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 Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 190 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 The Throes of Democracy written by Bryan McCann and published by . This book was released on with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of the left -- Urban crisis -- Back to the land -- Different drummers -- The Pentecostal boom -- Making culture in digital Brazil.

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 Democracy written by George F. McLean and published by CRVP. This book was released on 2004 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Promised Land Crusader State written by Walter A. McDougall and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1997 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Promised Land, Crusader State' is a reinterpretation of the traditions that have shaped U.S. foreign policy from 1776 to the present. Looking back over two centuries, Walter McDougall draws a striking contrast between America as Promised Land and a contrary vision of America as Crusader State.

Download or read book Four Threats written by Suzanne Mettler and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An urgent, historically-grounded take on the four major factors that undermine American democracy, and what we can do to address them. While many Americans despair of the current state of U.S. politics, most assume that our system of government and democracy itself are invulnerable to decay. Yet when we examine the past, we find that the United States has undergone repeated crises of democracy, from the earliest days of the republic to the present. In Four Threats, Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman explore five moments in history when democracy in the U.S. was under siege: the 1790s, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression, and Watergate. These episodes risked profound—even fatal—damage to the American democratic experiment. From this history, four distinct characteristics of disruption emerge. Political polarization, racism and nativism, economic inequality, and excessive executive power—alone or in combination—have threatened the survival of the republic, but it has survived—so far. What is unique, and alarming, about the present moment in American politics is that all four conditions exist. This convergence marks the contemporary era as a grave moment for democracy. But history provides a valuable repository from which we can draw lessons about how democracy was eventually strengthened—or weakened—in the past. By revisiting how earlier generations of Americans faced threats to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, we can see the promise and the peril that have led us to today and chart a path toward repairing our civic fabric and renewing democracy.

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 Jurgen Habermas written by Luke Goode and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 2005-10-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Habermas is a hugely influential thinker, yet his writing can be dense and inaccessible. This critical introduction offers undergraduates a clear way into Habermas’s concept of the ‘public sphere’ and its relevance to contemporary society. Luke Goode’s lively account also sheds new light on the ‘public sphere’ debate that will interest readers already familiar with Habermas’s work.For Habermas, the 'public sphere' was a social forum that allowed people to debate -- whether it was the town hall or the coffee house, maintaining a space for public debate was an essential part of democracy. Habermas’s controversial work examines the erosion of these spaces within consumer society and calls for new thinking about democracy today.Drawing on Habermas’s early and more recent writings, this book examines the ‘public sphere’ in its full complexity, outlining its relevance to today’s media and culture. It will be of interest to students and scholars in a range of disciplines across the social sciences and humanities.

Download or read book Challenges to Civil Society written by and published by Cambria Press. This book was released on with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy written by Richard A. Posner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following up on his timely and well-received book, A Failure of Capitalism, Richard Posner steps back to take a longer view of the continuing crisis of democratic capitalism as the American and world economies crawl gradually back from the depths to which they had fallen in the autumn of 2008 and the winter of 2009. By means of a lucid narrative of the crisis and a series of analytical chapters pinpointing critical issues of economic collapse and gradual recovery, Posner helps non-technical readers understand business-cycle and financial economics, and financial and governmental institutions, practices, and transactions, while maintaining a neutrality impossible for persons professionally committed to one theory or another. He calls for fresh thinking about the business cycle that would build on the original ideas of Keynes. Central to these ideas is that of uncertainty as opposed to risk. Risk can be quantified and measured. Uncertainty cannot, and in this lies the inherent instability of a capitalist economy. As we emerge from the financial earthquake, a deficit aftershock rumbles. It is in reference to that potential aftershock, as well as to the government's stumbling efforts at financial regulatory reform, that Posner raises the question of the adequacy of our democratic institutions to the economic challenges heightened by the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis and the government's energetic response to it have enormously increased the national debt at the same time that structural defects in the American political system may make it impossible to pay down the debt by any means other than inflation or devaluation.

Download or read book Our Time Is Now written by Stacey Abrams and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author of Lead From The Outside and political leader Stacey Abrams, a blueprint to end voter suppression, empower our citizens, and take back our country. "With each page, she inspires and empowers us to create systems that reflect a world in which all voices are heard and all people believe and feel that they matter." —Kerry Washington A recognized expert on fair voting and civic engagement, Abrams chronicles a chilling account of how the right to vote and the principle of democracy have been and continue to be under attack. Abrams would have been the first African American woman governor, but experienced these effects firsthand, despite running the most innovative race in modern politics as the Democratic nominee in Georgia. Abrams didn’t win, but she has not conceded. The book compellingly argues for the importance of robust voter protections, an elevation of identity politics, engagement in the census, and a return to moral international leadership. Our Time Is Now draws on extensive research from national organizations and renowned scholars, as well as anecdotes from her life and others’ who have fought throughout our country’s history for the power to be heard. The stakes could not be higher. Here are concrete solutions and inspiration to stand up for who we are?now. "This is a narrative that describes the urgency that compels me and millions more to push for a different American story than the one being told today. It's a story that is one part danger, one part action, and all true. It's a story about how and why we fight for our democracy and win." - Stacey Abrams

Download or read book Dark Quadrant written by Jonathan Marshall and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-04-09 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Truman to Trump, the deep corruption of our political leaders unveiled. Many critiques of the Trump era contrast it with the latter half of the twentieth century, when the United States seemed governed more by statesmen than by special interests. Without denying the extraordinary vigor of President Trump’s assault on traditional ethical and legal norms, Jonathan Marshall challenges the myth of a golden age of American democracy. Drawing on a host of original archival sources, he tells a shocking story of how well-protected criminals systematically organized the corruption of American national politics after World War II. Marshall begins by tracing the extraordinary scandals of President Truman, whose political career was launched by the murderous Pendergast machine in Missouri. He goes on to highlight the role of organized crime in the rise of McCarthyism during the Cold War, the near-derailment of Vice President Johnson’s political career by two mob-related scandals, and Nixon’s career-long association with underworld figures. The book culminates with a discussion of Donald Trump’s unique history of relations with the traditional American Mafia and newer transnational gangs like the Russian mafiya—and how the latter led to his historic impeachment by the House of Representatives.

Download or read book When You Grow Up to Vote written by Eleanor Roosevelt and published by Roaring Brook Press. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eleanor Roosevelt’s book on citizenship for young people now revised and updated for a contemporary audience. In the voice of one of the most iconic and beloved political figures of the twentieth century comes a book on citizenship for the future voters of the twenty-first century. Eleanor Roosevelt published the original edition of When You Grow Up to Vote in 1932, the same year her husband was elected president. The new edition has updated information and back matter as well as fresh, bold art from award-winning artist Grace Lin. Beginning with government workers like firefighters and garbage collectors, and moving up through local government to the national stage, this book explains that the people in government work the voter. Fresh, contemporary, and even fun, When You Grow Up to Vote is the book parents and teachers need to talk to children about how our government is designed to work.

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.