Americans in the early 19th century were, as one foreign traveller bluntly put it, "filthy, bordering on the beastly"--perfectly at home in dirty, bug-infested, malodorous surroundings. Many a home swarmed with flies, barnyard animals, dust, and dirt; clothes were seldom washed; men hardly ever shaved or bathed. Yet gradually all this changed, and today, Americans are known worldwide for their obsession with cleanliness--for their sophisticated plumbing, daily bathing, shiny hair and teeth, and spotless clothes. In Chasing Dirt, Suellen Hoy provides a colorful history of this remarkable transformation from "dreadfully dirty" to "cleaner than clean," ranging from the pre-Civil War era to the 1950s, when American's obsession with cleanliness reached its peak.
Hoy offers here a fascinating narrative, filled with vivid portraits of the men and especially the women who helped America come clean. She examines the work of early promoters of cleanliness, such as Catharine Beecher and Sylvester Graham; and describes how the Civil War marked a turning point in our attitudes toward cleanliness, discussing the work of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, headed by Frederick Law Olmsted, and revealing how the efforts of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War inspired American women--such as Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, and Louisa May Alcott--to volunteer as nurses during the war. We also read of the postwar efforts of George E. Waring, Jr., a sanitary engineer who constructed sewer systems around the nation and who, as head of New York City's street-cleaning department, transformed the city from the nation's dirtiest to the nation's cleanest in three years. Hoy details the efforts to convince African-Americans and immigrants of the importance of cleanliness, examining the efforts of Booker T. Washington (who preached the "gospel of the toothbrush"), Jane Addams at Hull House, and Lillian Wald at the Henry Street Settlement House. Indeed, we see how cleanliness gradually shifted from a way to prevent disease to a way to assimilate, to become American. And as the book enters the modern era, we learn how advertising for soaps, mouth washes, toothpastes, and deodorants in mass-circulation magazines showed working men and women how to cleanse themselves and become part of the increasingly sweatless, odorless, and successful middle class. Shower for success!
By illuminating the historical roots of America's shift from "dreadfully dirty" to "squeaky clean," Chasing Dirt adds a new dimension to our understanding of our national culture. And along the way, it provides colorful and often amusing social history as well as insight into what makes Americans the way we are today.

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Suellen Hoy - Chasing Dirt, The American Pursuit o f Cleanliness (1996).pdf

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Dennis S. Ippolito - Why Budgets Matter, Budget Po licy and American Politics (2003).jpg

Much of what government does depends on money. From the nation's founding until today, conflicts over the powers to tax, spend, and borrow have been at the heart of American politics. Why Budgets Matter is a comprehensive account of how these conflicts over budget policy have shaped national politics by determining the size and role of the federal government.
The history of budget policy provides a unique perspective on political change in the United States and helps explain how and why the federal government has grown over time. Dennis Ippolito reviews the different stages of this development-from the era of small government prior to the Civil War through the dramatic transformations of the New Deal and Cold War up to the current challenges of modernizing the welfare state-and shows how each of these stages reflected a dominant vision of the size and role of the federal government, incorporating particular spending, tax, and borrowing philosophies and policies.
Why Budgets Matter offers new insights into the enduring debate over "limited government" versus "big government" in the United States and will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and policymakers seeking a better understanding of the background to the fiscal problems we face today.

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Dennis S. Ippolito - Why Budgets Matter, Budget Po licy and American Politics (2003).pdf

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Loren R. Cass - The Failures of American And Europ ean Climate Policy, International Norms, Domestic Politics, And Unachievable Commitments (2006)).jpg

USA Books1 - Loren R. Cass - The Failures of American And European... Domestic Politics, And Unachievable Commitments 2006.jpg

Examines why some nations, but not others, have met their commitments to international climate treaties.
In this timely work, Loren R. Cass argues that international norms and normative debates provide the keys to understanding the evolution of both domestic and international responses to the threat of global climate change. Ranging from the early identification and framing of this problem in the mid 1980s through the Kyoto Protocol's entry into force in 2005, Cass focuses on two normative debates that were critical to the development of climate policy--"who should bear primary responsibility for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and what principles would guide these reductions. He examines why some nations, but not others, have met their commitments, and concludes that while many states affirmed the international norms, most did not fully translate them into domestic policy. Cass offers an index to measure the domestic salience of international norms and compare the level of salience across states and within states over time, and uses it to assess the European Union, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

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Loren R. Cass - The Failures of American And Europ ean Climate Policy, International Norms, Domestic Politics, And Unachievable Commitments (2006)).pdf

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The New Americans - Yukio Kawano - Social Determin ants of Immigrant Selection, The United States, Ca nada, And Australia (2006).jpg

USA Books1 - The New Americans - Yukio Kawano - Social Determinants...ection, The United States, Canada, And Australia 2006.jpg

Self-selection theory predicts that skilled workers move to countries with more unequal labor markets, and unskilled workers to countries with more equal ones. However, this thesis alone fails to consider the structural process of uprooting in the sending countries and the process of group adaptation in the host countries. Kawano reveals that imbalanced development in peripheral countries induces emigration of skilled workers, and that economic and intellectual resources in the receiving coethnic groups positively affect adaptation, while social networks and English fluency negatively affect it. Racial discrimination in the U.S. is also a factor: Asian and Latino immigrants in Canada and Australia earn at least as much as native whites, but much less in the U.S.

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The New Americans - Yukio Kawano - Social Determin ants of Immigrant Selection, The United States, Ca nada, And Australia (2006).pdf

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John G. Gunnell - Imagining the American Polity, P olitical Science and the Discourse of Democracy (2 004).jpg

Americans have long prided themselves on living in a country that serves as a beacon of democracy to the world, but from the time of the founding they have also engaged in debates over what the criteria for democracy are as they seek to validate their faith in the United States as a democratic regime. In this book John Gunnell shows how the academic discipline of political science has contributed in a major way to this ongoing dialogue, thereby playing a significant role in political education and the formulation of popular conceptions of American democracy.
Using the distinctive "internalist" approach he has developed for writing intellectual history, Gunnell traces the dynamics of conceptual change and continuity as American political science evolved, from its focus in the nineteenth century on the idea of the state through the emergence of a pluralist theory of democracy in the 1920s and its transfiguration into liberalism in the mid-1930s up to the rearticulation of pluralist theory in the 1950s and its resurgence yet again in the 1990s. Along the way he explores how political scientists have grappled with a fundamental paradox about popular sovereignty: whether democracy requires a people and a national democratic community or whether the requisites of democracy can be achieved through fortuitous social configurations coupled with the design of certain institutional mechanisms.

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John G. Gunnell - Imagining the American Polity, P olitical Science and the Discourse of Democracy (2 004).pdf

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Lanita Jacobs-Huey - From the Kitchen to the Parlo r, Language and Becoming in African American Women 's Hair Care (2006).jpg

USA Books1 - Lanita Jacobs-Huey - From the Kitchen to the Parlor, L...nd Becoming in African American Womens Hair Care 2006.jpg

When is hair "just hair" and when is it not "just hair"? Documenting the politics of African American women's hair, this multi-sited linguistic ethnography explores everyday interaction in beauty parlors, Internet discussions, comedy clubs, and other contexts to illuminate how and why hair matters in African American women's day-to-day experiences.

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Lanita Jacobs-Huey - From the Kitchen to the Parlo r, Language and Becoming in African American Women 's Hair Care (2006).pdf

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Howard J. Wiarda - Think Tanks and Foreign Policy, The Foreign Policy Research Institute and Preside ntial Politics (2010).jpeg

USA Books1 - Howard J. Wiarda - Think Tanks and Foreign Policy, The...cy Research Institute and Presidential Politics 2010.jpeg

Think tanks have become increasingly important in American politics foreign policy. In the last thirty years think tanks have emerged as major actors on the political stage, comparable in influence to large interest groups, political parties, and government agencies. In the same time span these think tanks have replaced universities as the main source for new policy ideas and the background research and arguments to justify them.

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Howard J. Wiarda - Think Tanks and Foreign Policy, The Foreign Policy Research Institute and Preside ntial Politics (2010).pdf

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Joshua Kosman - The Buyout of America, How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis (2 009).jpg

An authoritative exposé of the mysterious and potentially dangerous world of private equity
Few people realize that the top private equity firms, such as Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, have become the nation's largest employers through the businesses they own. Using leveraged buyouts that load their acquired companies with loans, private equity firms have generated more than $1 trillion in new debt-which will come due just when these businesses are least likely to be able to pay it off.
Journalist Josh Kosman explores private equity's explosive growth and shows how its barons wring profits at the expense of the long-term health of their companies. He argues that excessive debt and mismanagement will likely trigger another economic meltdown within the next five years, wiping out up to two million jobs.
He also explores the links between the private equity elite and Washington power players, who have helped them escape government scrutiny. The result is a timely book with an important warning for us all.

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Joshua Kosman - The Buyout of America, How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis (2 009).pdf

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Keally D. Mcbride - Collective Dreams, Political I magination & Community (2005).jpg

How do we go about imagining different and better worlds for ourselves? Collective Dreams looks at ideals of community, frequently embraced as the basis for reform across the political spectrum, as the predominant form of political imagination in America today. Examining how these ideals circulate without having much real impact on social change provides an opportunity to explore the difficulties of practicing critical theory in a capitalist society.
Different chapters investigate how ideals of community intersect with conceptions of self and identity, family, the public sphere and civil society, and the state, situating community at the core of the most contested political and social arenas of our time. Ideals of community also influence how we evaluate, choose, and build the spaces in which we live, as the author's investigations of Celebration, Florida, and of West Philadelphia show. Following in the tradition of Walter Benjamin, Keally McBride reveals how consumer culture affects our collective experience of community as well as our ability to imagine alternative political and social orders.
Taking ideals of community as a case study, Collective Dreams also explores the structure and function of political imagination to answer the following questions: What do these oppositional ideals reveal about our current political and social experiences? How is the way we imagine alternative communities nonetheless influenced by capitalism, liberalism, and individualism? How can these ideals of community be used more effectively to create social change?

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Keally D. Mcbride - Collective Dreams, Political I magination & Community (2005).pdf

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Norval Morris, Michael Tonry - Between Prison and Probation, Intermediate Punishments in a Rational Sentencing System (1991).jpg

USA Books1 - Norval Morris, Michael Tonry - Between Prison and Prob...iate Punishments in a Rational Sentencing System 1991.jpg

Across the country prisons are jammed to capacity and, in extreme cases, barges and mobile homes are used to stem the overflow. Probation officers in some cities have caseloads of 200 and more--hardly a manageable number of offenders to track and supervise. And with about one million people in prison and jail, and two and a half million on probation, it is clear we are experiencing a crisis in our penal system.
In Between Prison and Probation, Norval Morris and Michael Tonry, two of the nation's leading criminologists, offer an important and timely strategy for alleviating these problems. They argue that our overwhelmed corrections system cannot cope with the flow of convicted offenders because the two extremes of punishment--imprisonment and probation--are both used excessively, with a near-vacuum of useful punishments in between. Morris and Tonry propose instead a comprehensive program that relies on a range of punishment including fines and other financial sanctions, community service, house arrest, intensive probation, closely supervised treatment programs for drugs, alcohol and mental illness, and electronic monitoring of movement. Used in rational combinations, these "intermediate" punishments would better serve the community than our present polarised choice. Serious consideration of these punishments has been hindered by the widespread perception that they are therapeutic rather than punitive. The reality, however, Morris and Tonry argue, "is that the American criminal justice system is both too severe and too lenient--almost randomly." Systematically implemented and rigorously enforced, intermediate punishments can "better and more economically serve the community, the victim, and the criminal than the prison terms and probation orders they supplant."
Between Prison and Probation goes beyond mere advocacy of an increasing use of interdediate punishments; the book also addresses the difficult task of fitting these punishments into a comprehensive, fair and community-protective sentencing system.

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Norval Morris, Michael Tonry - Between Prison and Probation, Intermediate Punishments in a Rational Sentencing System (1991).pdf

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The New Americans - Jill S. Reichman - Immigration , Acculturation, And Health, The Mexican Diaspora (2006).jpg

USA Books1 - The New Americans - Jill S. Reichman - Immigration, Ac... Acculturation, And Health, The Mexican Diaspora 2006.jpg

Reichman’s debunks the myth of the cognitive and behavioral intransigence of first generation Mexican immigrants. Focusing on health care, she reveals the flexibility of female immigrants’ beliefs about health and illness. She demonstrates how the rate of acculturation varies with the complaint: those with chronic disease shift health ideology faster than those sick from sub-acute illnesses. Ultimately, all sojourners learn new ways to care for themselves and redefine how they prevent and treat disease. Reichman’s most important discovery is that the majority of changes occur within ten years, regardless of the age at which immigration takes place, the type of sending community, the level of education, or the English language fluency of the migrant.

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The New Americans - Jill S. Reichman - Immigration , Acculturation, And Health, The Mexican Diaspora (2006).pdf

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Ann DuCille - The Coupling Convention, Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction (1993).jpg

What does the tradition of marriage mean for people who have historically been deprived of its legal status? Generally thought of as a convention of the white middle class, the marriage plot has received little attention from critics of African-American literature. In this study, Ann duCille uses texts such as Nella Larsen's Quicksand (1928) and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) to demonstrate that the African-American novel, like its European and Anglo-American counterparts, has developed around the marriage plot--what she calls "the coupling convention." Exploring the relationship between racial ideology and literary and social conventions, duCille uses the coupling convention to trace the historical development of the African-American women's novel. She demonstrates the ways in which black women appropriated this novelistic device as a means of expressing and reclaiming their own identity. More than just a study of the marriage tradition in black women's fiction, however, The Coupling Convention takes up and takes on many different meanings of tradition. It challenges the notion of a single black literary tradition, or of a single black feminist literary canon grounded in specifically black female language and experience, as it explores the ways in which white and black, male and female, mainstream and marginalized "traditions" and canons have influenced and cross-fertilized each other. Much more than a period study, The Coupling Convention spans the period from 1853 to 1948, addressing the vital questions of gender, subjectivity, race, and the canon that inform literary study today. In this original work, duCille offers a new paradigm for reading black women's fiction.

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Ann DuCille - The Coupling Convention, Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction (1993).pdf

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Arthur David Kahn - Experiment in Occupation, Witn ess to the Turnabout, Anti-Nazi War to Cold, War 1 944-1946 (2004).jpg

USA Books1 - Arthur David Kahn - Experiment in Occupation, Witness... Turnabout, Anti-Nazi War to Cold, War 1944-1946 2004.jpg

As a participant in many of the events he writes about in Experiment in Occupation, Arthur Kahn offers a richly detailed account of the process by which the fight against Nazism came to be transformed into the Cold War. His story reveals how those in the Military Government of Germany who were dedicated to carrying out the war aims promulgated by Roosevelt and Eisenhower for a thorough democratization of Germany were ultimately defeated in their confrontation with powerful elements in the Military Government and in Washington who were more intent upon launching a preemptive war against the Soviet Union than upon the eradication of Nazism and German militarism.
A twenty-three-year-old OSS operative, Arthur Kahn was assigned after D-Day to a psychological warfare unit, where at first he supervised prisoner-of-war interrogations and then served as an editor of intelligence. Instructed to respond to requests from Supreme Headquarters, he drafted proposals for psychological warfare approaches to critical situations at the front only to discover that a SHAEF directive banned calls to the Germans to revolt. Subsequently Kahn served in liaison with the Soviets and during the Battle of the Bulge at Montgomery's British headquarters. For several months before and after VE Day he traveled through the American Zone as an intelligence investigator and wrote a report that led to the dismissal of General George S. Patton as Military Governor of Bavaria. Appointed Chief Editor of Intelligence of the Information Control Division, he produced the most influential intelligence weekly in the American Zone.
Kahn's portrayal of events in postwar Germany provides warnings for current and future American experiments in foreign occupation.

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Arthur David Kahn - Experiment in Occupation, Witn ess to the Turnabout, Anti-Nazi War to Cold, War 1 944-1946 (2004).pdf

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Harry Browne - Why Government Doesn't Work (1995).jpg

A platform summation by the libertarian candidate for president states that big government is ineffective and behind most of American society's ills and proposes a redefined government that will improve such areas as education, violence, and taxes.
Harry Browne, the Libertarian Party candidate for President in 1996, outlines his views on government and lays out his platform. According to Browne, just about everything from rising healthcare costs to our collapsing morality is the fault of a government that differs from organized crime only because it "has flags in front of its offices." The answer to all our ills, he says, lies with free enterprise, which should be put in charge of such tasks as national defense and education. Among the things he promises to do if elected: pardon anyone ever convicted of violating federal weapons-control laws, and sell the country's national parks.

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Harry Browne - Why Government Doesn't Work (1995).pdf

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Jason A. Edwards - Navigating the Post-Cold War Wo rld, President Clinton's Foreign Policy Rhetoric ( 2008).jpg

Jason A. Edwards explores the various rhetorical choices and strategies employed by former president Bill Clinton to discuss foreign policy issues in a new, post-Cold War era. Edwards argues that each U.S. president has situated himself within the same foreign policy paradigm, drawing upon the same set of ideas and utilizing the same basic vernacular to discuss foreign policy. He describes how former presidents-and President Clinton, in particular-made modifications to this paradigm, leaving a rhetorical signature that tells us as much about the nature of their presidencies as it does about the international environment they faced. By examining the nuances and unique contributions President Clinton made to American foreign policy rhetoric, Edwards shows how his distinct rhetorical signature will influence future administrations.

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