Download or read book Problems in U S History written by Jim Cook and published by . This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In presenting students with diverse issues and interests, the selections in Problems in U.S. History help readers think critically about the social, political, and cultural issues that have shaped America. The readings provide students exposure to the unique perspectives of various historians and the challenges of an evolving country. The anthology explores the place of food in historic events, a history of the Puritans, Native Americans and historical consciousness in the 19th century, industrial capitalism, changes in the labor force in recent times, and more. Each reading is framed by an introduction, which places it in context and prepares students for effective reading, and post-reading questions that encourage students to explore and analyze ideas and information. The second edition features new readings on American Reconstruction and the 19th century roots of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Problems in U.S. History helps students understand that history is more than a sequence of events, composed of the challenges people experience, the values they hold, and the changes in culture that occur with the evolution of a specific place. It is an ideal textbook for foundational courses in U.S. history. Jim Cook holds a Ph.D. in history from Texas Tech University. His areas of specialty include American religious movements, the role of religion in American culture, and the impact of memory and nostalgia on political and religious expression. Dr. Cook has taught American and world history survey courses at Fresno City College, Merced College, and the California State University, Stanislaus, where he also serves as a faculty mentor and teaches courses in contemporary United States history, colonial North America, history from the Reconstruction era to World War II, and problems in United States history.

Download or read book Wild Problems written by Russ Roberts and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the host of EconTalk, a guide to decision-making when you can't crunch the numbers Algorithms and apps analyze data and tell you how to beat the traffic, what books to buy, what music to listen to, and even who to date—often with great results. But what do you do when you face the big decisions of life—the "wild problems" of who to marry, whether to have children, where to move, how to forge a life well-lived—that can’t be solved by measurement or calculation? In Wild Problems, beloved host of EconTalk Russ Roberts offers puzzled rationalists a way to address these wild problems. He suggests spending less time and energy on the path that promises the most happiness, and more time on figuring out who you actually want to be. He draws on the experience of great artists, writers, and scientists of the past who found creative ways to navigate life’s biggest questions. And he lays out strategies for reducing the fear and the loss of control that inevitably come when a wild problem requires a leap in the dark. Ultimately, Roberts asks us to see ourselves and our lives less as a problem to be solved than a mystery to be experienced. There's no right decision waiting to be uncovered by an app or rational analysis. Reality is harder than that and, perhaps, a little more interesting.

Download or read book The Problem of Democracy written by Nancy Isenberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Told with authority and style. . . Crisply summarizing the Adamses' legacy, the authors stress principle over partisanship."--The Wall Street Journal How the father and son presidents foresaw the rise of the cult of personality and fought those who sought to abuse the weaknesses inherent in our democracy. Until now, no one has properly dissected the intertwined lives of the second and sixth (father and son) presidents. John and John Quincy Adams were brilliant, prickly politicians and arguably the most independently minded among leaders of the founding generation. Distrustful of blind allegiance to a political party, they brought a healthy skepticism of a brand-new system of government to the country's first 50 years. They were unpopular for their fears of the potential for demagoguery lurking in democracy, and--in a twist that predicted the turn of twenty-first century politics--they warned against, but were unable to stop, the seductive appeal of political celebrities Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. In a bold recasting of the Adamses' historical roles, The Problem of Democracy is a major critique of the ways in which their prophetic warnings have been systematically ignored over the centuries. It's also an intimate family drama that brings out the torment and personal hurt caused by the gritty conduct of early American politics. Burstein and Isenberg make sense of the presidents' somewhat iconoclastic, highly creative engagement with America's political and social realities. By taking the temperature of American democracy, from its heated origins through multiple upheavals, the authors reveal the dangers and weaknesses that have been present since the beginning. They provide a clear-eyed look at a decoy democracy that masks the reality of elite rule while remaining open, since the days of George Washington, to a very undemocratic result in the formation of a cult surrounding the person of an elected leader.

Download or read book The Problem of the Media written by Robert D. McChesney and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known—a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement. Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the political economy of the media, illuminating its major flashpoints and controversies by locating them in the political economy of U.S. capitalism. It deals with issues such as the declining quality of journalism, the question of bias, the weakness of the public broadcasting sector, and the limits and possibilities of antitrust legislation in regulating the media. It points out the ways in which the existing media system has become a threat to democracy, and shows how it could be made to serve the interests of the majority. McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy was hailed as a pioneering analysis of the way in which media had come to serve the interests of corporate profit rather than public enlightenment and debate. Bill Moyers commented, "If Thomas Paine were around, he would have written this book." The Problem of the Media is certain to be a landmark in media studies, a vital resource for media activism, and essential reading for concerned scholars and citizens everywhere.

Download or read book Major Problems in American History Since 1945 written by Robert Griffith and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 2007 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essys on important topics in U.S. history. The book asks students to evaluate primary surces, test the interpretations and draw their own conclusions.

Download or read book U S Health in International Perspective written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.

Download or read book Homelessness Is a Housing Problem written by Gregg Colburn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using rich and detailed data, this groundbreaking book explains why homelessness has become a crisis in America and reveals the structural conditions that underlie it. In Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, Colburn and Aldern shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area. Using accessible statistical analysis, they test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city—including mental illness, drug use, poverty, weather, generosity of public assistance, and low-income mobility—and find that none explain the regional variation observed across the country. Instead, housing market conditions, such as the cost and availability of rental housing, offer a far more convincing account. With rigor and clarity, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem explores U.S. cities' diverse experiences with housing precarity and offers policy solutions for unique regional contexts.

Download or read book A Brief History of Doom written by Richard Vague and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-03-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Financial crises happen time and again in post-industrial economies—and they are extraordinarily damaging. Building on insights gleaned from many years of work in the banking industry and drawing on a vast trove of data, Richard Vague argues that such crises follow a pattern that makes them both predictable and avoidable. A Brief History of Doom examines a series of major crises over the past 200 years in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and China—including the Great Depression and the economic meltdown of 2008. Vague demonstrates that the over-accumulation of private debt does a better job than any other variable of explaining and predicting financial crises. In a series of clear and gripping chapters, he shows that in each case the rapid growth of loans produced widespread overcapacity, which then led to the spread of bad loans and bank failures. This cycle, according to Vague, is the essence of financial crises and the script they invariably follow. The story of financial crisis is fundamentally the story of private debt and runaway lending. Convinced that we have it within our power to break the cycle, Vague provides the tools to enable politicians, bankers, and private citizens to recognize and respond to the danger signs before it begins again.

Download or read book Major Problems in American Popular Culture written by Kathleen Franz and published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. This book was released on 2012 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE, International Edition is part of a highly respected series of edited collections of primary documents and scholarly essays designed for use in history courses at the undergraduate level. The basic goal of these texts is to provide students and instructors with the most distinguished, readable, and stimulating writing available: essays centered on major historical questions, complemented by related primary source materials.

Download or read book The Politics of Information written by Frank R. Baumgartner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-01-02 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does the government decide what’s a problem and what isn’t? And what are the consequences of that process? Like individuals, Congress is subject to the “paradox of search.” If policy makers don’t look for problems, they won’t find those that need to be addressed. But if they carry out a thorough search, they will almost certainly find new problems—and with the definition of each new problem comes the possibility of creating a government program to address it. With The Politics of Attention, leading policy scholars Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones demonstrated the central role attention plays in how governments prioritize problems. Now, with The Politics of Information, they turn the focus to the problem-detection process itself, showing how the growth or contraction of government is closely related to how it searches for information and how, as an organization, it analyzes its findings. Better search processes that incorporate more diverse viewpoints lead to more intensive policymaking activity. Similarly, limiting search processes leads to declines in policy making. At the same time, the authors find little evidence that the factors usually thought to be responsible for government expansion—partisan control, changes in presidential leadership, and shifts in public opinion—can be systematically related to the patterns they observe. Drawing on data tracing the course of American public policy since World War II, Baumgartner and Jones once again deepen our understanding of the dynamics of American policy making.

Download or read book Major Problems in the History of the American West written by Clyde A. Milner and published by Major Problems in American His. This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique collection of essays and documents brings to life the major topics in American western and frontier history from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Download or read book Major Problems in American Women s History written by Mary Beth Norton and published by Cengage Learning. This book was released on 2007 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, theMajor Problemsseries introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history.Major Problems in American Women's Historyis the leading reader for courses on the history of American women, covering the subject's entire chronological span. While attentive to the roles of women and the details of women's lives, the authors are especially concerned with issues of historical interpretation and historiography. The Fourth Edition features greater coverage of the experiences of women in the Midwest and the West, immigrant women, and more voices of women of color. Key pedagogical elements of theMajor Problemsformat have been retained: 14 to 15 chapters per volume, chapter introductions, headnotes, and suggested readings. New!In Chapter 1, an exclusive essay by Kate Haulman examines the evolution of the field of women's history and the state of women's history today. New!Chapter 2 now focuses on Native American women, while a new Chapter 3 covers witches and their accusers in New England and the Salem witch trials. New!Chapter 6 draws on recent scholarship on the roles of ordinary and elite women in the numerous reform movements of the Early Republic. Revised!Chapter 7 rethinks and refocuses the text's coverage of women's roles in slavery and the Civil War, and more directly addresses the lives of African American women during and after slavery. New!Post-1960 coverage (in Chapters 15–16) has been thoroughly revised to highlight the women's movement, women's health, recent immigration, and economic changes affecting women.

Download or read book How to Solve Our Human Problems written by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso and published by Tharpa Publications US. This book was released on 2007-02 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guiding readers in learning how to respond to difficult situations with a positive, peaceful mind, this resource educates on how to turn challenges into opportunities for mental and spiritual growth and development.

Download or read book The Surgeon General s Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity written by and published by Office of the Surgeon General. This book was released on 2001 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Promotes the recognition, treatment, and prevention of conditions of overweight and obesity in the United States.

Download or read book A Problem from Hell written by Samantha Power and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From former UN Ambassador and author of the New York Times bestseller The Education of an Idealist Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on America's repeated failure to stop genocides around the world In her prizewinning examination of the last century of American history, Samantha Power asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to stop genocide? Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, draws upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policymakers, thousands of declassified documents, and her own reporting from modern killing fields to provide the answer. "A Problem from Hell" shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings, and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act. A modern classic and "an angry, brilliant, fiercely useful, absolutely essential book" (New Republic), "A Problem from Hell" has forever reshaped debates about American foreign policy. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Raphael Lemkin Award

Download or read book American Poison written by Eduardo Porter and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2020 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf."

Download or read book Insanity Defense written by Jane Harman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider's account of America's ineffectual approach to some of the hardest defense and intelligence issues in the three decades since the Cold War ended. Insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. As a nation, America has cycled through the same defense and intelligence issues since the end of the Cold War. In Insanity Defense, Congresswoman Jane Harman chronicles how four administrations have failed to confront some of the toughest national security policy issues and suggests achievable fixes that can move us toward a safer future. The reasons for these inadequacies are varied and complex, in some cases going back generations. American leaders didn’t realize soon enough that the institutions and habits formed during the Cold War were no longer effective in an increasingly multi-power world transformed by digital technology and riven by ethno-sectarian conflict. Nations freed from the fear of the Soviets no longer deferred to America as before. Yet the United States settled into a comfortable, at times arrogant, position as the lone superpower. At the same time our governing institutions, which had stayed resilient, however imperfectly, through multiple crises, began their own unraveling. Congresswoman Harman was there—as witness, legislator, exhorter, enabler, dissident and, eventually, outside advisor and commentator. Insanity Defense is an insider’s account of decades of American national security—of its failures and omissions—and a roadmap to making significant progress on solving these perennially difficult issues.