Download or read book Best American Political Writing 2008 written by Royce Flippin and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-10-20 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Best American Political Writing 2008 draws from a variety of publications and political viewpoints to present the year's most insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking pieces on the current political scene. This year's edition will include full coverage of the presidential candidates and conventions, and will offer incisive reporting on America's most pressing political concerns -- from the threat of a looming economic recession, to the continued struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Selections will include Jane Mayer's investigation of the various highly coercive interrogation techniques routinely employed by the CIA and the Pentagon, Jonathan Chait's report on how radical economic extremists have hijacked national policy, Andrew Sullivan's article on "Why Barack Obama Matters," George Packer's analysis of the contrasting appeals of Obama and Hillary Clinton, Parag Khanna on America's struggle to retain its status as the world's great superpower, and John Judis's essay on how politicians wield power by tapping into our deepest anxieties, from such publications as The New Yorker, The New Republic, the Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Vanity Fair.

Download or read book Best American Political Writing 2008 Large Print 16pt written by Royce Flippin and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011-03 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Best American Political Writing 2008 draws from a variety of publications and political viewpoints to present the year's most insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking pieces on the current political scene. This year's edition will include full coverage of the presidential candidates and conventions, and will offer incisive reporting o...

Download or read book Best American Political Writing 2008 written by Royce Flippin and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-10-07 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Best American Political Writing 2008 draws from a variety of publications and political viewpoints to present the year's most insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking pieces on the current political scene. This year's edition will include full coverage of the presidential candidates and conventions, and will offer incisive reporting on America's most pressing political concerns—from the threat of a looming economic recession, to the continued struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Selections will include Jane Mayer's investigation of the various highly coercive interrogation techniques routinely employed by the CIA and the Pentagon, Jonathan Chait's report on how radical economic extremists have hijacked national policy, Andrew Sullivan's article on “Why Barack Obama Matters,” George Packer's analysis of the contrasting appeals of Obama and Hillary Clinton, Parag Khanna on America's struggle to retain its status as the world's great superpower, and John Judis's essay on how politicians wield power by tapping into our deepest anxieties, from such publications as The New Yorker, The New Republic, the Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Vanity Fair.

Download or read book Obama s Race written by Michael Tesler and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barack Obama’s presidential victory naturally led people to believe that the United States might finally be moving into a post-racial era. Obama’s Race—and its eye-opening account of the role played by race in the election—paints a dramatically different picture. The authors argue that the 2008 election was more polarized by racial attitudes than any other presidential election on record—and perhaps more significantly, that there were two sides to this racialization: resentful opposition to and racially liberal support for Obama. As Obama’s campaign was given a boost in the primaries from racial liberals that extended well beyond that usually offered to ideologically similar white candidates, Hillary Clinton lost much of her longstanding support and instead became the preferred candidate of Democratic racial conservatives. Time and again, voters’ racial predispositions trumped their ideological preferences as John McCain—seldom described as conservative in matters of race—became the darling of racial conservatives from both parties. Hard-hitting and sure to be controversial, Obama’s Race will be both praised and criticized—but certainly not ignored.

Download or read book Pulp Politics written by Glenn W. Richardson, Jr. and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2008-07-17 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulp Politics helps us understand how political ads work by exploring how people think and feel, how our brains work, and how we tell and listen to stories. The book dissents from much popular and scholarly opinion that contends that political advertising only despoils democracy. It proposes that the fabric of popular culture, not the essentials of informed consent, constitutes the communicative core of contemporary political campaigns. The book subjects campaign spots to compellingly detailed and nuanced analysis.

Download or read book The Forever War written by Dexter Filkins and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The definitive account of America's conflict with Islamic fundamentalism and a searing exploration of its human costs—an instant classic of war reporting from the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, we witness the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, the aftermath of the attack on New York on September 11th, and the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Filkins is the only American journalist to have reported on all these events, and his experiences are conveyed in a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters and astonishing scenes. Brilliant and fearless, The Forever War is not just about America's wars after 9/11, but about the nature of war itself.

Download or read book Nixonland written by Rick Perlstein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Perlstein...aims here at nothing less than weaving a tapestry of social upheaval. His success is dazzling.” —Los Angeles Times “Both brilliant and fun, a consuming journey back into the making of modern politics.” —Jon Meacham “Nixonland is a grand historical epic. Rick Perlstein has turned a story we think we know—American politics between the opposing presidential landslides of 1964 and 1972—into an often-surprising and always-fascinating new narrative.” —Jeffrey Toobin Rick Perlstein’s bestselling account of how the Nixon era laid the groundwork for the political divide that marks our country today. Told with vivid urgency and sharp political insight, Nixonland recaptures America’s turbulent 1960s and early 1970s and reveals how Richard Nixon rose from the political grave to seize and hold the presidency of the United States. Perlstein’s epic account begins in the blood and fire of the 1965 Watts riots, nine months after Lyndon Johnson’s historic landslide victory over Barry Goldwater appeared to herald a permanent liberal consensus in the United States. Yet the next year, scores of liberals were tossed out of Congress, America was more divided than ever, and a disgraced politician was on his way to a shocking comeback: Richard Nixon. Between 1965 and 1972 America experienced no less than a second civil war. Out of its ashes, the political world we know now was born. Filled with prodigious research and driven by a powerful narrative, Rick Perlstein’s magisterial account of how it all happened confirms his place as one of our country’s most celebrated historians.

Download or read book Best American Political Writing 2009 Large Print 16pt written by Royce Flippin and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A must-have anthology for political junkies, Best American Political Writing compiles the year 's best political stories from a variety of publications and points of view, in a single, comprehensive volume. Culling from the most memorable reporting of what promises to be a thrilling political year, the 2009 American Political Writing edition will include incisive coverage of the new Obama presidency and its impact nationwide, as well as the most pressing political concerns facing America today - from the depressed economy to our participation in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Download or read book Sundays at Eight written by Brian Lamb and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the last 25 years, Sunday nights at 8pm on C-SPAN has been appointment television for many Americans. During that time, host Brian Lamb has invited people to his Capitol Hill studio for hour-long conversations about contemporary society and history. In today’s soundbite culture that hour remains one of television’s last vestiges of in-depth, civil conversation. First came C-SPAN’s Booknotes in 1989, which by the time it ended in December 2004, was the longest-running author-interview program in American broadcast history. Many of the most notable nonfiction authors of its era were featured over the course of 800 episodes, and the conversations became a defining hour for the network and for nonfiction writers. In January 2005, C-SPAN embarked on a new chapter with the launch of Q and A. Again one hour of uninterrupted conversation but the focus was expanded to include documentary film makers, entrepreneurs, social workers, political leaders and just about anyone with a story to tell. To mark this anniversary Lamb and his team at C-SPAN have assembled Sundays at Eight, a collection of the best unpublished interviews and stories from the last 25 years. Featured in this collection are historians like David McCullough, Ron Chernow and Robert Caro, reporters including April Witt, John Burns and Michael Weisskopf, and numerous others, including Christopher Hitchens, Brit Hume and Kenneth Feinberg. In a March 2001 Booknotes interview 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt described the show’s success this way: “All you have to do is tell me a story.” This collection attests to the success of that principle, which has guided Lamb for decades. And his guests have not disappointed, from the dramatic escape of a lifelong resident of a North Korean prison camp, to the heavy price paid by one successful West Virginia businessman when he won $314 million in the lottery, or the heroic stories of recovery from the most horrific injuries in modern-day warfare. Told in the series’ signature conversational manner, these stories come to life again on the page. Sundays at Eight is not merely a token for fans of C-SPAN’s interview programs, but a collection of significant stories that have helped us understand the world for a quarter-century.

Download or read book What It Takes written by Richard Ben Cramer and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 1712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before Game Change there was What It Takes, a ride along the 1988 campaign trail and “possibly the best [book] ever written about an American election” (NPR). Written by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and New York Times–bestselling author Richard Ben Cramer, What It Takes is “a perfect-pitch rendering of the emotions, the intensity, the anguish, and the emptiness of what may have been the last normal two-party campaign in American history” (Time). An up-close, in-depth look at six candidates—George H. W. “Poppy” Bush, Bob Dole, Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, and Gary Hart—this account of the 1988 US presidential campaign explores a unique moment in history, with details on everything from Bush at the Astrodome to Hart’s Donna Rice scandal. Cramer also addresses the question we find ourselves pondering every four years: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that allows them to throw their hat in the ring as a candidate for leadership of the free world? Exhaustively researched from thousands of hours of interviews, What It Takes creates powerful portraits of these Republican and Democratic contenders, and the consultants, donors, journalists, handlers, and hangers-on who surround them, as they meet, greet, and strategize their way through primary season chasing the nomination, resulting in “a hipped-up amalgam of Teddy White, Tom Wolfe, and Norman Mailer” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). With timeless insight that helps us understand the current state of the nation, this “ultimate insider’s book on presidential politics” explores what helps these people survive, what makes them prosper, what drives them, and ultimately, what drives our government—human beings, in all their flawed glory (San Francisco Chronicle).

Download or read book The Paranoid Style in American Politics written by Richard Hofstadter and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs.In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence — and derail — the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups. With such other classic essays as “Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey” and “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?, ” The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States.

Download or read book State of Confusion written by Bryant Welch and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finally, the answer to the many questions that have been preying on the minds of millions of Americans has arrived. Why are Americans so vulnerable to divisive political tactics? Why did Americans get dragged into such an unwise war in Iraq? Why do fundamentalist religious groups, Fox News, and right-wing radio still play such influential roles in America's political landscape? And why are long-accepted rational scientific ideas like evolution under siege? These questions hold America's future in the balance. Ultimately, they are questions about the American mind. Psychologist-attorney Dr. Bryant Welch has the answers. If America is going to change the mind-set that led us to war in Iraq and left us unable to confront our serious national problems, this book is vitally important. Drawing on his unique experience both as a clinical psychologist and a Washington, D.C., political figure with the American Psychological Association, Dr. Welch shows how the long-term effects of sophisticated new forms of political manipulation have not only led to our debacle in Iraq but are also currently undercutting America's ability to address its very serious problems. In the 1944 movie Gaslight, a husband drives his wife to the brink of insanity by playing games with her sense of reality. Just as in the movie, America's most recent political "gaslighters," such as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and many religious leaders, have generated and exploited confusion in the minds of countless Americans. Gaslighters prey on their victim's vulnerability to paranoia, sexual perplexity, and envy to undermine the mind's ability to function rationally. Welch examines why millions of Americans, in response to such assaults, subconsciously and dangerously create their own simplistic reality, even if it is completely different from the more complex reality of the world. Most important, State of Confusion explains how and why Americans must act now to fight back against this harmful manipulation before it's too late. Dr. Welch's exploration of the American mind is both fascinating and frightening, and State of Confusion is a must-read for everyone who cares about the future of this great country.

Download or read book Political Fictions written by Joan Didion and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2002-08-27 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In these coolly observant essays, the iconic bestselling writer looks at the American political process and at "that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life." Through the deconstruction of the sound bites and photo ops of three presidential campaigns, one presidential impeachment, and an unforgettable sex scandal, Didion reveals the mechanics of American politics. She tells us the uncomfortable truth about the way we vote, the candidates we vote for, and the people who tell us to vote for them. These pieces build, one on the other, into a disturbing portrait of the American political landscape, providing essential reading on our democracy.

Download or read book History of American Political Thought written by Bryan-Paul Frost and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 963 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised and updated, this long-awaited second edition provides a comprehensive introduction to what the most thoughtful Americans have said about the American experience from the colonial period to the present. The book examines the political thought of the most important American statesmen, activists, and writers across era and ideologies, helping another generation of students, scholars, and citizens to understand more fully the meaning of America. This new second edition of the book includes chapters on several additional historical figures, including Walt Whitman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Ronald Reagan, as well as a new chapter on Barack Obama, who was not prominent in public life when the first edition was published. Significant revisions and additions have also been made to many of the original chapters, most notably on Antonin Scalia, which now updates his full legacy, increasing the breadth and depth of the collection.

Download or read book American Empire and the Politics of Meaning written by Julian Go and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-14 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the United States took control of the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the wake of the Spanish-American War, it declared that it would transform its new colonies through lessons in self-government and the ways of American-style democracy. In both territories, U.S. colonial officials built extensive public school systems, and they set up American-style elections and governmental institutions. The officials aimed their lessons in democratic government at the political elite: the relatively small class of the wealthy, educated, and politically powerful within each colony. While they retained ultimate control for themselves, the Americans let the elite vote, hold local office, and formulate legislation in national assemblies. American Empire and the Politics of Meaning is an examination of how these efforts to provide the elite of Puerto Rico and the Philippines a practical education in self-government played out on the ground in the early years of American colonial rule, from 1898 until 1912. It is the first systematic comparative analysis of these early exercises in American imperial power. The sociologist Julian Go unravels how American authorities used “culture” as both a tool and a target of rule, and how the Puerto Rican and Philippine elite received, creatively engaged, and sometimes silently subverted the Americans’ ostensibly benign intentions. Rather than finding that the attempt to transplant American-style democracy led to incommensurable “culture clashes,” Go assesses complex processes of cultural accommodation and transformation. By combining rich historical detail with broader theories of meaning, culture, and colonialism, he provides an innovative study of the hidden intersections of political power and cultural meaning-making in America’s earliest overseas empire.

Download or read book The Audacity of Hope written by Barack Obama and published by Crown. This book was released on 2006-10-17 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Barack Obama’s lucid vision of America’s place in the world and call for a new kind of politics that builds upon our shared understandings as Americans, based on his years in the Senate “In our lowdown, dispiriting era, Obama’s talent for proposing humane, sensible solutions with uplifting, elegant prose does fill one with hope.”—Michael Kazin, The Washington Post In July 2004, four years before his presidency, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. One phrase in particular anchored itself in listeners’ minds, a reminder that for all the discord and struggle to be found in our history as a nation, we have always been guided by a dogged optimism in the future, or what Obama called “the audacity of hope.” The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama’s call for a different brand of politics—a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” He explores those forces—from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media—that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment. At the heart of this book is Barack Obama’s vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats—from terrorism to pandemic—that gather beyond our shores. And he grapples with the role that faith plays in a democracy—where it is vital and where it must never intrude. Underlying his stories is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus. Only by returning to the principles that gave birth to our Constitution, Obama says, can Americans repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Those Americans are out there, he writes—“waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”

Download or read book Contemporary Pragmatism Volume 10 Number 2 December 2013 written by John R. Shook and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents Meg Holden, Andy Scerri, and Cameron Owens: More Publics, More Problems: The Productive Interface between the Pragmatic Sociology of Critique and Deweyan Pragmatism Erin C. Tarver: Signifying ¿Hillary¿: Making (Political) Sense with Butler and Dewey Joel Chow Ken Q: The Internet and the Democratic Imagination: Deweyan Communication in the 21st Century David Boersema: Pragmatism v. Originalism: A Mistrial? Aaron Massecar: The Fitness of an Ideal: A Peircean Ethics Sharyn Clough: Pragmatism and Embodiment as Resources for Feminist Interventions in Science Mark Tschaepe: Gradations of Guessing: Preliminary Sketches and Suggestions Jonathan Knowles: Non-Reductive Naturalism and the Vocabulary of Agency Tibor Solymosi: Cooking Up Consciousness John Capps: Review of Huw Price, Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism Clayton Chin: Review of Michael Bacon, Pragmatism: An Introduction Mathew A. Foust: Review of Kelly A. Parker and Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski, ed., Josiah Royce for the Twenty-First Century: Historical, Ethical, and Religious Interpretations