English History Political Parties

Alan I. Abramowitz has emerged as a leading spokesman for the view that our current political divide is not confined to a small group of elites and activists but a key feature of the American social and cultural landscape. The polarization of the political and media elites, he argues, arose and persists because it accurately reflects the state of American society. Here, he goes further: The polarization is unique in modern US history. Today's party divide reflects an unprecedented alignment of many different divides: racial and ethnic, religious, ideological, and geographic.

Bartho deftly provides a new perspective on Reagan's political career and the Republican Party of the Reagan era while detailing the often-rancorous philosophical differences between Reaganism and southern conservatism and the resulting political conflicts. Whistling Dixie highlights a divide in the Republican Party and in American conservatism that has often been overlooked-a divide that laid the foundations for the GOP's southernization and ultimately led to the rise of Donald Trump.

The Carter presidency was on life support. The Democrats, desperate to keep power and yearning to resurrect former glory, turned to Ted Kennedy. Camelot's End details the incredible drama of Kennedy's challenge - what led to it, how it unfolded, and its lasting effects - with cinematic sweep. It is a story about what happened to the Democratic Party when the country's long string of successes, luck, and global dominance following World War II ran its course, and how, on a quest to recapture the magic of JFK, Democrats plunged themselves into an intra-party civil war.

After the 2012 election, the GOP was in the wilderness. Lost and in disarray. And doggedly determined to do whatever it took to get back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. McKay Coppins has had unparalleled access to Republican presidential candidates, power brokers, lawmakers, and Tea Party leaders. Based on more than 300 interviews, The Wilderness is the book that opens up the party like never before.

Historian Sean Wilentz presents two key insights that together reveal a clearer, much-needed vision of American political history. First, partisanship has almost always been a feature of American history and in fact has made possible the nation's greatest social reforms. There is little to be gained from a "postpartisan" political world. Second, the recent attention to economic inequality has a long history. From the founders' generation to the present, America's egalitarian tradition has appeared and reappeared like an underground river.

American populism has always been home to a fascinating assortment of charismatic leaders, characters, kooks, cranks, and sometimes charlatans who have led the charge of ordinary folks who have gotten wise to the ways of the swamp. Every Man a King tells the stories of America's populist leaders, from Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt to Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Donald Trump. It is a rollicking history of an American attitude that has shaped not only our current moment, but also the long struggle over who gets to define the truths we hold to be self evident.

American democracy is at an impasse. After years of zero-sum partisan trench warfare, our political institutions are deteriorating. Our norms are collapsing. Democrats and Republicans no longer merely argue; they cut off contact with each other. In short, the two-party system is breaking our democracy, and driving us all crazy.

An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, this is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.

The Naked God is Howard Fast's public repudiation of the Communist Party, of which he was a devoted member for thirteen years until reading about the full scope of atrocities committed by the Soviet Union under Stalin. The best-selling author of Spartacus and Citizen Tom Paine, Howard Fast lent his writing talents and celebrity to the communist cause as a steadfast advocate and public figure. However, he felt increasingly ill at ease with the superior manner Party leaders took with rank-and-file members and with rumors of Soviet anti-Semitism.

The Last Liberal Republican is a memoir from one of Nixon's senior domestic policy advisors. John Roy Price-a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, a cofounder of the Ripon Society, and an employee on Nelson Rockefeller's campaigns - joined Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and later John D. Ehrlichman, in the Nixon White House to develop domestic policies, especially on welfare, hunger, and health.

For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes.

In 2009, an unemployed mother of two and a politically inexperienced Northern California attorney met on a conference call that would end up starting one of the largest grassroots political organizations in American history, the Tea Party Patriots. Fueled by the fires of passion and patriotism, Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin have become the faces of the most powerful political movement in the country, empowering their more than twenty million members by using both high-tech advances and the time-tested American tradition of rallying in public.

Political Realignment tracks the evolution of citizen and elite opinions on economic and cultural issues from the 1970s to the 2010s - and the impact of these changes on electoral politics and public policy. Citizen positions on these cleavages have realigned over time, producing a similar realignment in the structure of the party systems to represent these demands. Economic issues remain important, now joined by divisions on cultural issues as a backlash to modernization. Assembling a time series of empirical evidence, this study explains the new forces of elector change in both Europe and the United States.

For much of American history, evangelicalism was aligned with progressive political causes: nineteenth-century evangelicals fought for the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage, and public education. But contemporary conservative activists have defaulted on this majestic legacy, embracing instead an agenda virtually indistinguishable from the Republican Party platform.

The saga of English predominance in Ireland began in the 12th century following the Norman invasion of England, when a band of Norman adventurers, established on the Welsh mainland, set off across the Irish Sea to test their prospects on the shores of England’s western neighbor. Ireland at the time was ruled in provinces by local kings, each with limited power and authority, and often at war with one another.

In 2014, the International Space Station unleashed a series of photographs that had netizens around the globe simultaneously slapping their cheeks in disbelief for more reasons than one. For starters, the world was astounded by the crisp definition and stellar resolution of the images captured by the space agency's NightPod lenses, which showed striking satellite shots of the world at nighttime, illuminated by its dazzling city lights. But it was a close-up snap of the China-North Korea border that elicited reactions far greater than the rest, for the image, as terrific as it was, was equally troubling.

Under the cover of being designated as private correspondence, the letters between the queen and the governor-general about the dismissal have been locked away for decades in the National Archives of Australia, and embargoed by the queen - potentially forever. In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she mounted a crowd-funded campaign, securing a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia.

R.W Johnson’s best-selling How Long Will South Africa Survive? was hailed by financial writer Alec Hogg as 'a masterpiece in unblemished reality'. Published at the height of the Zuma presidency, it accurately forecast that South Africa’s credit rating would be downgraded to junk status. Johnson warned that this sorry progress might end in an IMF bailout and wholesale change to the political system.

The Land of Flickering Lights is a unique contribution to American political writing at this or any other time. Democratic Senator Michael Bennet from Colorado lifts a veil on Congress to reveal, in his words, "through a series of actual stories - about the people, the politics, the motives, the money, the hypocrisy, the stakes, the outcome - the pathological culture of the capitol and the consequences for us all."

Political writer and official RNC spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany spent months traveling throughout the United States conducting interviews with Americans whose powerful and moving stories were forgotten or intentionally ignored by our leaders. They discussed their deeply personal stories and the issues that are most important to them, such as illegal immigration. The New American Revolution chronicles both the losses of these grassroots voters as well as their ultimate victory in November 2016.