American Political Theory

Veteran White House reporter April Ryan thought she had seen everything in her two decades as a White House correspondent. And then came the Trump administration. In Under Fire, Ryan takes us inside the confusion and chaos of the Trump White House to understand how she and other reporters adjusted to the new normal. She takes us inside the policy debates, the revolving door of personnel appointments, and what it is like when she, as a reporter asking difficult questions, finds herself in the spotlight, becoming part of the story.

There is a point in everybody's life at which a tough decision will have to be made - a hard call. For inspiration and direction, we can look to the remarkable individuals in John McCain and Mark Salter's book, which dramatically describes the anatomy of a great decision.

Against the backdrop of post-9/11 America, listeners are taken behind the scenes of some of the most important civil liberties cases in America. From the story of the "American Taliban" to the battle against the National Security Agency's warrantless spying program, In Defense of Our America tracks a roster of skirmishes in the larger fight for civil liberties in this country.

Beginning with the debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton over the future of the nation and continuing through the Civil War, the New Deal, the Reagan Revolution, and Obama and the Tea Party, many pols have asked, "What would the founders do?" instead of "What is the common good today?" Recently both the right and the left have used the founders to sort through such issues as voting rights, campaign finance, free speech, gun control, taxes, and war and peace.

Over eight years of war, ordinary Americans accomplished something extraordinary. Far from the actions of the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, they took responsibility for the course of the revolution. They policed their neighbors, sent troops and weapons to distant strangers committed to the same cause, and identified friends and traitors. By taking up the reins of power but also setting its limits, they ensured America's success. Without their participation there would have been no victory over Great Britain, no independence.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," were two of the most important Founders of the United States as well as the closest of political allies. Yet historians have often seen a tension between the idealistic rhetoric of the Declaration and the more pedestrian language of the Constitution. Moreover, to some, the adoption of the Constitution represented a repudiation of the democratic values of the Revolution.

A fascinating chronicle of radical feminism’s rise and fall from the mid-60s to the mid-70s, Daring to Be Bad is a must-listen for both students of gender history and activists of intersectionality. This 30th anniversary edition reveals how current debates about race, transgender rights, queer theory, and sexuality echo issues that galvanized and divided feminists 50 years ago.

Bart Stupak, a nine-term Democratic Congressman from Michigan’s First Congressional District, brought two unshakable principles with him to Capitol Hill in 1992: a firm belief in the sanctity of life, and the conviction that health care was a right for all Americans and not a privilege for the fortunate few. Studies indicating that 45,000 Americans died needlessly every year for lack of access to health care inspired Congressman Stupak’s tireless efforts, often at great personal cost, to pass lifesaving legislation while remaining true to his right-to-life principles.

This audiobook is about the development of the American social welfare state, from FDR to LBJ, with particular emphasis on the ideas (social, political, and economic) that have formed the basis of America's social welfare state.

Over the past few decades, the complicated divides of geography, class, religion, and race created deep fractures in the United States, each side fighting to advance its own mythology and political interests. We lack a central story, a common ground we can celebrate and enrich with deeper meaning. Unable to agree on first principles, we cannot agree on what it means to be American. As we dismantle or disregard symbols and themes that previously united us, can we replace them with stories and rites that unite our tribes and maintain meaning in our American identity?

Richard Labunski offers a dramatic account of a time when the entire American experiment hung in the balance, only to be saved by the most unlikely of heroes, the diminutive and exceedingly shy James Madison. Here is a vividly written account of not one, but several major political struggles that changed the course of American history.

Beyond Shangri-La chronicles relations between the Tibetans and the United States since 1908, when a Dalai Lama first met with U.S. representatives. What was initially a distant alliance became more intimate and entangled in the late 1950s, when the Tibetan people launched an armed resistance movement against the Chinese occupiers. The Tibetans fought to oust the Chinese and to maintain the presence of the current Dalai Lama and his direction of their country.

>For the People offers a new interpretation of populist political movements from the Revolution to the eve of the Civil War and roots them in the disconnect between the theory of rule by the people and the reality of rule by elected representatives. Ron Formisano seeks to rescue populist movements from the distortions of contemporary opponents as well as the misunderstandings of later historians.From the Anti-Federalists to the Know-Nothings, Formisano traces the movements chronologically, contextualizing them and demonstrating the progression of ideas and movements.

The 2016 presidential election was unlike any other in recent memory, and Donald Trump was an entirely different kind of candidate than voters were used to seeing. He was the first true outsider to win the White House in over a century and the wealthiest populist in American history. John L. Campbell contextualizes Donald Trump's success by focusing on the long-developing economic, racial, ideological, and political shifts that enabled Trump to win the White House. Campbell argues that Trump's rise to power was the culmination of a half-century of deep, slow-moving change in America.

In this brilliant historical classic, Dan Sisson argues that Thomas Jefferson thought democratic revolutions would be necessary from time to time to break the grip of autocratic factions on the government. That is how Jefferson saw the election of 1800 - and the lessons for today couldn’t be more obvious. Most historians celebrate Jefferson’s victory over Adams in 1800 as the beginning of the two-party system, but Jefferson would have been horrified by this interpretation.

Why has John Quincy Adams been largely written out of American history when he is, in fact, our lost Founding Father? Overshadowed by both his brilliant father and the brash and bold Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams has long been dismissed as hyper-intellectual. Viciously assailed by Jackson and his populist mobs for being both slippery and effete, Adams nevertheless recovered from the malodorous 1828 presidential election to lead the nation as a lonely Massachusetts congressman in the fight against slavery.

#1 New York Times bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio host Glenn Beck provides readers with the truth about the issues the media and politicians are scared to touch. COURAGE > COWARDS As we approach the most important presidential election in America’s history, something has...

Estados Unidos como potencia económica es objeto de deseo mundial. Tanto entre las elites, que lo ven como lo más cercano a la utopía del libre mercado, la competencia y la privatización, como entre los más pobres, embebidos por un incesante imperialismo cultural que les graba a fuego el American Dream de la tierra de las oportunidades. Sin embargo, la realidad difiere bastante de la imagen que Washington proyecta ante el mundo, especialmente en el caso de la clase media y trabajadora.

Political races in the United States rely heavily on highly paid political consultants who carefully curate the images of politicians, advise candidates on polling and analytics, and shape voters' perceptions through marketing and advertising techniques. More than half of the $6 billion spent in the 2012 election went to consultants who controlled virtually every aspect of the campaigns, from polling, fundraising, and media to more novel techniques of social media and micro-targeting.

In Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, Thomas J. Balcerski explores the lives of these two politicians and discovers one of the most significant collaborations in American political history. He traces the parallels in the men's personal and professional lives before elected office, including their failed romantic courtships and the stories they told about them. Unlikely companions from the start, they lived together as congressional messmates in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse and became close confidantes.