Excessive secrecy is the enemy of public accountability and democratic governance. Unfortunately, it is becoming standard operating procedure for many government officials. Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent insistence that his office is not subject to secrecy regulations that apply to the executive branch is just the latest evidence of a systematic campaign to keep information about government activities out of the hands of the American public.
Freedoms of Information laws are grounded in the recognition that knowledge about the government’s actions is the necessary first step in oversight and accountability. Most Americans recognize the need to safeguard national security information from improper public disclosures that would damage the national interest. But national security has become a blanket excuse to withhold information from the public as well as from Congress, especially in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The National Security Archive has documented widespread agency mismanagement and obstruction which lead to delays as long as 17 years in responding to public Freedom of Information Act requests. Only one in four agencies is complying with the Electronic Freedom of Information Act a decade after it passed.
Of course, the right to know is also undermined by the release of information that is inaccurate or misleading.
At the federal level, politics increasingly trumps sound science: reports on key environmental issues are altered by political appointees; information about HIV/AIDS is manipulated to promote a particular ideological viewpoint; and federal employees are muzzled from sharing their expertise.
The misuse of secrecy and the manipulation of science and other information undermine the public’s right to know and the health of our democracy. And they threaten the health of the public as well: a fire at a chemical plant situated near a neighborhood could pose a serious threat to residents’ health, but it is difficult for individuals to learn the most basic information about hazards to which their families may be exposed. The preface to this report, written by Republican Robert Barr and Democrat John Podesta, reflects that the importance of the public’s right to know is not a partisan issue; it is a fundamentally American issue.
Over the years, regardless of the political party in charge, our three organizations have challenged excessive government secrecy and offered ideas to protect the public’s right to know. For example, in 1987, People for the American Way, OMB Watch, the Benton Foundation, and the Advocacy Institute launched a public education campaign to draw attention to the ways in which government was withholding information from the public. One element of that campaign was the publication by People for the American Way of Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy, a primer on secrecy that serves as the model for this publication.

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David Banisar - Government Secrecy, Decisions With out Democracy (2007) 52p 9789998157996 9998157994.pdf

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Emma Goldman - Living My Life (2006).jpg

Anarchist, journalist, drama critic, advocate of birth control and free love, Emma Goldman was the most famous—and notorious—woman in the early twentieth century. This abridged version of her two-volume autobiography takes her from her birthplace in czarist Russia to the socialist enclaves of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Against a dramatic backdrop of political argument, show trials, imprisonment, and tempestuous romances, Goldman chronicles the epoch that she helped shape: the reform movements of the Progressive Era, the early years of and later disillusionment with Lenin’s Bolshevik experiment, and more. Sounding a call still heard today, Living My Life is a riveting account of political ferment and ideological turbulence.

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3,5 MB
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Emma Goldman - Living My Life (2006).pdf

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Emma Goldman - My Further Disillusionment In Russi a (2006).jpg

My Further Disillusionment in Russia is a 1924 non-fiction book by Emma Goldman, her continuation of My Disillusionment in Russia, the original publication of which the last twelve chapters were entirely missing, including the Afterword.

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Emma Goldman - My Further Disillusionment In Russi a (2006).pdf

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Anthony Flint - This Land, The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America (2006).jpg

Despite a modest revival in city living, Americans are spreading out more than ever -- into "exurbs" and "boomburbs" miles from anywhere, in big houses in big subdivisions. We cling to the notion of safer neighborhoods and better schools, but what we get, argues Anthony Flint, is long commutes, crushing gas prices and higher taxes -- and a landscape of strip malls and office parks badly in need of a makeover.
This Land tells the untold story of development in America -- how the landscape is shaped by a furious clash of political, economic and cultural forces. It is the story of burgeoning anti-sprawl movement, a 1960s-style revolution of New Urbanism, smart growth, and green building. And it is the story of landowners fighting back on the basis of property rights, with free-market libertarians, homebuilders, road pavers, financial institutions, and even the lawn-care industry right alongside them.
The subdivisions and extra-wide roadways are encroaching into the wetlands of Florida, ranchlands in Texas, and the desert outside Phoenix and Las Vegas. But with up to 120 million more people in the country by 2050, will the spread-out pattern cave in on itself? Could Americans embrace a new approach to development if it made sense for them?
A veteran journalist who covered planning, development, and housing for the Boston Globe for sixteen years and a visiting scholar in 2005 at the Harvard Design School, Flint reveals some surprising truths about the future and how we live in This Land.

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David F. Prindle - The Paradox of Democratic Capit alism, Politics and Economics in American Thought (2006).jpg

USA Books1 - David F. Prindle - The Paradox of Democratic Capitalis...lism, Politics and Economics in American Thought 2006.jpg

A truly interdisciplinary enterprise, The Paradox of Democratic Capitalism examines the interplay of ideas about politics, economics, and law in American society from the pre-revolutionary era to the eve of the September 11 attacks. David F. Prindle argues that while the United States was founded on liberalism, there is constant tension between two ideals of the liberal tradition: capitalism and democracy.
Tracing the rise of natural law doctrine from neoclassical economics, Prindle examines the influence of economic development in late medieval society on the emergence of classical liberalism in early America and likens that influence to the impact of orthodox economics on contemporary American society.
Prindle also evaluates political, economic, and legal ideas through the lens of his own beliefs. He warns against the emerging extremes of liberal ideology in contemporary American politics, where the right's definition of capitalism excludes interference from democratic publics and the left's definition of democracy excludes a market-based economy.

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Deak Nabers - Victory of Law, The Fourteenth Amend ment, the Civil War, and American Literature, 1852 --1867 (2006).jpg

USA Books1 - Deak Nabers - Victory of Law, The Fourteenth Amendmen...e Civil War, and American Literature, 1852--1867 2006.jpg

In Victory of Law, Deak Nabers examines developing ideas about the nature of law as reflected in literary and political writing before, during, and after the American Civil War. Nabers traces the evolution of antislavery thought from its pre-war opposition to the constitutional order of the young nation to its ultimate elevation of the U.S. Constitution as an expression of the ideal of justice -- an ideal embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment.
Nabers shows how the intellectual history of the Fourteenth Amendment was rooted in literary sources -- including Herman Melville's Battle-Pieces, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and William Wells Brown's Clotel -- as well as in legal texts such as Somerset v. Stewart, Dred Scott v. Sandford, and Charles Sumner's "Freedom National" address. Not only were prominent writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Frederick Douglass instrumental in remapping the relations between law and freedom, but figures like Sumner and John Bingham helped develop a systematic antislavery reading of the Constitution which established literary texts as sources for legal authority.
This interdisciplinary study sheds light on the transformative significance of emerging legalist and constitutionalist forms of antislavery thinking on the literature of the 1850s and 1860s and the growing centrality of aesthetic considerations to antebellum American legal theory and practice -- the historical terms in which a distinctively American cultural identity was conceived.

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Oz Frankel - States of Inquiry, Social Investigati ons and Print Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britai n and the United States (2006).jpg

USA Books1 - Oz Frankel - States of Inquiry, Social Investigations ...Nineteenth-Century Britain and the United States 2006.jpg

In the mid-nineteenth century, American and British governments marched with great fanfare into the marketplace of knowledge and publishing. British royal commissions of inquiry, inspectorates, and parliamentary committees conducted famous social inquiries into child labor, poverty, housing, and factories. The American federal government studied Indian tribes, explored the West, and investigated the condition of the South during and after the Civil War.
Performing, printing, and then circulating these studies, government established an economy of exchange with its diverse constituencies. In this medium, which Frankel terms "print statism," not only tangible objects such as reports and books but knowledge itself changed hands. As participants, citizens assumed the standing of informants and readers.
Even as policy investigations and official reportage became a distinctive feature of the modern governing process, buttressing the claim of the state to represent its populace, government discovered an unintended consequence: it could exercise only limited control over the process of inquiry, the behavior of its emissaries as investigators or authors, and the fate of official reports once issued and widely circulated.
This study contributes to current debates over knowledge, print culture, and the growth of the state as well as the nature and history of the "public sphere." It interweaves innovative, theoretical discussions into meticulous, historical analysis.

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William H. Young, Nancy K. Young - Music of the Wo rld War II Era (2007).jpg

In the World War II era, big bands and swing music reached the heights of popularity with soldiers as well as friends and loved ones back home. Many entertainers such as Glenn Miller also served in the military, or supported the war effort with bond drives and entertaining the troops at home and abroad. In addition to big band and swing music, musicals, jazz, blues, gospel and country music were also popular. Chapters on each, along with an analysis of the evolution of record companies, records, radios, and television are included here, for students, historians, and fans of the era. Includes a timeline of the music of the era, an appendix of the Broadway and Hollywood Musicals, 1939-1945, and an appendix of Songs, Composers, and lyricists, 1939-1945. An extensive discography and bibliography, along with approximately 35 black and white photos, complete the volume.

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William H. Young, Nancy K. Young - Music of the Wo rld War II Era (2007).pdf

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Bobby Murcer, Glen Waggoner - Yankee for Life, My 40-Year Journey in Pinstripes (2008).jpg

A former Yankees great remembers his years in pinstripes and talks candidly about his courageous battle with brain cancer.
As he stepped to the plate at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day in 1966, Bobby Murcer carried with him the hopes and expectations of Yankees fans looking for the next Mickey Mantle.
Like Mantle, Murcer was a phenom from Oklahoma. Like Mantle, he came up to the majors as a shortstop, but was later converted to a centerfielder. And like Mantle, his first at-bat in Yankee Stadium was at the tender age of 19.
Bobby wasn't the Mick, but he became one of the most beloved Yankees of all time.
Yankee for Life is the story of Murcer's stellar career as both a player and as an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster. With self-effacing humor and down-home charm, he shares fascinating, illuminating, and never-before-told anecdotes about former teammates and bosses, including Mantle, Phil Rizzuto, Lou Piniella—and George Steinbrenner.
But no relationship was more significant and poignant than his friendship with Yankees captain Thurman Munson, who died in a plane crash in 1979. On the morning of Munson's funeral, Murcer delivered the eulogy for his friend in Ohio; he ended the day by driving in all five runs in an extra-inning 5-4 victory at Yankee Stadium to honor his captain's memory.
Following his career, Murcer became a revered figure in the Yankees broadcast booth. From the best seat in the House That Ruth Built, he has watched the latest generation of Yankee superstars—Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Mariano Rivera—grow up.
No one is more qualified—or brave enough—to choose his own personal Pinstripe All-Star Team of the last 40 years.
Murcer is no stranger to courage. On Christmas Eve 2006, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Five days later, after surgery to remove it, he learned that the cancer was terminal. In an uplifting, honest, and even humorous exploration of his battle with illness, Murcer explains how the love of his wife and his family, a deep religious faith, and the passionate support of fans have seen him through his ordeal.
Bobby Murcer may not have become the next Mickey Mantle, but he became someone he always wanted to be—a Yankee for life.

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Bobby Murcer, Glen Waggoner - Yankee for Life, My 40-Year Journey in Pinstripes (2008).pdf

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Mark Aldrich - Death Rode the Rails, American Rail road Accidents and Safety, 1828--1965 (2006).jpg

For most of the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, railroads dominated American transportation. They transformed life and they captured the imagination. Yet by 1907 railroads had also become the largest cause of violent death in the country, claiming that year the lives of nearly twelve thousand passengers, workers, and others. In Death Rode the Rails Mark Aldrich explores the evolution of railroad safety in the United States by examining a variety of incidents: spectacular train wrecks, smaller accidents in shops and yards which devastated the lives of workers and their families, and the deaths of thousands of women and children killed while walking on or crossing the street-grade tracks.
The evolution of railroad safety, Aldrich argues, involved the interplay of market forces, science and technology, and legal and public pressures. He considers the railroad as a system in its entirety: operational realities, technical constraints, economic history, internal politics, and labor management. Aldrich shows that economics initially encouraged American carriers to build and operate cheap and dangerous lines. Only over time did the trade-off between safety and output -- shaped by labor markets and public policy -- motivate carriers to develop technological improvements that enhanced both productivity and safety.
A fascinating account of one of America's most important industries and its dangers, Death Rode the Rails will appeal to scholars of economics and the history of transportation, technology, labor, regulation, and business, as well as to railroad enthusiasts.

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Mary C. Kelly - The Shamrock And The Lily, The New York Irish And The Creation Of A Transatlantic Id entity, 1845-1921 (2005).jpg

USA Books1 - Mary C. Kelly - The Shamrock And The Lily, The New Yor... Creation Of A Transatlantic Identity, 1845-1921 2005.jpg

Ireland's tumultuous heritage combined with the promise of cosmopolitan New York to forge a new Irish-American immigrant identity. Between the Great Irish Famine and the creation of the Irish Free State, the New York Irish world preserved as much from the old country as it adopts from the new. The Shamrock and the Lily illuminates a set of remarkable transatlantic connections dominated by the road to Ireland's independence, in an absorbing study of a people driven from a troubled past toward freedom for themselves and for those they left behind.

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Mary C. Kelly - The Shamrock And The Lily, The New York Irish And The Creation Of A Transatlantic Id entity, 1845-1921 (2005).pdf

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Christopher Healy - Pop Culture, The Sane Man's Gu ide to the Insane World of New Fatherhood (2006).jpg

A smart, hip, and exhilaratingly funny primer for today’s father
Once upon a time being a good dad meant doling out bowls of Frankenberry to the kids on weekends while your wife slept until eight. Today it means juggling bilingual board books, Baby Bjorns, and chilled bottles of pre-pumped breast milk. Fortunately, new and prospective fathers have the equivalent of a Sherpa dad in Christopher Healy, who brings his experience—and that of more than 100 other dads—to this clearheaded and hilarious guide. Healy goes beyond the basics and tackles the questions that really matter:
• Is it appropriate to play a couple games of Grand Theft Auto in front of an infant?
• Who decided that people under five will only listen to trilly folk music?
• Is it okay to watch Blue’s Clues when your child is not around?
Genuinely useful and truly entertaining, Pop Culture is indispensable.

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Erik M. Conway - Blind Landings, Low-Visibility Op erations in American Aviation, 1918--1958 (2006).jpg

When darkness falls, storms rage, fog settles, or lights fail, pilots are forced to make "instrument landings," relying on technology and training to guide them through typically the most dangerous part of any flight. In this original study, Erik M. Conway recounts one of the most important stories in aviation history: the evolution of aircraft landing aids that make landing safe and routine in almost all weather conditions. Discussing technologies such as the Loth leader-cable system, the American National Bureau of Standards system, and, its descendants, the Instrument Landing System, the MIT-Army-Sperry Gyroscope microwave blind landing system, and the MIT Radiation Lab's radar-based Ground Controlled Approach system, Conway interweaves technological change, training innovation, and pilots' experiences to examine the evolution of blind landing technologies. He shows how systems originally intended to produce routine, all-weather blind landings gradually developed into routine instrument-guided approaches. Even so, after two decades of development and experience, pilots still did not want to place the most critical phase of flight, the landing, entirely in technology's invisible hand. By the end of World War II, the very concept of landing blind therefore had disappeared from the trade literature, a victim of human limitations.

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Yonn Dierwechter - Urban Growth Management and Its Discontents, Promises, Practices, and Geopolitics in U.S. City-Regions (2008).jpg

USA Books1 - Yonn Dierwechter - Urban Growth Management and Its Dis... Practices, and Geopolitics in U.S. City-Regions 2008.jpg

This book investigates urban growth management in the USA as a contested form of state territoriality. Synthesizing, interpreting, and contributing to literature on the history, theory and practices of urban growth management, the analysis offers critically theorized case studies of four ‘city-regions’ located in four different growth management states.”

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Yonn Dierwechter - Urban Growth Management and Its Discontents, Promises, Practices, and Geopolitics in U.S. City-Regions (2008).pdf

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Gary Lawson, Guy Seidman - The Constitution of Emp ire (2004).jpg

The Constitution of Empire offers a constitutional and historical survey of American territorial expansion from the founding era to the present day. The authors describe the Constitution's design for territorial acquisition and governance and examine the ways in which practice over the past two hundred years has diverged from that original vision. Noting that most of America's territorial acquisitions-including the Louisiana Purchase, the Alaska Purchase, and the territory acquired after the Mexican-American and Spanish-American Wars-resulted from treaties, the authors elaborate a Jeffersonian-based theory of the federal treaty power and assess American territorial acquisitions from this perspective. They find that at least one American acquisition of territory and many of the basic institutions of territorial governance have no constitutional foundation, and they explore the often-strange paths that constitutional law has traveled to permit such deviations from the Constitution's original meaning.

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Gary Lawson, Guy Seidman - The Constitution of Emp ire (2004).pdf

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Joan Hoff - A Faustian Foreign Policy from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush, Dreams of Perfectibilit y (2007).jpg

USA Books1 - Joan Hoff - A Faustian Foreign Policy from Woodrow Wil...lson to George W. Bush, Dreams of Perfectibility 2007.jpg

Professor Joan Hoff's A Faustian Foreign Policy: Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush critiques U.S. foreign policy during this period by showing how moralistic diplomacy has increasingly taken on Faustian overtones. As long as the ideological outcome of the Cold War remained in doubt, there was little reason for presidents or government decision makers to question the unethical aspects of U.S. relations with the rest of the world or the universal and exceptional nature of American values. September 11 allowed the United States to assert its exceptionalism and dominance more unilaterally than ever before.

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Philip Abbott - Accidental Presidents, Death, Assa ssination, Resignation, and Democratic Succession (2009).jpg

USA Books1 - Philip Abbott - Accidental Presidents, Death, Assassin...sination, Resignation, and Democratic Succession 2009.jpg

One of the commonly stated virtues of modern constitutional democracies is their capacity to insure reliable and accepted methods of political succession through election. This book focuses on one particular, though not uncommon, complication in the democratic mode of political succession: American vice-presidents who assume office as a result of the death, assassination or resignation of a president. Three basic strategies by “accidental presidents” to establish and enhance their legitimacy are identified and evaluated. While none are reliably successful, each provides a lens to study the nature of presidential power and authority as well as to contribute to a democratic theory of succession.

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Philip Abbott - Accidental Presidents, Death, Assa ssination, Resignation, and Democratic Succession (2009).pdf

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Colin Read - The Fear Factor, What Happens When Fe ar Grips Wall Street (2009).jpg

The science behind and economic consequences of fear are explained by demonstrating how fear can drive markets to disastrous lows and how the financial industry profits most when fear and volatility are highest. The reader is offered recommendations that can resolve market fears and bolster world economies.

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Jon A. Maguire - Silver Wings, Pinks & Greens, Uni forms, Wings & Insignia of USAAF Airmen in WWII (1 994).jpg

This new look at the uniforms and insignia of the USAAF during the World War II years covers a broad range of clothing, collar insignia, rank insignia, shoulder/sleeve insignia and squadron patches. Additionally, there is an in-depth examination of wing qualification badges.Actual items are presented in nearly 600 illustrations in full color, and also as they appeared in actual war-era photos. Actual uniform regulations and illustrations from the 1943 and 1944 Officers Guides are also provided.Silver Wings, Pinks & Greens will be a useful addition to the libraries of collectors, historians, modelers and veterns alike. Jon Maguire is also the author of American Flight Jackets, Airmen & Aircraft: A History of U.S. Flyers' Jackets from World War I to Desert Storm(with John Conway). Jon lives in Oklahoma City, Ok.

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