American Doctrines

In The Obama Doctrine, Colin Dueck analyzes and explains what the Obama Doctrine in foreign policy actually is and maps out the competing visions on offer from the Republican Party. Dueck, a leading scholar of US foreign policy, contends it is now becoming clear that Obama's policy of international retrenchment is in large part a function of his emphasis on achieving domestic policy goals. There have been some successes in the approach, but there have also been costs.

The American empire emerged from the shadows of World War II. As the nation's influence swept the globe with near impunity, a host of evil forces followed—from racism, exploitation, and military invasion to killer clowns, flying saucers, and monsters borne of a fear of the other. By viewing American imperial history through the prism of the horror genre, Dark Carnivals lays bare how the genre shaped us, distracted us, and gave form to a violence as American as apple pie.

This anthology provides a timely critical overview of the American conservative movement. The contributors take on subjects that other commentators have either not noticed or have been fearful to discuss. In particular, this collection of searing essays hits hard at blatant cult of celebrity and intolerance of dissent that has come to characterize the conservative movement in this country.

With essays and manifestos by American Compass founder Oren Cass, New America cofounder Michael Lind, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, National Affairs founding editor Yuval Levin, American Affairs founding editor Julius Krein, among others, The New Conservatives revitalizes the American conservative tradition, breaking from the GOP's free-market fundamentalism to promote the productive markets, supportive communities, and responsive politics that are the foundations of the nation's liberty and prosperity.

Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on US global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the 21st century into a dark time of despotism.

Jeffries spares no one and nothing in this explosive new book. The atrocities of Union troops during the Civil War, and Allied troops during World War II, are documented in great detail. The Nuremberg Trials are presented as the antithesis of justice. In the follow-up to his previous, bestselling book Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics, Jeffries demonstrates that crimes, corruption, and conspiracies didn't start with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

In this powerful, sweeping history and analysis of American democracy, Thom Hartmann shows how democracy is the one form of governance most likely to produce peace and happiness among people. With the violent exception of the Civil War, American democracy resisted the pressure to disintegrate into factionalism for nearly two centuries, and now our very system of democratic elections is at stake. So how do we save our democracy?

Six months ago, I had never heard the name Eugene Debs. Today, I believe he is one of the greatest orators in history, ranking alongside Napoleon, Robespierre, Lincoln, and Cicero. More importantly, he was a genuine hero, a man to believe in and follow into the fires of hell. His legacy has been unrightly ignored by the same powers that imprisoned and harassed him over his life. He should be an icon, but is unremembered, for reasons he himself goes into.

Propelled by the belief that government has slipped out of the hands of ordinary citizens, a surging wave of populism is destabilizing democracies around the world. As John Matsusaka reveals in Let the People Rule, this belief is based in fact. Over the past century, while democratic governments have become more efficient, they have also become more disconnected from the people they purport to represent. The solution Matsusaka advances is familiar but surprisingly underused: direct democracy, in the form of referendums.

A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one-year anniversary of the Trump presidency.

Americans have always put the past to political ends. The Union laid claim to the Revolution - so did the Confederacy. Civil rights leaders said they were the true sons of liberty - so did Southern segregationists. This book tells the story of the centuries-long struggle over the meaning of the nation's founding, including the battle waged by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and evangelical Christians to "take back America".

In this visionary book, Dennis Prager, one of America's most original thinkers, contends that humanity confronts a monumental choice. The world must decide between American values and its two oppositional alternatives: Islamism and European-style democratic socialism. Prager makes the case for the American value system as the most viable program ever devised to produce a good society. Those values are explained here more clearly and persuasively than ever before.

The award-winning producer of The Rachel Maddow Show exposes the Republican Party as a gang of impostors, meticulously documenting how they have abandoned their duty to govern and are gravely endangering America.

Union tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together and forge an American nationhood.

The goal of playing the great game of business has always been to find a way to teach the have-nots how the haves make it. It’s about creating and distributing wealth equitably as a way to close those gaps in wealth that plague our society. It’s about changing the game. We authored Change the Game for those of you who continue to seek a brighter side of capitalism - one that truly transforms lives for the better. This book is about hope: No matter how grim things look, you can make them better.

For the past 30 years, David Mamet has been a controversial and defining force in theater and film, championing the most cherished liberal values along the way. In some of the great movies and plays of our time, his characters have explored the ethics of the business world, embodied the struggles of the oppressed, and faced the flaws of the capitalist system. But in recent years Mamet has had a change of heart.

The problem isn’t that liberal authors present their opinions or interpretations of history from an obvious left-wing bias. Students learn, for example, that the Founding Fathers were elitists who drafted the Constitution in order to protect their own economic interests; that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation only because he needed black soldiers; that racist groups such as the KKK represented our society in the early twentieth century.

Taking stock of our fragmented political landscape, Michael Patrick Lynch delivers a trenchant philosophical take on digital culture and its tendency to make us into dogmatic know-it-alls. The internet - where most shared news stories are not even read by the person posting them - has contributed to the rampant spread of "intellectual arrogance". In this culture, we have come to think that we have nothing to learn from one another; we are rewarded for emotional outrage over reflective thought; and we glorify a defensive rejection of those different from us.

In The Politics Industry, Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis - and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework - to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change - a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws.

With Uncivil Agreement, Lilliana Mason looks at the growing social gulf across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently come to divide neatly between the two major political parties. She argues that group identifications have changed the way we think and feel about ourselves and our opponents. Even when Democrats and Republicans can agree on policy outcomes, they tend to view one another with distrust and to work for party victory over all else.