File Size : 27,67 MB

Release : 2009

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0887847668

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Book Description

Many of us are alarmed by the accelerating rates of extinction of plants and animals. But how many of us know that human cultures are going extinct at an even more shocking rate? While biologists estimate that 18 percent of mammals and 11 percent of birds are threatened, and botanists anticipate the loss of 8 percent of flora, anthropologists predict that fully 50 percent of the 7,000 languages spoken around the world today will disappear within our lifetimes. And languages are merely the canaries in the coal mine: what of the knowledge, stories, songs, and ways of seeing encoded in these voices? In The Wayfinders, Wade Davis offers a gripping and enlightening account of this urgent crisis. He leads us on a fascinating tour through a handful of indigenous cultures, describing the worldviews they represent and reminding us of the encroaching danger to humankind's survival should they vanish.



Last Best Hope

Author : George Packer

Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Page : 240 pages

File Size : 44,18 MB

Release : 2021-06-15

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0374603677

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Book Description

One of The New York Times's 100 notable books of 2021 "[George Packer's] account of America’s decline into destructive tribalism is always illuminating and often dazzling." —William Galston, The Washington Post Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America’s descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides In the year 2020, Americans suffered one rude blow after another to their health, livelihoods, and collective self-esteem. A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. With pitiless precision, the year exposed the nation’s underlying conditions—discredited elites, weakened institutions, blatant inequalities—and how difficult they are to remedy. In Last Best Hope, George Packer traces the shocks back to their sources. He explores the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression. In lively and biting prose, Packer shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy. To point a more hopeful way forward, he looks for a common American identity and finds it in the passion for equality—the “hidden code”—that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. Today, we are challenged again to fight for equality and renew what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the art” of self-government. In its strong voice and trenchant analysis, Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to the literature of national renewal.



Separate and Unequal

Author : Steven M Gillon

Publisher : Basic Books

Page : 398 pages

File Size : 26,5 MB

Release : 2018-03-06

Category : History

ISBN : 0465096093

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Book Description

From a New York Times bestselling author, the definitive history of the Kerner Commission, whose report on urban unrest reshaped American debates about race and inequality In Separate and Unequal, New York Times bestselling historian Steven M. Gillon offers a revelatory new history of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders -- popularly known as the Kerner Commission. Convened by President Lyndon Johnson after riots in Newark and Detroit left dozens dead and thousands injured, the commission issued a report in 1968 that attributed the unrest to "white racism" and called for aggressive new programs to end discrimination and poverty. "Our nation is moving toward two societies," it warned, "one black, and one white -- separate and unequal." Johnson refused to accept the Kerner Report, and as his political coalition unraveled, its proposals went nowhere. For the right, the report became a symbol of liberal excess, and for the left, one of opportunities lost. Separate and Unequal is essential for anyone seeking to understand the fraught politics of race in America.



Blueprint for Disaster

Author : D. Bradford Hunt

Publisher : University of Chicago Press

Page : 392 pages

File Size : 50,46 MB

Release : 2009-08-01

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0226360873

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Book Description

Now considered a dysfunctional mess, Chicago’s public housing projects once had long waiting lists of would-be residents hoping to leave the slums behind. So what went wrong? To answer this complicated question, D. Bradford Hunt traces public housing’s history in Chicago from its New Deal roots through current mayor Richard M. Daley’s Plan for Transformation. In the process, he chronicles the Chicago Housing Authority’s own transformation from the city’s most progressive government agency to its largest slumlord. Challenging explanations that attribute the projects’ decline primarily to racial discrimination and real estate interests, Hunt argues that well-intentioned but misguided policy decisions—ranging from design choices to maintenance contracts—also paved the road to failure. Moreover, administrators who fully understood the potential drawbacks did not try to halt such deeply flawed projects as Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes. These massive high-rise complexes housed unprecedented numbers of children but relatively few adults, engendering disorder that pushed out the working class and, consequently, the rents needed to maintain the buildings. The resulting combination of fiscal crisis, managerial incompetence, and social unrest plunged the CHA into a quagmire from which it is still struggling to emerge. Blueprint for Disaster, then,is an urgent reminder of the havoc poorly conceived policy can wreak on our most vulnerable citizens.