Download or read book Throes of Democracy written by Walter A. McDougall and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-30 with total page 819 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “provocative and richly detailed” history of 19th-century America from the age of Jackson to the abandonment of Reconstruction (Kirkus, starred review). From its shocking curtain-raiser—the conflagration that consumed Lower Manhattan in 1835—to the climactic centennial year of 1876, when Americans staged a corrupt, deadlocked presidential campaign (fought out in Florida), Walter A. McDougall’s Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877 throws off sparks like a flywheel. This eagerly awaited sequel to Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828 carries the saga of the American people’s continuous self-reinvention from the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson through the eras of Manifest Destiny, Civil War, and Reconstruction, America’s first failed crusade to put “freedom on the march” through regime change and nation building. But Throes of Democracy is much more than a political history. Here, for the first time, is the American epic as lived by Germans and Irish, Catholics and Jews, as well as people of British Protestant and African American stock; an epic defined as much by folks in Wisconsin, Kansas, and Texas as by those in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia; an epic in which Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, showman P. T. Barnum, and circus clown Dan Rice figure as prominently as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Henry Ward Beecher; an epic in which railroad management and land speculation prove as gripping as Indian wars. Walter A. McDougall’s zesty, irreverent narrative says something new, shrewd, ironic, or funny about almost everything as it reveals our national penchant for pretense—a predilection that explains both the periodic throes of democracy and the perennial resilience of the United States. Praise for Throes of Democracy “History buffs will definitely gravitate to this thick book. . . . A provocative survey from a premier historian.” —Booklist (starred review) “A pleasing romp through a critical period in the nation’s history, it sticks to the tried and true.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Throes of Democracy written by Doctor Bryan McCann and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1980s, Brazil emerged from two decades of military dictatorship and embarked on an experiment in full democracy for the first time in the nation's history Since then, Brazilians have sought to live up to the ideals of this experiment while negotiating dramatic economic and cultural transformations. In The Throes of Democracy Bryan McCann gives a panoramic view of this process, exploring the relationships between the rise of the political left, the escalation of urban violence, the agribusiness boom and the spread of pentecostal evangelization. Brazil remains a land marked by deep inequality, but in the last two decades the structure of that inequality has changed substantially. This is a country which remains an endlessly vital source of popular culture, now bubbling forth from different corners of the map. In explaining these transformations, this book provides a fascinating introduction to one of the 21st century's most significant countries.
Download or read book Discos and Democracy written by Orville Schell and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1989-05-22 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this arresting chronicle of one tumultuous year in China's love-hate relationship with the West, Orville Schell brings us a revealing analysis of the Chinese reform movement.
Download or read book Freedom Just Around the Corner written by Walter A. McDougall and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-30 with total page 1187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful reinterpretation of United States history is remarkable not only for its scholarship and historical breadth, but also in its assertion that the success of the country depends in a large part on the unique American character, which has shaped so many historic events. In the first of a projected three-volume series, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Walter A. McDougall argues that the creation of the United States is the central event in the last four hundred years of world history. Freedom Just Around the Corner masterfully chronicles the earliest years of this nation, revealing that the genius behind the success of the United States is not based on the works and ideas of one person, but rather on the complex, irrepressible American spirit. A professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, Walter A. McDougall is the author of many books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heavens and the Earth and Let the Sea Make a Noise..., Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877, and Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage children. “The chapter on the framing of the Constitution should be required reading ... Walter McDougall is a historian with a masterful grasp of his subject.” — Claude Crowley, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Download or read book Throes of Democracy written by Walter A. McDougall and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 821 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "And then there came a day of fire!" From its shocking curtain-raiser—the conflagration that consumed Lower Manhattan in 1835—to the climactic centennial year of 1876, when Americans staged a corrupt, deadlocked presidential campaign (fought out in Florida), Walter A. McDougall's Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877 throws off sparks like a flywheel. This eagerly awaited sequel to Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828 carries the saga of the American people's continuous self-reinvention from the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson through the eras of Manifest Destiny, Civil War, and Reconstruction, America's first failed crusade to put "freedom on the march" through regime change and nation building. But Throes of Democracy is much more than a political history. Here, for the first time, is the American epic as lived by Germans and Irish, Catholics and Jews, as well as people of British Protestant and African American stock; an epic defined as much by folks in Wisconsin, Kansas, and Texas as by those in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia; an epic in which Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, showman P. T. Barnum, and circus clown Dan Rice figure as prominently as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Henry Ward Beecher; an epic in which railroad management and land speculation prove as gripping as Indian wars. Walter A. McDougall's zesty, irreverent narrative says something new, shrewd, ironic, or funny about almost everything as it reveals our national penchant for pretense—a predilection that explains both the periodic throes of democracy and the perennial resilience of the United States.
Download or read book One Person No Vote written by Carol Anderson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As featured in the documentary All In: The Fight for Democracy Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Longlisted for the National Book Award in Nonfiction Named one of the Best Books of the Year by: Washington Post * Boston Globe * NPR* Bustle * BookRiot * New York Public Library From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, the startling--and timely--history of voter suppression in America, with a foreword by Senator Dick Durbin. In her New York Times bestseller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice. Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. In gripping, enlightening detail she explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, she explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans.
Download or read book The End of the Nation state written by Jean-Marie Guéhenno and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English translation of the 1993 French publication speculating on the future demise of the nation-state. Guehenno contends that economic globalization implies a future without geographical boundaries, and a restructuring of political power. He discusses the European Union as an example of this new age, and issues of ethnicity and tribalism in relation to global evolution. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Digital Disconnect written by Robert W. McChesney and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrants and skeptics alike have produced valuable analyses of the Internet's effect on us and our world, oscillating between utopian bliss and dystopian hell. But according to Robert W. McChesney, arguments on both sides fail to address the relationship between economic power and the digital world. McChesney's award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy skewered the assumption that a society drenched in commercial information is a democratic one. In Digital Disconnect McChesney returns to this provocative thesis in light of the advances of the digital age, incorporating capitalism into the heart of his analysis. He argues that the sharp decline in the enforcement of antitrust violations, the increase in patents on digital technology and proprietary systems, and other policies and massive indirect subsidies have made the Internet a place of numbing commercialism. A small handful of monopolies now dominate the political economy, from Google, which garners an astonishing 97 percent share of the mobile search market, to Microsoft, whose operating system is used by over 90 percent of the world's computers. This capitalistic colonization of the Internet has spurred the collapse of credible journalism, and made the Internet an unparalleled apparatus for government and corporate surveillance, and a disturbingly anti-democratic force. In Digital Disconnect Robert McChesney offers a groundbreaking analysis and critique of the Internet, urging us to reclaim the democratizing potential of the digital revolution while we still can.
Download or read book How Democracy Ends written by David Runciman and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2018-05-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Scintillating ... thought-provoking ... one of the very best of the great crop of recent books on the subject.' Andrew Rawnsley, Observer Democracy has died hundreds of times, all over the world. We think we know what that looks like: chaos descends and the military arrives to restore order, until the people can be trusted to look after their own affairs again. However, there is a danger that this picture is out of date. Until very recently, most citizens of Western democracies would have imagined that the end was a long way off, and very few would have thought it might be happening before their eyes as Trump, Brexit and paranoid populism have become a reality. David Runciman, one of the UK's leading professors of politics, answers all this and more as he surveys the political landscape of the West, helping us to spot the new signs of a collapsing democracy and advising us on what could come next.
Download or read book Waking Giant written by David S. Reynolds and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-06 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book “Far more than just a political story or, for that matter, a story of Andrew Jackson, Reynolds’s book shines a bright light on the cultural, social, intellectual, and artistic currents buffeting the nation. . . . Reynolds is a thoughtful historian and Waking Giant is as engaging and insightful a narrative of this critical interregnum as any written in years.”—New York Times Book Review A brilliant, definitive history of America’s vibrant and tumultuous rise during the Jacksonian era, from the Bancroft Prize-winning author of Walt Whitman’s America America experienced unprecedented growth and turmoil in the years between 1815 and 1848. It was an age when Andrew Jackson redefined the presidency and James K. Polk expanded the nation's territory. Historian and literary critic David S. Reynolds captures the turbulence of a democracy caught in the throes of the controversy over slavery, the rise of capitalism, and the birth of urbanization. He brings to life the reformers, abolitionists, and temperance advocates who struggled to correct America's worst social ills, and he reveals the shocking phenomena that marked the age: violent mobs, P. T. Barnum's freaks, all-seeing mesmerists, polygamous prophets, and rabble-rousing feminists. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Waking Giant is a brilliant chronicle of America's vibrant and tumultuous rise.
Download or read book The Five Thousand Year Leap written by W. Cleon Skousen and published by Verity Publishing. This book was released on with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Founding Fathers of the United States of America created the first free people in modern times. They wrote a new kind of Constitution which is now the oldest in existence. They built a new kind of commonwealth designed as a model for the whole human race. They believed it was thoroughly possible to create a new kind of civilization; giving freedom, equality, and justice to all. The Founders created a new cultural climate that gave wings to the human spirit. They built a free-enterprise culture to encourage industry and prosperity. They gave humanity the needed ingredients for a gigantic 5,000-year leap in which more progress has been made in the past 200 years than all of prior recorded human history. All of this came about because of 28 basic principles the Founders discovered, upon which all free nations must be built in order to succeed. This eBook includes the original index, footnotes, table of contents and page numbering from the printed format, and also new illustrations.
Download or read book The Year of Dreaming Dangerously written by Slavoj Zizek and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Call it the year of dreaming dangerously: 2011 caught the world off guard with a series of shattering events. While protesters in New York, Cairo, London, and Athens took to the streets in pursuit of emancipation, obscure destructive fantasies inspired the world’s racist populists in places as far apart as Hungary and Arizona, achieving a horrific consummation in the actions of mass murderer Anders Breivik. The subterranean work of dissatisfaction continues. Rage is building, and a new wave of revolts and disturbances will follow. Why? Because the events of 2011 augur a new political reality. These are limited, distorted—sometimes even perverted—fragments of a utopian future lying dormant in the present
Download or read book Jurgen Habermas written by Luke Goode and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2005-10-20 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latest introduction in the Modern European Thinkers series, ideal for undergraduates.
Download or read book Liberty Defined written by Ron Paul and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2011-04-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Liberty Defined, congressman and #1 New York Times bestselling author Ron Paul returns with his most provocative, comprehensive, and compelling arguments for personal freedom to date. The term "Liberty" is so commonly used in our country that it has become a mere cliché. But do we know what it means? What it promises? How it factors into our daily lives? And most importantly, can we recognize tyranny when it is sold to us disguised as a form of liberty? Dr. Paul writes that to believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular social and economic outcome. It is to trust in the spontaneous order that emerges when the state does not intervene in human volition and human cooperation. It permits people to work out their problems for themselves, build lives for themselves, take risks and accept responsibility for the results, and make their own decisions. It is the seed of America. This is a comprehensive guide to Dr. Paul's position on fifty of the most important issues of our times, from Abortion to Zionism. Accessible, easy to digest, and fearless in its discussion of controversial topics, LIBERTY DEFINED sheds new light on a word that is losing its shape.
Download or read book The Death of Expertise written by Tom Nichols and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the early 1990s, a small group of "AIDS denialists," including a University of California professor named Peter Duesberg, argued against virtually the entire medical establishment's consensus that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Science thrives on such counterintuitive challenges, but there was no evidence for Duesberg's beliefs, which turned out to be baseless. Once researchers found HIV, doctors and public health officials were able to save countless lives through measures aimed at preventing its transmission"--
Download or read book Sustaining Democracy written by Robert B. Talisse and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy is not easy. Citizens who disagree sharply about politics must nonetheless work together as equal partners in the enterprise of collective self-government. Ideally, this work would be conducted under conditions of mutual civility, with opposed citizens nonetheless recognizing one another's standing as political equals. But when the political stakes are high, and the opposition seems to us severely mistaken, why not drop the democratic pretences of civil partnership, and simply play to win? Why seek to uphold properly democratic relations with those who embrace political ideas that are flawed, irresponsible, and out of step with justice? Why sustain democracy with political foes? Drawing on extensive social science research concerning political polarization and partisan identity, Robert B. Talisse argues that when we break off civil interactions with our political opponents, we imperil relations with our political allies. In the absence of engagement with our political critics, our alliances grow increasingly homogeneous, conformist, and hierarchical. Moreover, they fracture and devolve amidst internal conflicts. In the end, our political aims suffer because our coalitions shrink and grow ineffective. Why sustain democracy with our foes? Because we need them if we are going to sustain democracy with our allies and friends.
Download or read book The Land of Flickering Lights written by Michael Bennet and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Colorado Senator offers “a sweeping diagnosis of the nation’s political ills . . . stitched together with assurances that room for redemption still exists” (New York Times Book Review). In The Land of Flickering Lights, Senator Michael Bennet lifts a veil on the inner workings of Congressional politics to reveal, in his words, “a series of actual stories—about the people, the politics, the motives, the money, the hypocrisy . . .” each of which demonstrates “the pathological culture of the capital and the consequences for us all.” Bennet unfolds the dramatic backstories behind the highly politicized confirmation battles over judicial nominations at all levels; the passage of the Trump tax law; the shredding of the Iran nuclear deal; the pervasive corruption unleashed by the influence of “dark money”; and the sabotage by a congressional minority of the “Gang of Eight’s” bi-partisan deal to reform America’s immigration policies. With frankness and refreshing candor, Bennet pulls the machinations behind these episodes into full public view, shedding vital new light on today’s political dysfunction. Arguing that each of us has a duty to act as a founder, he calls on Americans of all political persuasions to demand that the “winners” of our political battles be all the American people, nor one party or the other.
