Politics

The financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 is the most alarming of our lifetime because of the warp-speed at which it is occurring. How could it have happened, especially after all that we've learned from the Great Depression? Why wasn't it anticipated so that remedial steps could be taken to avoid or mitigate it? What can be done to reverse a slide into a full-blown depression? Why have the responses to date of the government and the economics profession been so lackluster? Richard Posner presents a concise and non-technical examination of this mother of all financial disasters and of the, as yet, stumbling efforts to cope with it. No previous acquaintance on the part of the reader with macroeconomics or the theory of finance is presupposed. This is a book for intelligent generalists that will interest specialists as well.

Among the facts and causes Posner identifies are: excess savings flowing in from Asia and the reckless lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve Board; the relation between executive compensation, short-term profit goals, and risky lending; the housing bubble fuelled by low interest rates, aggressive mortgage marketing, and loose regulations; the low savings rate of American people; and the highly leveraged balance sheets of large financial institutions.

Posner analyzes the two basic remedial approaches to the crisis, which correspond to the two theories of the cause of the Great Depression: the monetarist--that the Federal Reserve Board allowed the money supply to shrink, thus failing to prevent a disastrous deflation--and the Keynesian--that the depression was the product of a credit binge in the 1920s, a stock-market crash, and the ensuing downward spiral in economic activity. Posner concludes that the pendulum swung too far and that our financial markets need to be more heavily regulated.

A major reassessment of American political culture in the days of Jefferson, Hamilton, and Burr

"[A] landmark study of Hamilton and the founders."--Jeff Sharlet, Chronicle of Higher Education

"Demands the attention of everyone with a serious interest in the history of American politics."--Pauline Maier, Washington Post

In this extraordinary book, Joanne Freeman offers a major reassessment of political culture in the early years of the American republic. By exploring both the public actions and private papers of key figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton, Freeman reveals an alien and profoundly unstable political world grounded on the code of honor. In the absence of a party system and with few examples to guide America's experiment in republican governance, the rituals and rhetoric of honor provided ground rules for political combat. Gossip, print warfare, and dueling were tools used to jostle for status and form alliances in an otherwise unstructured political realm. These political weapons were all deployed in the tumultuous presidential election of 1800--an event that nearly toppled the new republic.

By illuminating this culture of honor, Freeman offers new understandings of some of the most perplexing events of early American history, including the notorious duel between Burr and Hamilton. A major reconsideration of early American politics, Affairs of Honor offers a profoundly human look at the anxieties and political realities of leaders struggling to define themselves and their role in the new nation.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is one of the world's most perceptive and original analysts of global development. In this major new work he presents a compelling and practical framework for how global citizens can use a holistic way forward to address the seemingly intractable worldwide problems of persistent extreme poverty, environmental degradation, and political-economic injustice: sustainable development.

Sachs offers readers, students, activists, environmentalists, and policy makers the tools, metrics, and practical pathways they need to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Far more than a rhetorical exercise, this book is designed to inform, inspire, and spur action. Based on Sachs's twelve years as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, his thirteen years advising the United Nations secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals, and his recent presentation of these ideas in a popular online course, The Age of Sustainable Development is a landmark publication and clarion call for all who care about our planet and global justice.

Jefferson Lecturer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Forrest McDonald is widely recognized as one of our most respected and challenging historians of the Constitution. He has been called brilliant, provocative, controversial, passionate, pugnacious, and crafty in intellectual combat. Whatever the label, he remains unsurpassed as a commentator on the American founding.

Novus Ordo Seclorum, his best-known work, was hailed as "magisterial," "a tour-de-force," "the American history book of the decade," "the best single book on the origins of the U.S. Constitution," and was featured on Bill Moyers's highly praised PBS series In Search of the Constitution. McDonald now applies his considerable talents to a study of another venerable institution-the American presidency.

Writing at the height of his powers as an intellectual historian, McDonald explores how and why the presidency has evolved into such a complex and powerful institution, unlike any other in the world. Scores of republics have come into existence during the last two centuries and many have adopted constitutions similar to our own. But, as McDonald persuasively shows, the American presidency is unique-no other nation has a leadership position that combines the seemingly incongruous roles of ceremonial head of state and chief executive magistrate.

Lacking an acceptable role model, McDonald explains, the founding fathers constructed their idea of the presidency from sources as diverse as the Bible, Machiavelli, John Locke, the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the laws of England, and the early colonial and state government experiences. So many influences, he suggests, guaranteed a substantial degree of persistent ambiguity and contradiction in the office.

McDonald chronicles the presidency's creation, implementation, and evolution and explains why it's still working today despite its many perceived afflictions. Along the way, he provides trenchant commentary upon the Constitutional Convention, ratification debates, presidencies of Washington and Jefferson, presidential administration and leadership, presidential-congressional conflicts, the president as chief architect of foreign policy, and the president as myth and symbol. He also analyzes the enormous gap between what we've come to expect of presidents and what they can reasonably hope to accomplish.

Ambitious, comprehensive, and engaging, this is the best single-volume study of an institution that has become troubled and somewhat troublesome yet, in McDonald's words, "has been responsible for less harm and more good than perhaps any other secular institution in history." It will make a fine and necessary companion for understanding the presidency as it moves into its third century.

One of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2022, Kirkus Reviews
"A righteous indictment of racism and misogyny."--Publishers Weekly

A powerful account of violence against Black women and girls in the United States and their fight for liberation.

Echoing the energy of Nina Simone's searing protest song that inspired the title, this book is a call to action in our collective journey toward just futures.

America, Goddam explores the combined force of anti-Blackness, misogyny, patriarchy, and capitalism in the lives of Black women and girls in the United States today.

Through personal accounts and hard-hitting analysis, Black feminist historian Treva B. Lindsey starkly assesses the forms and legacies of violence against Black women and girls, as well as their demands for justice for themselves and their communities. Combining history, theory, and memoir, America, Goddam renders visible the gender dynamics of anti-Black violence. Black women and girls occupy a unique status of vulnerability to harm and death, while the circumstances and traumas of this violence go underreported and understudied. America, Goddam allows readers to understand

How Black women--who have been both victims of anti-Black violence as well as frontline participants--are rarely the focus of Black freedom movements.

How Black women have led movements demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, Toyin Salau, Riah Milton, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and countless other Black women and girls whose lives have been curtailed by numerous forms of violence.

How across generations and centuries, their refusal to remain silent about violence against them led to Black liberation through organizing and radical politics.

America, Goddam powerfully demonstrates that the struggle for justice begins with reckoning with the pervasiveness of violence against Black women and girls in the United States.

American Power and the New Mandarins is Noam Chomsky's first political book, widely considered to be among the most cogent and powerful statements against the American war in Vietnam. Long out of print, this collection of early, seminal essays helped to establish Chomsky as a leading critic of United States foreign policy. These pages mount a scathing critique of the contradictions of the war, and an indictment of the mainstream, liberal intellectuals--the "new mandarins"--who furnished what Chomsky argued was the necessary ideological cover for the horrors visited on the Vietnamese people.

As America's foreign entanglements deepen by the month, Chomsky's lucid analysis is a sobering reminder of the perils of imperial diplomacy. With a new foreword by Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, American Power and the New Mandarins is a renewed call for independent analysis of America's role in the world.

One of the few members of the Russian aristocracy to become a revolutionary, Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842‒1921) renounced his title at the age of 12. He later became one of the leading theorists of anarchism. Forced to flee his homeland in the 1870s to avoid arrest for his revolutionary activities against the czarist government, the noted geographer and social philosopher lived in exile, mainly in England, for the next 42 years of his life. During this period Kropotkin wrote a number of pamphlets on the practical and moral aspects of the anarchist movement. Allowed to return to Russia in 1917, he continued to write but remained vigorously opposed to the Bolsheviks and Marxist socialism.
This collection contains a number of his important writings, including the brief but moving "Spirit of Revolt"; "Modern Science and Anarchism," an investigation of the scientific principles of revolutionary anarchism; "Law and Authority," an argument for social control through custom and education; "Prisons and Their Moral Influence on Prisoners," an unparalleled description of the evils of the prison system (which Kropotkin witnessed during his incarcerations); a note on the 1917 revolution and the Soviet government; and five other documents. Also reprinted is Kropotkin's article for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Anarchism," widely considered the best statement in English on the meaning, history, and aims of revolutionary anarchism.
A valuable addition to the libraries of instructors and students of history and government, this modestly priced volume also will appeal to anyone interested in aspects of anarchist thought.

A powerful new translation of de Tocqueville's influential look at the origins of modern France

The Ancien Régime and the Revolution is a comparison of revolutionary France and the despotic rule it toppled. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) is an objective observer of both periods - providing a merciless critique of the ancien régime, with its venality, oppression and inequality, yet acknowledging the reforms introduced under Louis XVI, and claiming that the post-Revolution state was in many ways as tyrannical as that of the King; its once lofty and egalitarian ideals corrupted and forgotten. Writing in the 1850s, Tocqueville wished to expose the return to despotism he witnessed in his own time under Napoleon III, by illuminating the grand, but ultimately doomed, call to liberty made by the French people in 1789. His eloquent and instructive study raises questions about liberty, nationalism and justice that remain urgent today.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Herbert J. Storing's Complete Anti-Federalist, hailed as "a civic event of enduring importance" (Leonard W. Levy, New York Times Book Review), indisputably established the importance of the Anti-Federalists' writings for our understanding of the Constitution. As Storing wrote in his introduction, "If the foundation of the American polity was laid by the Federalists, the Anti-Federalist reservations echo through American history; and it is in the dialogue, not merely in the Federalist victory, that the country's principles are to be discovered."

This one-volume edition presents the essence of the other side of that crucial dialogue. It can be read as a genuine counterpart to the Federalist Papers; as an original source companion to Storing's brilliant essay What the Anti-Federalists Were For (volume I of The Complete Anti-Federalist, available as a separate paperback); or as a guide to exploring the full range of Anti-Federalist writing. The Anti-Federalist makes a fundamental source of our political heritage accessible to everyone.

We live in a time when public discourse is more skewed than ever by the propaganda that big money can buy, with trust in the leadership of elected officials at an all-time low. The "news" has degenerated into sensationalist sound bites, and the idea of debate has become a polarized shouting match that precludes any meaningful discussion.

It's also a time of anxiety, as we're faced with economic and ecological crises on a global scale, with stakes that seem higher than ever before. In times like these, it's essential that we be able to think and communicate clearly.

In this lively primer on critical thinking, Robert Jensen attacks the problems head on and delivers an accessible and engaging book that explains how we can work collectively to enrich our intellectual lives. Drawing on more than two decades of classroom experience and community organizing, Jensen shares strategies on how to challenge "conventional wisdom" in order to courageously confront the crises of our times and offers a framework for channeling our fears and frustrations into productive analysis that can inform constructive action.

Jensen connects abstract ideas with the everyday political and spiritual struggles of ordinary people. Free of either academic or political jargon, this book is for anyone struggling to understand our world and contribute to making it a better place.

Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and a founding board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center.

"At the moment, what passes for political debate is the bickering of two vociferous and wrong-headed parties. Robert Jensen reacquaints us with the political and social skills we'll need if we're to reclaim politics for the 21st century. This is a brave book, one that packs more wisdom in its few pages than a shelf's worth of political theory, because it's also a book about political practice. Jensen patiently, honestly, and rigorously exemplifies the highest virtues of a public intellectual."--Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System

"The first date or dinner party taboo is famous: 'No religion, no politics.' Debating, discussion, engagement with ideas that matter--these are all supposed to be left to professionals, specialists who talk to each other in mutually incomprehensible ways. Meanwhile decades of advertising, sound bites, PR, filtered information, and internet trolling have numbed us even more. But we don't have to live this way. We could immediately start living in a better world, one in which every conversation was an opportunity to learn more about ourselves, others, and the precious little world we all have to try to live on together. To do that, though, we would have to re-learn how to think and talk, how to agree and disagree. Robert Jensen's Arguing For Our Lives can help us do that."--Justin Podur, Associate Professor, York University and author of Haiti's New Dictatorship (Pluto Press 2012)

"Arguing for Our Lives is a crucial book for reclaiming not only the pedagogical and political virtues of critical thinking, but for securing the foundations for critical agency and engaged citizenship. This is an indispensable book for students, educators, and others willing to fight the current ongoing assault by religious, political, and moral fundamentalists on critical thought, if not reason itself, that has engulfed American politics. Everyone should read Arguing for Our Lives if they believe there is a connection between how we think and how we act, how we understand democracy and how we experience and struggle for it."--Henry Giroux, author of Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Politics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm, 2012)

Winner, 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

A small but growing number of people in many countries consistently avoid the news. They feel they do not have time for it, believe it is not worth the effort, find it irrelevant or emotionally draining, or do not trust the media, among other reasons. Why and how do people circumvent news? Which groups are more and less reluctant to follow the news? In what ways is news avoidance a problem--for individuals, for the news industry, for society--and how can it be addressed?

This groundbreaking book explains why and how so many people consume little or no news despite unprecedented abundance and ease of access. Drawing on interviews in Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States as well as extensive survey data, Avoiding the News examines how people who tune out traditional media get information and explores their "folk theories" about how news organizations work. The authors argue that news avoidance is about not only content but also identity, ideologies, and infrastructures: who people are, what they believe, and how news does or does not fit into their everyday lives. Because news avoidance is most common among disadvantaged groups, it threatens to exacerbate existing inequalities by tilting mainstream journalism even further toward privileged audiences. Ultimately, this book shows, persuading news-averse audiences of the value of journalism is not simply a matter of adjusting coverage but requires a deeper, more empathetic understanding of people's relationships with news across social, political, and technological boundaries.

Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential thinkers of modern times. The most cited writer in the humanities, his work has revolutionized the field of linguistics, and has dominated many other disciplines including politics and the philosophy of mind and human nature. This Companion brings together a team of leading linguists, philosophers, cognitive scientists and political theorists to consolidate the disparate strands of Chomsky's thought into one accessible volume and an essential guide to one of the leading intellectual figures of our time.