01 - USA - dobosz4 - Chomikuj.pl, Strona 420

1,7 MB
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Sam A. Maddra - Hostiles, The Lakota Ghost Dance A nd Buffalo Bill's Wild West (2006).pdf

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Cecilia Tichi - Electronic Hearth, Creating an Ame rican Television Culture (1992).jpg

We all talk about the "tube" or "box," as if television were simply another appliance like the refrigerator or toaster oven. But Cecilia Tichi argues that TV is actually an environment--a pervasive screen-world that saturates almost every aspect of modern life. In Electronic Hearth, she looks at how that environment evolved, and how it, in turn, has shaped the American experience.Tichi explores almost fifty years of writing about television--in novels, cartoons, journalism, advertising, and critical books and articles--to define the role of television in the American consciousness. She examines early TV advertising to show how the industry tried to position the new device as not just a gadget but a prestigious new piece of furniture, a highly prized addition to the home. The television set, she writes, has emerged as a new electronic hearth--the center of family activity. John Updike described this "primitive appeal of the hearth" in Roger's Version: "Television is--its irresistable charm--a fire. Entering an empty room, we turn it on, and a talking face flares into being." Sitting in front of the TV, Americans exist in a safety zone, free from the hostility and violence of the outside world. She also discusses long-standing suspicions of TV viewing: its often solitary, almost autoerotic character, its supposed numbing of the minds and imagination of children, and assertions that watching television drugs the minds of Americans. Television has been seen as treacherous territory for public figures, from generals to presidents, where satire and broadcast journalism often deflate their authority. And the print culture of journalism and book publishing has waged a decades-long war of survival against it--only to see new TV generations embrace both the box and the book as a part of their cultural world. In today's culture, she writes, we have become "teleconscious"--seeing, for example, real life being certified through television ("as seen on TV"), and television constantly ratified through its universal presence in art, movies, music, comic strips, fabric prints, and even references to TV on TV.

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23,3 MB
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Cecilia Tichi - Electronic Hearth, Creating an Ame rican Television Culture (1992).pdf

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Michael Hirsh - At War with Ourselves, Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World (2004).jpg

From Publishers Weekly
America's profound ambivalence toward stewardship of the international system will be the "permanent quagmire" of the 21st century, argues Hirsh (a senior editor at Newsweek, which excerpted this book in its May 12 issue) in his timely contribution to recent literature on the U.S. role in the post-Cold War world. While America "the "oberpower" dominates the globe by exerting a combination of ideological influence and military and economic power, Hirsh says that successive administrations have failed to grasp the nation's historic mandate as orchestrator of the new world order. Having been a foreign correspondent from Kosovo to Afghanistan, Hirsh reports on the discordant policies of Clinton and Bush, while providing the lay reader with an overview of the conflicts and personalities that have shaped a lackluster U.S. foreign policy over the past decade. Unconventional threats like terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction render the U.S. vulnerable and necessitate, in the author's view, a multilateral approach. In Hirsh's perfect world, Clinton's Wilsonian idealism-marked by economic integration, democratization and multilateral cooperation-would coalesce with Bush's unilateralist view of overwhelming military power to forge a strong and principled American leadership. In the meantime, America must confront the pitfalls of "ideological blowback" caused by the spotty application of its own ideals abroad. Repairing the disconnect in U.S. foreign policy that backs autocratic regimes in places like the Middle East while failing to press democracy in the area, offers, Hirsh says, a good place to start.

From Booklist
How is it that the same country that gave the world Woodrow Wilson's crusade for a League of Nations to guarantee peace has now also given us George Bush's dismissal of the United Nations as an irrelevance to the waging of war? A longtime diplomatic correspondent, Hirsch has watched closely as America has stumbled into being the only superpower to survive the cold war. The stumbling was apparent during the Clinton administration--which freely deployed the Wilsonian rhetoric of international idealism but botched its handling of the Kosovo crisis and recoiled from the horrors of Rwanda. But Hirsch expresses even deeper skepticism about the go-it-alone assertiveness of Bush conservatives. Our real national interest, Hirsch argues, lies in leading--not abandoning--the international community that the U.S. helped bring into existence. Only a full commitment to international organizations can limit the "ideological blowback" America has incubated by preaching self-determination and free enterprise while denying the claims of Third World separatists. An ideal primer for general readers trying to fathom the promise and peril of global politics. Bryce Christensen

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2,5 MB
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Michael Hirsh - At War with Ourselves, Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World (2004).pdf

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69 KB
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Shelley Streeby - American Sensations, Class, Empi re, and the Production of Popular Culture (2002).jpg

American Sensations is a brilliant book, useful to students, professors and other readers interested in the history of popular culture and US imperialism. Well written and researched, Streeby's analysis of popular culture regarding the US/Mexican War--a conflict often overlooked in accounts of US cultural history--is stunning. This is a real classic destined to be read for years to come by students and scholars in American Studies, Latin American Studies, and Chicana/o Studies. And given current debates over US imperialism in the Middle East, American Sensations should be required reading for anyone interested in how the past continues to shape our present moment.

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8,2 MB
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Shelley Streeby - American Sensations, Class, Empi re, and the Production of Popular Culture (2002).pdf

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Charles Darrah, James Freeeman, J.A. English-Lueck - Busier Than Ever!, Why American Families Can't Slow Down (2007).jpg

01 - USA - Charles Darrah, James Freeeman, J.A. English-Lueck - Bu...r Than Ever, Why American Families Cant Slow Down 2007.jpg

Busyness defines the lives of most Americans. For some, the focus of busyness is family. For others, it is career or social activities. Sometimes busyness results from a big event, like the catastrophic illness of a family member, but much of it builds from many seemingly inconsequential demands that collectively become overwhelming. We search for the best airline prices on the Internet, are "partners" with teachers in our children's education, and employ a battery of devices that promise to save labor if only we can learn how to use them.

Busier Than Ever! follows the daily activities of fourteen American families. It explores why they are busy and what the consequences are for their lives. Busyness is not just a matter of personal time management, but of the activities we participate in and how each of us creates "the good life." While numerous books deal with efficiency and the difficulties of balancing work and family, Busier Than Ever! offers a fresh approach. Busyness is not a "problem" to be solved--it is who we are as Americans and it's redefining American families.

"Overscheduled families with mission statements. Parents on the run. Kids too busy for childhood. Work invades family life, and vice versa. Blurred boundaries and compartmentalized behavior. How do families create and manage the myriad obligations of middle-class life in 21st century America? Based on extended and detailed ethnographic fieldwork, with intriguing and appealing case studies, the authors offer an unique analysis of contemporary life. No one seeking to understand the American middle class today can afford to miss this highly readable and revealing book."
--Conrad Kottak, University of Michigan

"We all know--and experience--that Americans are busier than ever, but what does that busyness actually entail, day to day, family to family? A fascinating examination of everyday life, this book offers a detailed picture of what constitutes busyness in American families as they cope with a risk society and manage the consequences of option overload. While showing that each family is unique, the authors also uncover patterns that help us understand family life in America today."
--Deborah Tannen, author of You're Wearing THAT? Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation

"The authors have discovered a remarkable paradox. In their devotion to family, parents often express a desire for efficiency, control, productivity--a `new instrumentalism' many of us associate with work. This is a timely look in the mirror of dual-income middle class America."
--Arlie Hochschild, author of The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work

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1,8 MB
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Charles Darrah, James Freeeman, J.A. English-Lueck - Busier Than Ever!, Why American Families Can't Slow Down (2007).pdf

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David Harvey - A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2 007).jpg

Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.

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Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor - The Concise New Partri dge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (2007).jpg

The Concise New Partridge presents, for the first time, all the slang terms from The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English in a single volume.
With over 60,000 entries from around the English-speaking world, the Concise gives you the language of beats, hipsters, Teddy Boys, mods and rockers, hippies, pimps, druggies, whores, punks, skinheads, ravers, surfers, Valley girls, dudes, pill-popping truck drivers, hackers, rappers and more.
The Concise New Partridge is a spectacular resource infused with humor and learning - it's rude, it's delightful and it's a prize for anyone with a love of language.

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54 KB
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David T. Thackery - A Light and Uncertain Hold, A History of the Sixty-Sixth Ohio Volunteer Infantry (1999).jpg

A military and social history of the Sixty-sixth Ohio Volunteer Infantry and the wartime Champaign County, Ohio. It deals with the homefront, morale, reenlistment, and the memory and commemoration of the war. It includes the words and stories of individual soldiers.

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6,6 MB
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David T. Thackery - A Light and Uncertain Hold, A History of the Sixty-Sixth Ohio Volunteer Infantry (1999).pdf

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51 KB
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Eileen Heyes - Tobacco, Usa, Industry Behind the S moke Curtain (1999).jpg

Describes how the health dangers of tobacco became known, despite the political clout and promotional rhetoric that once kept the tobacco industry thriving.

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Eileen Heyes - Tobacco, Usa, Industry Behind the S moke Curtain (1999).pdf

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Aviva Chomsky - ''They Take Our Jobs'', and 20 Ot her Myths about Immigration (2007).jpg

Claims that immigrants take Americans’ jobs, are a drain on the American economy, contribute to poverty and inequality, destroy the social fabric, challenge American identity, and contribute to a host of social ills by their very existence are openly discussed and debated at all levels of society. Chomsky dismantles twenty of the most common assumptions and beliefs underlying statements like “I’m not against immigration, only illegal immigration” and challenges the misinformation in clear, straightforward prose.

In exposing the myths that underlie today’s debate, Chomsky illustrates how the parameters and presumptions of the debate distort how we think—and have been thinking—about immigration. She observes that race, ethnicity, and gender were historically used as reasons to exclude portions of the population from access to rights. Today, Chomsky argues, the dividing line is citizenship. Although resentment against immigrants and attempts to further marginalize them are still apparent today, the notion that non-citizens, too, are created equal is virtually absent from the public sphere. Engaging and fresh, this book will challenge common assumptions about immigrants, immigration, and U.S. history.

“Chomsky’s book is an indispensable guide to the current debate on immigration. If you are at all uncertain about how to deal with anti-immigrant arguments, you will find Chomsky’s book a perfect response to those arguments. She makes her points with crystal-clear clarity, and unassailable evidence, while offering constructive solutions, both short-term and long-term.” —Howard Zinn, author of You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train

“Immigrants take away jobs from “Americans.” Immigrants drive down wages. Immigrants don’t pay taxes and yet benefit from public services. You’ve heard it all before, probably from CNN’s Lou Dobbs. But as Avi Chomsky demonstrates, these are all myths, if not outright lies. She not only demolishes virtually every myth about immigrants and immigration to the U.S., she offers policy makers and activists solutions for tackling many of the issues created by globalization and an immigration policy grounded in falsehoods, and in so doing destroys the greatest myth of all: that nothing can be done.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

"Finally, a concise and comprehensive breakdown of the most prevalent misconceptions about immigration. Avi Chomsky provides not only practical ammunition for the pundit wars, but also real thinking about the intersection of migration with the history of race and rights in the U.S. It's the definitive field guide to today’s immigration debate." —Tram Nguyen, executive editor of Colorlines magazine and author of We Are All Suspects Now

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1,9 MB
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Aviva Chomsky - ''They Take Our Jobs'', and 20 Ot her Myths about Immigration (2007).pdf

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75 KB
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Liz Sonneborn - Chronology of American Indian Hist ory (2006).jpg

A fascinating, in-depth timeline of American Indian history, "Chronology of American Indian History, Updated Edition", updated and expanded with current information, describes thousands of years of events that helped shape the lives and cultures of Native Americans, as well as American society as a whole - from their ancestors' arrival in North America to the present. Cited year-by-year, the events highlight important and interesting moments in American Indian history - both those well-known to any student of American history and those largely unfamiliar to most general readers. A completely new chapter has been added as well, covering events from January 2001 to the present, including such information as court decisions, museum openings, protests, and cultural celebrations. This new material also presents the Indian perspective on more general events - such as the Iraq War and the Katrina disaster - that have made the past five years among the most tumultuous in American history. This edition also includes an expanded bibliography, as well as new photographs that illustrate the people, places, and events discussed in the new chapter.

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Liz Sonneborn - Chronology of American Indian Hist ory (2006).pdf

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Mary Ann Franke - To Save The Wild Bison, Life On The Edge In Yellowstone (2005).jpg

Although the American bison was saved from near-extinction in the nineteenth century, today almost all herds are managed like livestock. The Yellowstone area is the only place in the United States where wild bison have been present since before the first Euro-Americans arrived. But these bison pose risks to property and people when they roam outside the park, including the possibility that they can spread the abortion-inducing disease brucellosis to cattle. Yet measures to constrain the population threaten their status as wild animals.
Mary Ann Franke's To Save the Wild Bison is the first book to examine the ecological and political aspects of the bison controversy and how it reflects changing attitudes toward wildlife. The debate has evoked strong emotions from all sides, including park officials, environmentalists, livestock growers, and American Indians. In describing political compromises among competing positions, Franke does not so much champion a cause as critique the process by which federal and state officials have made and carried out bison management policies. She shows that science, however valuable a tool, cannot by itself resolve what is ultimately a choice among conflicting values.

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2,6 MB
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Mary Ann Franke - To Save The Wild Bison, Life On The Edge In Yellowstone (2005).pdf

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Osprey - Duel 14 - Ron Field - Confederate Ironcla d vs Union Ironclad, Hampton Roads 1862 (2008).jpg

The Ironclad was a revolutionary weapon of war, the first modern, armoured, self-propelled warships. During the American Civil War the South used ironclads to protect their ports from the Northern blockade. Impressed with their superior resistance to fire and, the North developed its own rival fleet of ironclads. Eventually the two products of this modern arms race duelled at the battle of Hampton Roads in a clash that would change the face of naval warfare. Fully illustrated with cutting-edge digital artwork, rare photographs and first-person perspective gunsight views, this book allows the reader to discover the revolutionary and radically different designs of the two rival Ironclads - the Merrimac and USS Monitor - through an analysis of each ship's weaponry, ammunition and steerage.

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Osprey - Warrior 138 - Alejandro de Quesada - Roo sevelt's Rough Riders (2009).jpg

This book examines the brief but colorful history of the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry, and details the rich experiences of the men who fought in its ranks. Founded in May 1898 after the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, the unit was composed of volunteers from all walks of American life. Posted to Cuba, it fought in the battles of Las Guasimas, Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill. At this time, Theodore Roosevelt assumed command, and the unit became known as 'Roosevelt's Rough Riders'. Eventually withdrawn, the men returned to a hero's welcome in the US. The last veteran of the unit died in 1975, but a rich body of source material has survived, and much of this is covered in this fascinating work.

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Paul’t Hart, Karen Tindall - Framing the Global Ec onomic Downturn, Crisis Rhetoric and the Politics of Recessions (2009).jpg

01 - USA - Pault Hart, Karen Tindall - Framing the Global Economi...n, Crisis Rhetoric and the Politics of Recessions 2009.jpg

The global economic downturn that followed the collapse of major US financial institutions is no doubt the most significant crisis of our times. Its effects on corporate and governmental balance sheets have been devastating, as have been its impacts on the employment and well being of tens of millions of citizens. It continues to pose major challenges to national policymakers and institutions around the world.

Managing public uncertainty and anxiety is vital in coping with financial crises. This requires not just prompt action but, most of all, persuasive communication by government leaders. At the same time, the very occurrence of such crises raises acute questions about the effectiveness and robustness of current government policies and institutions. With the stakes being so high, defining and interpreting what is going on, how and why it happened, and what ought to be done now become key questions in the political and policy struggles that crises invariably unleash.

In this volume, we study how heads of government, finance ministers and national bank governors in eight countries as well as the EU engage in such ‘framing contests’, and how their attempts to interpret the cascading events of the economic downturn were publicly received. Using systematic content analysis of speeches and media coverage, this volume offers a unique comparative assessment of public leadership in times of crisis.

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Paul’t Hart, Karen Tindall - Framing the Global Ec onomic Downturn, Crisis Rhetoric and the Politics of Recessions (2009).pdf

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Robert Bryce - Gusher of Lies, The Dangerous Delus ions of ''Energy Independence'' (2009).jpg

Everybody is talking about “energy independence.” But is it really achievable—or even desirable? In this controversial, meticulously researched book, Robert Bryce exposes the false promises and political posturing behind the rhetoric. Gusher of Lies explains why the idea of energy independence appeals to voters while also showing that renewable sources like wind and solar cannot meet America’s growing energy demand. Along the way, Bryce exposes the ethanol scam as one of the longest-running robberies ever perpetrated on American taxpayers. In a new foreword to this edition, he shows how energy independence rhetoric was used during the 2008 election, even as the heavily subsidized ethanol business fueled a growing global food crisis.

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Victoria de Grazia - Irresistible Empire, America' s Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe (2005).jpg

The most significant conquest of the twentieth century may well have been the triumph of American consumer society over Europe's bourgeois civilization. It is this little-understood but world-shaking campaign that unfolds in Irresistible Empire, Victoria de Grazia's brilliant account of how the American standard of living defeated the European way of life and achieved the global cultural hegemony that is both its great strength and its key weakness today.

De Grazia describes how, as America's market empire advanced with confidence through Europe, spreading consumer-oriented capitalism, all alternative strategies fell before it--first the bourgeois lifestyle, then the Third Reich's command consumption, and finally the grand experiment of Soviet-style socialist planning. Tracing the peculiar alliance that arrayed New World salesmanship, statecraft, and standardized goods against the Old World's values of status, craft, and good taste, Victoria de Grazia follows the United States' market-driven imperialism through a vivid series of cross-Atlantic incursions by the great inventions of American consumer society. We see Rotarians from Duluth in the company of the high bourgeoisie of Dresden; working-class spectators in ramshackle French theaters conversing with Garbo and Bogart; Stetson-hatted entrepreneurs from Kansas in the midst of fussy Milanese shoppers; and, against the backdrop of Rome's Spanish Steps and Paris's Opera Comique, Fast Food in a showdown with advocates for Slow Food. Demonstrating the intricacies of America's advance, de Grazia offers an intimate and historical dimension to debates over America's exercise of soft power and the process known as Americanization. She raises provocative questions about the quality of the good life, democracy, and peace that issue from the vaunted victory of mass consumer culture.Oleg Kalugin oversaw the work of American spies, matched wits with the CIA, and became one of the youngest generals in KGB history. Even so, he grew increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system. In 1990, he went public, exposing the intelligence agency’s shadowy methods. Revised and updated in the light of the KGB’s enduring presence in Russian politics, Spymaster is Kalugin’s impressively illuminating memoir of the final years of the Soviet Union.
This essential guide to ancient warfare describes the fight-ing methods of soldiers in Europe and the Middle East in an age before gunpowder. From a detailed examination of the individual components of an ancient army and their equip-ment, to a fascinating exploration of ancient battle strategies, siege warfare, and naval battles, the book explores the unique tactics required to win battles with the technology available. Featuring specially commissioned color and black-and-white artwork and twenty-four full-color tactical maps, this book shows in great detail the methods by which armies, including Assyrians and Roman forces, prevailed over their foes, and why other armies were less successful. This is a must-read for anyone interested in ancient warfare.

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Victoria de Grazia - Irresistible Empire, America' s Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe (2005).pdf

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Vanessa Barker - The Politics of Imprisonment, How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Pun ishes Offenders (2009).jpg

01 - USA - Vanessa Barker - The Politics of Imprisonment, How the ...Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders 2009.jpg

The attention devoted to the unprecedented levels of imprisonment in the United States obscure an obvious but understudied aspect of criminal justice: there is no consistent punishment policy across the U.S. It is up to individual states to administer their criminal justice systems, and the differences among them are vast. For example, while some states enforce mandatory minimum sentencing, some even implementing harsh and degrading practices, others rely on community sanctions. What accounts for these differences?
The Politics of Imprisonment seeks to document and explain variation in American penal sanctioning, drawing out the larger lessons for America's overreliance on imprisonment. Grounding her study in a comparison of how California, Washington, and New York each developed distinctive penal regimes in the late 1960s and early 1970s--a critical period in the history of crime control policy and a time of unsettling social change--Vanessa Barker concretely demonstrates that subtle but crucial differences in political institutions, democratic traditions, and social trust shape the way American states punish offenders. Barker argues that the apparent link between public participation, punitiveness, and harsh justice is not universal but dependent upon the varying institutional contexts and patterns of civic engagement within the U.S. and across liberal democracies.
A bracing examination of the relationship between punishment and democracy, The Politics of Imprisonment not only suggests that increased public participation in the political process can support and sustain less coercive penal regimes, but also warns that it is precisely a lack of civic engagement that may underpin mass incarceration in the United States.

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