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Politics
"Impeaching the President is lucid, balanced, and deeply informed. Anyone in search of a reasoned guide to the unreason of our current situation should read it."--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction
"Ousting a president is a complicated and uncertain endeavor, according to this perceptive study of impeachments. . . . [This book] shrewdly assesses the impeachability of President Trump based on his alleged offenses . ... Hirsch's lucid prose and careful analysis make the book a fine corrective to cavalier popular rhetoric surrounding discussions of impeachment."-- Publishers Weekly
"A masterpiece for the masses."--Ralph Nader
"Amid the partisan passion, an illuminating primer of analysis and context lowers the temperature on this hot-button issue. . . . A cogent analysis that builds a common-sense case for proceeding with caution and against using impeachment as a partisan weapon."--Kirkus Reviews
" The reader gets a hearty mix of American history, political intrigue, and constitutional law, all adhered with Hirsch's amazing writing. He captures the political chaos surrounding each prior case, yanking the reader out of our present exceptionalism to see the evolution of impeachment with the proper context and clarity. Can't recommend it enough."--Travis Cohen, Brookline Booksmith, MA
"In an era when the notion of impeachment is tossed around as the ultimate political indictment, Alan Hirsch guides us with a steady hand through our own history to consider the three presidents who faced that ultimate punishment. This is a sober, precise, and carefully argued analysis that should be read by every member of Congress--and every president."--David K. Shipler, former reporter for the New York Times and Pulitzer Prize recipient
"Alan Hirsch brings clarity, wisdom, and wit to a contentious and critical subject. Impeaching the President is must reading for all concerned citizens."--Howard Shapiro, former FBI General Counsel
"Incredibly readable, well-researched, analytically sound and important."--Alan B. Morrison, Associate Dean for Public Interest & Public Service at the George Washington Law School
Donald J. Trump is only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.
Constitutional scholar Alan Hirsch offers clear and to-the-point guidance for all matters relating to removing a sitting president, including: the Founders' vision for checking presidential power; the impeachment stories of presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton; wrongdoing in the Trump administration; and the availability of the 25th Amendment and presidential self-pardon.
Illustrated throughout with historical engravings, photographs, and other impeachment documentation, this concise, timely, and accessible analysis offers an invaluable perspective on how the Constitution provides stability during times of political upheaval.
"Sunstein has written the story of impeachment every citizen needs to know. This is a remarkable, essential book." --Doris Kearns Goodwin
As Benjamin Franklin famously put it, Americans have a republic, if we can keep it. Preserving the Constitution and the democratic system it supports is the public's responsibility. One route the Constitution provides for discharging that duty--a route rarely traveled--is impeachment.
Cass R. Sunstein provides a succinct citizen's guide to an essential tool of self-government. He illuminates the constitutional design behind impeachment and emphasizes the people's role in holding presidents accountable. Despite intense interest in the subject, impeachment is widely misunderstood. Sunstein identifies and corrects a number of misconceptions. For example, he shows that the Constitution, not the House of Representatives, establishes grounds for impeachment, and that the president can be impeached for abuses of power that do not violate the law. Even neglect of duty counts among the "high crimes and misdemeanors" delineated in the republic's foundational document. Sunstein describes how impeachment helps make sense of our constitutional order, particularly the framers' controversial decision to install an empowered executive in a nation deeply fearful of kings.
With an eye toward the past and the future, Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide considers a host of actual and imaginable arguments for a president's removal, explaining why some cases are easy and others hard, why some arguments for impeachment have been judicious and others not. In direct and approachable terms, it dispels the fog surrounding impeachment so that Americans of all political convictions may use their ultimate civic authority wisely.
An authoritative introduction to ISIS--now expanded and revised to bring events up to the present
The Islamic State stunned the world with its savagery, destructiveness, and military and recruiting successes. However, its most striking and distinctive characteristic was its capacity to build governing institutions and a theologically grounded national identity. What explains the rise of ISIS and the caliphate, and what does it portend for the future of the Middle East? In this book, one of the world's leading authorities on political Islam and jihadism sheds new light on these questions. Moving beyond journalistic accounts, Fawaz Gerges provides a clear and compelling explanation of the deeper conditions that fuel ISIS. This new edition brings the story of ISIS to the present, covering key events--from the military defeat of its territorial state to the death of its leader al-Baghdadi--and analyzing how the ongoing Syrian, Iraqi, and Saudi-Iranian conflict could lead to ISIS's revival.The Islamic State, known as ISIS, exploded into the public eye in 2014 with startling speed and shocking brutality. It has captured the imagination of the global jihadist movement, attracting recruits in unprecedented numbers and wreaking bloody destruction with a sadistic glee that has alienated even the hardcore terrorists of its parent organization, al Qaeda.
Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, two of America's leading experts on terrorism, dissect the new model for violent extremism that ISIS has leveraged into an empire of death in Iraq and Syria, and an international network that is rapidly expanding in the Middle East, North Africa and around the world.
ISIS: The State of Terror traces the ideological innovations that the group deploys to recruit unprecedented numbers of Westerners, the composition of its infamous snuff videos, and the technological tools it exploits on social media to broadcast its atrocities, and its recruiting pitch to the world, including its success at attracting thousands of Western adherents. The authors examine ISIS's predatory abuse of women and children and its use of horror to manipulate world leaders and its own adherents as it builds its twisted society. The authors offer a much-needed perspective on how world leaders should prioritize and respond to ISIS's deliberate and insidious provocations.
A concise and authoritative introduction to Islamic political ideas
In sixteen concise chapters on key topics, this book provides a rich, authoritative, and up-to-date introduction to Islamic political thought from the birth of Islam to today, presenting essential background and context for understanding contemporary politics in the Islamic world and beyond. Selected from the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, and focusing on the origins, development, and contemporary importance of Islamic political ideas and related subjects, each chapter offers a sophisticated yet accessible introduction to its topic. Written by leading specialists and incorporating the latest scholarship, the alphabetically arranged chapters cover the topics of authority, the caliphate, fundamentalism, government, jihad, knowledge, minorities, modernity, Muhammad, pluralism and tolerance, the Qur'an, revival and reform, shariʿa (sacred law), traditional political thought, 'ulama' (religious scholars), and women. Read separately or together, these chapters provide an indispensable resource for students, journalists, policymakers, and anyone else seeking an informed perspective on the complex intersection of Islam and politics.
The contributors are Gerhard Bowering, Ayesha S. Chaudhry, Patricia Crone, Roxanne Euben, Yohanan Friedmann, Paul L. Heck, Roy Jackson, Wadad Kadi, John Kelsay, Gudrun Krämer, Ebrahim Moosa, Armando Salvatore, Aram A. Shahin, Emad El-Din Shahin, Devin J. Stewart, SherAli Tareen, and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.
A new afterword discusses the essays in relation to contemporary political developments.
Kingmakers is the gripping story of how the modern Middle East came to be, as told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it. Some are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell); others infamous (Harry St. John Philby, father of Kim); some forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes, Israel's godfather, and A. T. Wilson, the territorial creator of Iraq). All helped enthrone rulers in a region whose very name is an Anglo-American invention. The aim of this engrossing character-driven narrative is to restore to life the colorful figures who gave us the Middle East in which Americans are enmeshed today.
"Despite our country's bootstrap rhetoric, outsiders in this land of individualism rarely make a go of it alone. As the first essay in this collection--an analysis of the anti-slavery movement of the mid-nineteenth century--attempts to show, improving conditions for those who have been left out' hinges on the ability of the despised and downtrodden, and their allies, to band together in collective struggle and insist on their entitlements."--from the Introduction, "Left Out"
The lives of "outsiders" have been the focus of Martin Duberman's work as a public intellectual for the past four decades. Best known for his biography of Paul Robeson, Duberman highlights the "banding together" of the excluded in "Left Out. "These identity-based movements--black power, gay liberation, feminism--have created a vital and controversial change in American consciousness in recent decades. Duberman's collected essays trace this evolution of thought in lively and engaging language. Available here for the first time in paperback, this edition includes three new essays.
Presenting summations of Duberman's views on such matters as race, foreign policy, gender, and sexuality, "Left Out "offers incisive analyses of the split between class-based and identity-based politics on the Left. As a white anti-racist, feminist man, socialist queer, and "godfather" of the gay studies movement, Duberman has taken many brave and prescient stands. His writing shows why he is considered a deeply moral and wise man.
"No matter the topic, Martin Duberman's thoughtful and nuanced essays are written with a humanity and optimism all too rare in our cynical times."--Susan Faludi
"[Duberman] has engaged the greatest struggles of our times with an unflinching nerve, a wise heart and a brilliant intellect."--Jonathan Kozol
With the skills of a journalist, the knowledge of a historian, and the heart of an activist, Hochschild shares the stories of people who took a stand against despotism, spoke out against unjust wars and government surveillance, and dared to dream of a better and more just world.
A remarkable collection of charming and eloquent letters that contain the seeds of Tocqueville's later masterful account of American democracy
Young Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in the United States for the first time in May 1831, c
A compelling explanation of the American public's acceptance of LGBT freedoms through the lens of pop culture
How did gay people go from being characterized as dangerous perverts to military heroes and respectable parents? How did the interests of the LGBT movement and the state converge to transform mainstream political and legal norms in these areas? Using civil rights narratives, pop culture, and critical theory, LGBT Inclusion in American Life tells the story of how exclusion was transformed into inclusion in US politics and society, as pop culture changed mainstream Americans thinking about "non-gay" issues, namely privacy, sex and gender norms, and family. Susan Burgess explores films such as Casablanca, various James Bond movies, and Julie and Julia, and television shows such as thirtysomething and The Americans, as well as the Broadway sensation Hamilton, as sources of growing popular support for LGBT rights. By drawing on popular culture as a rich source of public understanding, Burgess explains how the greater public came to accept and even support the three central pillars of LGBT freedoms in the post-World War II era: to have consensual adult sex without fear of criminal penalty, to serve openly in the military, and to marry legally. LGBT Inclusion in American Life argues that pop culture can help us to imagine unknown futures that lead beyond what we currently desire from contemporary politics, and in return asks now that the mainstream public has come to accept LGBT freedoms, where might the popular imagination be headed in the future?A classic collection of writings on political philosophy from leading thinkers of the late 20th century
Much contemporary political philosophy has been a debate between utilitarianism on the one hand and Kantian, or rights-based ethics on the other. However, in recent decades liberalism has faced a growing challenge from a different direction, from a view that argues for a deeper understanding of citizenship and community than the liberal ethic allows. The writings collected in this volume present leading statements of rights-based liberalism and of the communitarian, or civic republican alternatives to that position. With contributions from leading theorists such as Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, Alasdair MacIntyre, Liberalism and Its Critics shifts the focus from the familiar debate between utilitarians and Kantian liberals to consider a more powerful challenge to the rights-based ethic--a challenge indebted to Aristotle, Hegel, and the civic republican tradition.A compelling history of liberalism from the nineteenth century to today
Liberalism dominates today's politics just as it decisively shaped the American and European past. This engrossing history of liberalism--the first in English for many decades--traces liberalism's ideals, successes, and failures through the lives and ideas of a rich cast of European and American thinkers and politicians, from the early nineteenth century to today.
An enlightening account of a vulnerable but critically important political creed, Liberalism provides the vital historical and intellectual background for hard thinking about liberal democracy's future.
Unlike most textbooks in American Government, Liberty, Order, and Justice seeks to familiarize the student with the basic principles of the Constitution, and to explain their origin, meaning, and purpose. Particular emphasis is placed on federalism and the separation of powers. These features of the book, together with its extensive and unique historical illustrations, make this edition of Liberty, Order, and Justice especially suitable for introductory classes in American Government and for high school students in advanced placement courses.
James McClellan (1937-2005) was the James Bryce Visiting Fellow in American Studies at the Institute of United States Studies, University of London.
The #1 New York Times bestseller by Senator Al Franken, author of Giant of the Senate
Al Franken, one of our "savviest satirists" (People), has been studying the rhetoric of the Right. He has listened to their cries of "slander," "bias," and even "treason." He has examined the GOP's policies of squandering our surplus, ravaging the environment, and alienating the rest of the world. He's even watched Fox News. A lot.And, in this fair and balanced report, Al bravely and candidly exposes them all for what they are: liars. Lying, lying liars. Al destroys the liberal media bias myth by doing what his targets seem incapable of: getting his facts straight. Using the Right's own words against them, he takes on the pundits, the politicians, and the issues, in the most talked about book of the year.
Timely, provocative, unfailingly honest, and always funny, Lies sticks it to the most right-wing administration in memory, and to the right-wing media hacks who do its bidding.
to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements and under all circumstances, to be open and generous." Religion: "A concern purely between our God and our consciences." America's national character: "It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty with resolution and contrivance." Public debt: "We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves." War: "I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind." In stately measured cadences, these thirty-four essays provide timeless guidance on leading a spiritually fulfilling life. Light and Liberty is a triumphant work of supreme eloquence, as uplifting today as when Jefferson first set these immortal sentences on paper.
The changing face of the liberal creed from the ancient world to today
The Lost History of Liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political creed that has become a rallying cry--and a term of derision--in today's increasingly divided public square. Taking readers from ancient Rome to today, Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words liberal and liberalism, revealing the heated debates that have taken place over their meaning. She debunks the popular myth of liberalism as a uniquely Anglo-American tradition, and shows how it was only during the Cold War that it was refashioned into an American ideology focused on individual freedoms. This timely and provocative book sets the record straight on a core tenet of today's political conversation, laying the foundations for a more constructive discussion about the future of liberal democracy.