The death penalty remains one of the most controversial issues in the United States. Its proponents claim many things in their defense of its continued application. For example, they claim that it deters crime, that death by lethal injection is painless and humane, that it is racially neutral, and that it provides "closure" to families of the victims. In this comprehensive review of the major death penalty issues, the authors systematically dismantle each one of these myths about capital punishment in a hard-hitting critique of how our social, political, and community leaders have used fear and myth (symbolic politics) to misrepresent the death penalty as a public policy issue. They successfully demonstrate how our political and community leaders have used myth and emotional appeals to misrepresent the facts about capital executions. Successive chapters address the following topics: the notion of community bonding, the expectation of effective crime fighting, the desire for equal justice, deterrence, the hope for fidelity to the Constitution, the claim of error-free justice, closure, retribution, cost-effectiveness, and the messianic desires of some politicians. In each of these areas the authors quote from death penalty advocates making these claims and then proceed to analyze and ultimately dismember the claimed advantages of the death penalty.

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Rudolph J. Gerber, John M. Johnson - The Top Ten D eath Penalty Myths, The Politics of Crime Control (2007).pdf

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John C. Green - The Faith Factor, How Religion Inf luences American Elections (2007).jpg

The impact of religion on the 2004 presidential election results provoked widespread consternation and surprise. Given the intensity and closeness of the results, however, the role of religion should not have come as a shock. In fact, religion and faith have played a vital role in American elections for some time, and here, Green explores the links and how they have changed over time. Specifically, he concludes that there was an "old religion gap" that described longstanding political differences among religious communities, which has been supplanted by a "new religion gap" that shows political divisions based on religious behavior and belief. Green puts the differences into context and documents the changing role of religion in politics over the last sixty years. Covering three areas of religion that tend to influence election outcomes, Green illuminates the meaning of religious belonging, behaving, and believing in current political context. Each of these aspects of religion affects the way people vote and their views of issues, ideology, and partisanship. He reviews the importance of "moral values" in the major party coalitions and discusses the role religious appeals have in presidential campaigns. In addition, he compares the influence of religion to other factors such as gender, age, and income. Given the emphasis on the influence of religion on American politics and elections in recent years, this book serves as a cogent reminder that the situation is not new, and offers a careful analysis of the real role faith plays in the electing of government officials.

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Martin Dupuis, Keith Boeckelman - Barack Obama, th e New Face of American Politics (2007).jpg

Barack Obama's election to the U.S. Senate in 2004 is one of the most interesting and colorful political campaigns in recent history. His rousing keynote address at the Democratic National Convention that same year made his name a household word. The "Obama for Illinois" crusade offers important insights into American politics. The authors explore the role of money, political party, ethnicity, religion, and the issues facing our society today. Obama's straightforward policy recommendations, message of hope and inclusion, and charismatic style propelled him to the national spotlight. Obama has the potential to shape America and to reshape U.S. politics as he campaigns for the White House. Obama's state senate career and his decision to enter the U.S. Senate race are examined in this book. Despite a primary field of six competitors, Obama received more than half of the Democratic vote, defeating a multimillionaire and the state comptroller, a well-known figure in the Democratic Party. The general election imploded for the Republicans in the first few weeks of the campaign when it was revealed that their candidate was embroiled in a sex scandal. Alan Keyes, the ultraconservative, outspoken African American who had run for president twice and for the U.S. Senate from Maryland, was recruited to challenge Obama. But Obama, whose skill with the media and whose ability to raise funds was evident even in those early days of his career, easily won the race with 70 percent of the vote. The authors analyze Obama's ability to speak to the concerns of multiple constituencies by appealing to a coalition of voters that transcends race, class, and gender. At the start of his presidential run, Obama gives new meaning to the American dream.

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Martin Dupuis, Keith Boeckelman - Barack Obama, th e New Face of American Politics (2007).pdf

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Thomas Gangale - From the Primaries to the Polls, How to Repair America's Broken Presidential Nomina tion Process (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - Thomas Gangale - From the Primaries to the Polls, How ... Americas Broken Presidential Nomination Process 2007.jpg

America's presidential nominating process is inherently unfair and exclusive, yielding undue weight and privilege to the states that vote in the earliest rounds. More and more states are beating down the door to vote earlier, trying to redress the inequity on a state-by-state basis. In the ensuing free-for-all, the presidential primary schedule has become so front-loaded that the anointed "front-runner" with the biggest war chest in each of the major parties is the de facto nominee. The primaries are becoming mere noise and pageantry, as the national conventions have been for several decades. From the Primaries to the Polls describes the problem and proposes the solution. The American Plan is designed to begin with contests in small-population states, where candidates do not need millions of dollars to compete and a wide field of presidential hopefuls can be competitive in the early going. A "minor candidate's" surprise success in early rounds, based on merit rather than money, tends to attract money from larger numbers of small contributors for the campaign to spend in later rounds of primaries. Keeping more candidates in the race longer to challenge to the "front-runners" prevents a rush to judgment and permits more voters across the country to select from a diverse field. As the campaign proceeds over ten two-week intervals of primaries and caucuses on a semi-randomized schedule, the aggregate value of contested states becomes successively larger, requiring the expenditure of larger amounts of money in order to campaign effectively. A more gradual weeding-out process occurs, allowing a clear winner to emerge only after the full spectrum of candidates has been in play nationally.

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Thomas Gangale - From the Primaries to the Polls, How to Repair America's Broken Presidential Nomina tion Process (2007).pdf

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Portia Takakjian - The 32-Gun Frigate Essex (2005).jpg

On the successful completion of the War of Independence, the American navy was disbanded, and it was not until the late 1790s that a regular naval force was reconstituted. Provoked by the need to protect American merchant shipping from the belligerent European nations and the piratical Barbary powers, Congress decided on a programme of frigate building, which included the 32-gun frigate Essex. Designed by William Hackett, Essex was a typical medium frigate of her time. Working from both US and British sources, the author has reconstructed many previously undetermined details of the ship and in passing has rehabilitated the reputation of the designer as one who was responsible for one of the best balanced of that generation's frigates.

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Portia Takakjian - The 32-Gun Frigate Essex (2005).pdf

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Robert Wuthnow - After the Baby Boomers, How Twent y- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - Robert Wuthnow - After the Baby Boomers, How Twenty- ...ings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion 2007.jpg

In a volume sure to change how pundits and clergy think about religion in the contemporary U.S., prolific Princeton sociologist Wuthnow (American Mythos) assembles and analyzes a vast amount of data about the religious lives of Americans aged 21 to 45. His interests include the extent to which younger adults participate in organized worship, as well as how they think about spirituality, the relationship between religion and politics, and theology. Wuthnow insists that in some ways, today’s younger adults are similar to their boomer parents—the vitality of small groups, for example, is nothing new. But there are key differences, chief among them the tendency of today’s younger adults to remain single longer than ever before. Married people are significantly more likely to participate in religious communities; at the same time, participation in at least some religious groups may make marriage more likely. Wuthnow argues that our society provides lots of structural support for children and teens, but leaves younger adults to fend for themselves during the decades when they’re making crucial decisions about family and work. Though long passages of dense statistics make for a sometimes clunky read, this book is terrifically important.

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Christopher S. Parker - Fighting for Democracy, Bl ack Veterans and the Struggle Against White Suprem acy in the Postwar South (2009).jpg

USA Books1 - Christopher S. Parker - Fighting for Democracy, Black...gle Against White Supremacy in the Postwar South 2009.jpg

Fighting for Democracy shows how the experiences of African American soldiers during World War II and the Korean War influenced many of them to challenge white supremacy in the South when they returned home. Focusing on the motivations of individual black veterans, this groundbreaking book explores the relationship between military service and political activism. Christopher Parker draws on unique sources of evidence, including interviews and survey data, to illustrate how and why black servicemen who fought for their country in wartime returned to America prepared to fight for their own equality.
Parker discusses the history of African American military service and how the wartime experiences of black veterans inspired them to contest Jim Crow. Black veterans gained courage and confidence by fighting their nation's enemies on the battlefield and racism in the ranks. Viewing their military service as patriotic sacrifice in the defense of democracy, these veterans returned home with the determination and commitment to pursue equality and social reform in the South. Just as they had risked their lives to protect democratic rights while abroad, they risked their lives to demand those same rights on the domestic front.
Providing a sophisticated understanding of how war abroad impacts efforts for social change at home, Fighting for Democracy recovers a vital story about black veterans and demonstrates their distinct contributions to the American political landscape.

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Christopher S. Parker - Fighting for Democracy, Bl ack Veterans and the Struggle Against White Suprem acy in the Postwar South (2009).pdf

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Andrew Denson - Demanding the Cherokee Nation, Ind ian Autonomy and American Culture, 1830-1900 (2004 ).jpg

Demanding the Cherokee Nation examines nineteenth-century Cherokee political rhetoric to address an enigma in American Indian history: the contradiction between the sovereignty of Indian nations and the political weakness of Indian communities. Making use of a rich collection of petitions, appeals, newspaper editorials, and other public records, Andrew Denson describes the ways in which Cherokees represented their people and their nation to non-Indians after their forced removal to Indian Territory in the 1830s. He argues that Cherokee writings on nationhood document a decades-long effort by tribal leaders to find a new model for American Indian relations in which Indian nations could coexist with a modernizing United States.
Most non-Natives in the nineteenth century assumed that American development and progress necessitated the end of tribal autonomy, that at best the Indian nation was a transitional state for Native people on the way to assimilation. As Denson shows, however, Cherokee leaders found a variety of ways in which the Indian nation, as they defined it, belonged in the modern world. Tribal leaders responded to developments in the United States and adapted their defense of Indian autonomy to the great changes transforming American life in the middle and late nineteenth century. In particular, Cherokees in several ways found new justification for Indian nationhood in American industrialization.

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Andrew Denson - Demanding the Cherokee Nation, Ind ian Autonomy and American Culture, 1830-1900 (2004 ).pdf

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Anouar Majid - A Call for Heresy, Why Dissent Is V ital to Islam and America (2007).jpg

A Call for Heresy discovers unexpected common ground in one of the most inflammatory issues of the twenty-first century: the deepening conflict between the Islamic world and the United States. Moving beyond simplistic answers, Anouar Majid argues that the Islamic world and the United States are both in precipitous states of decline because, in each, religious, political, and economic orthodoxies have silenced the voices of their most creative thinkers—the visionary nonconformists, radicals, and revolutionaries who are often dismissed, or even punished, as heretics.

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Anouar Majid - A Call for Heresy, Why Dissent Is V ital to Islam and America (2007).pdf

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Patricia U. Bonomi - Under the Cope of Heaven, Rel igion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America ( 2003).jpg

In this pathbreaking study, Patricia Bonomi argues that religion was as instrumental as either politics or the economy in shaping early American life and values. Looking at the middle and southern colonies as well as at Puritan New England, Bonomi finds an abundance of religious vitality through the colonial years among clergy and churchgoers of diverse religious background. The book also explores the tightening relationship between religion and politics and illuminates the vital role religion played in the American Revolution.

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Patricia U. Bonomi - Under the Cope of Heaven, Rel igion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America ( 2003) [PDF].rar

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John Foran - Revolution in the Making of the Moder n World, Social identities, globalization and mode rnity (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - John Foran - Revolution in the Making of the Modern Wo..., Social identities, globalization and modernity 2007.jpg

Featuring contributions from leading thinkers on revolution, it combines theoretical concerns with case studies of individual revolutions to question whether ideas of revolution are still relevant in the postmodern and globalized world of the twenty-first century.

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John Foran - Revolution in the Making of the Moder n World, Social identities, globalization and mode rnity (2007).pdf

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Toyin Falola, Niyi Afolabi - Trans-Atlantic Migrat ion, The Paradoxes of Exile (2007).jpg

This book contrasts voluntary labor and political migration with the involuntary diaspora by focusing on the paradoxes of migration, exile, and survival of African immigrants in the New World.

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Toyin Falola, Niyi Afolabi - Trans-Atlantic Migrat ion, The Paradoxes of Exile (2007).pdf

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Jonathan M. Metzl - The Protest Psychosis, How Sch izophrenia Became a Black Disease (2010).jpg

Revolution was in the air in the 1960s. Civil rights protests demanded attention on the airwaves and in the streets. Anger gave way to revolt, and revolt provided the elusive promise of actual change. But a very differentcivil rights history evolved at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan. Here, far from the national glare of sit-ins, boycotts, or riots, African American men suddenly appeared in the asylum’s previously white, locked wards.Some of these men came to the attention of the state after participating in civil rights demonstrations, while others were sent by the military, the penal system, or the police. Though many of the men hailed from Detroit, ambulances and paddy wagons brought men from other urban centers as well. Once at Ionia, psychiatrists classified these men under a single diagnosis: schizophrenia. In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American men at the Ionia State Hospital, and how events at Ionia mirrored national conversations that increasingly linked blackness, madness, and civil rights. Expertly sifting through a vast array of cultural documents—from scientific literature, to music lyrics, to riveting, tragic hospital charts—Metzl shows how associations betweenschizophrenia and blackness emerged during the 1960s and 1970s in ways that directly reflected national political events. As he demonstrates, far from resulting from the racist intentions of individual doctors or the symptoms of specific patients, racializedschizophrenia grew from a much wider set of cultural shifts that defined the thoughts, actions, and even the politics of black men as being inherently insane. Ultimately, The Protest Psychosis provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions, even during our current, seemingly post-race era of genetics, pharmacokinetics, and brain scans.

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Jonathan M. Metzl - The Protest Psychosis, How Sch izophrenia Became a Black Disease (2010).pdf

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Chae-Jin Lee - A Troubled Peace, U.S. Policy and t he Two Koreas (2006).jpg

In A Troubled Peace, Professor Chae-Jin Lee reviews the vicissitudes of U.S. policy toward South and North Korea since 1948 when rival regimes were installed on the Korean peninsula. He explains the continuously changing nature of U.S.-Korea relations by discussing the goals the United States has sought for Korea, the ways in which these goals have been articulated, and the methods used to implement them. Using a careful analysis of declassified diplomatic documents, primary materials in English, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, and extensive interviews with American and Korean officials, Lee draws attention to a number of factors that have affected U.S. policy: the functions of U.S. security policy in Korea, the role of the United States in South Korea's political democratization, President Clinton's policy of constructive engagement toward North Korea, President Bush's hegemonic policy toward North Korea, and the hexagonal linkages among the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and the two Koreas.

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Thomas A. Johnson - National Security Issues in Sc ience, Law, and Technology (2007).jpg

The tragedy of 9/11 placed homeland security and the prevention of further attacks into the central focus of our national consciousness. With so many avenues of terror open to our enemies in terms of mode, medium, and location, effective management and mitigation of threat must be grounded in objective risk assessment. The structure of national security decisions should be premised on decision theory and science with minimal political posturing or emotional reactivisim. National Security Issues in Science, Law, and Technology demonstrates a mature look at a frightening subject and presents sound, unbiased tools with which to approach any situation that may threaten human lives. By applying the best of scientific decision-making practices this book introduces the concept of risk management and its application in the structure of national security decisions. It examines the acquisition and utilization of all-source intelligence, including the ability to analyze data and forecast patterns, to enable policymakers to make better informed decisions. The text addresses reaction and prevention strategies applicable to chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons; agricultural terrorism; cyberterrorism; and other potential threats to our critical infrastructure.

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William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, Carl J. Schram m - Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Econo mics of Growth and Prosperity (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, Carl J. Schramm - ...lism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity 2007.jpg

Imagine this: a mere century ago, the purchasing power of an average American was one-tenth of what it is today. But what will it take to sustain that growth through the next century? And what can be said about economic growth to aspiring nations seeking higher standards of living for their citizens? In this important book, William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, and Carl J. Schramm contend that the answers to these questions lie within capitalist economies, though many observers make the mistake of believing that “capitalism” is of a single kind. Writing in an accessible style, the authors dispel that myth, documenting four different varieties of capitalism, some “Good” and some “Bad” for growth. The authors identify the conditions that characterize Good Capitalism—the right blend of entrepreneurial and established firms, which can vary among countries—as well as the features of Bad Capitalism. They examine how countries catching up to the United States can move faster toward the economic frontier, while laying out the need for the United States itself to stick to and reinforce the recipe for growth that has enabled it to be the leading economic force in the world. This pathbreaking book is a must read for anyone who cares about global growth and how to ensure America’s economic future.

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William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan, Carl J. Schram m - Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Econo mics of Growth and Prosperity (2007).pdf

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Beverly Gage - The Day Wall Street Exploded, A Sto ry of America in its First Age of Terror (2009).jpg

In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of a once infamous but now largely forgotten terrorist attack. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation. It also takes readers back into the decades-long but little-known history of homegrown terrorism that shaped American society a century ago. The book delves into the lives of victims, suspects, and investigators: world banking power J.P. Morgan, Jr.; labor radical "Big Bill" Haywood; anarchist firebrands Emma Goldman and Luigi Galleani; "America's Sherlock Holmes," William J. Burns; even a young J. Edgar Hoover. It grapples as well with some of the most controversial events of its day, including the rise of the Bureau of Investigation, the federal campaign against immigrant "terrorists," the grassroots effort to define and protect civil liberties, and the establishment of anti-communism as the sine qua non of American politics. Many Americans saw the destruction of the World Trade Center as the first major terrorist attack on American soil, an act of evil without precedent. The Day Wall Street Exploded reminds us that terror, too, has a history.

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Tom Calarco - People of the Underground Railroad, A Biographical Dictionary (2008).jpg

The Underground Railroad was perhaps the best example in U.S. history of blacks and whites working together for the common good. People of the Underground Railroad is the largest in-depth collection of profiles of those individuals involved in the spiriting of black slaves to freedom in the northern states and Canada beginning around 1800 and lasting to the early Civil War years. One hundred entries introduce people who had a significant role in the rescuing, harboring, or conducting of the fugitives—from abolitionists, evangelical ministers, Quakers, philanthropists, lawyers, judges, physicians, journalists, educators, to novelists, feminists, and barbers—as well as notable runaways. The selections are geographically representational of the broad railroad network.
There is renewed interest in the Underground Railroad, exemplified by the new National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati and energized scholarly inquiry. People of the Underground Railroad presents authoritative information gathered from the latest research and established sources, many of them from period publications. Designed for student research and general browsing, in-depth essay entries include further reading. Numerous sidebars complement the entries. A timeline, illustrations, and map help put the profiles into context.

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