Showing results by narrator "Rick Adamson" in All Categories

Greg Mitchell's The Beginning or the End chronicles the first efforts of American media and culture to process the Atomic Age. A movie that began as a cautionary tale inspired by atomic scientists aiming to warn the world against a nuclear arms race would be drained of all impact due to revisions and retakes ordered by President Truman and the military.

Russia and China are both believed to have a "grand strategy" - a detailed set of goals backed by expansive ambitions. In the United States, policy makers have tried to articulate similar plans but have failed to reach a widespread consensus since the Cold War ended. Drawing on historical precedents and weighing issues such as Russia's resurgence, China's great rise, North Korea's nuclear machinations, and Middle-East turmoil, Michael O'Hanlon presents a well-researched, ethically sound, and politically viable vision for American national security policy.

Self-Publishing For Dummies takes you through the entire process of publishing your own books, starting with the writing and editing process and moving through cover design, printing options, distribution channels, and marketing to a target audience. With the advice in this book, you can tackle self-publishing, no matter what genre you write in. You'll learn how to retain full control over your work and keep the profits from the sales of your book.

Osamah Khalil argues that the militarization of US domestic and foreign affairs was the product of America's failure in Vietnam. Unsettled by their inability to prevail in Southeast Asia, US leaders increasingly came to see a host of problems as immune to political solutions. Rather, crime, drugs, and terrorism were enemies spawned in "badlands"—whether the Middle East or stateside inner cities. Characterized as sites of endemic violence, badlands lay beyond the pale of civilization, their ostensibly racially and culturally alien inhabitants best handled by force.

The second-century Greek physician Galen—the most famous doctor in antiquity after Hippocrates—is a central figure in Western medicine. A talented doctor, surgeon, writer, philosopher, teacher, pharmacologist, and inventor, Galen attended the court of Marcus Aurelius, living through outbreaks of plague that devastated the Roman Empire. He also served as a physician for professional gladiators. In writings that provided the foundation of Western medicine up to the nineteenth century, Galen created a unified account of health and disease.

The Individualization of War examines the status of individuals in contemporary armed conflict in three main capacities: as subject to violence but deserving of protection; as liable to harm because of their responsibility for attacks on others; and as agents who can be held accountable for the perpetration of crimes.

In History and Utopia, Cioran the monster writes of politics in its broadest sense, of history, and of the utopian dream. His views are, to say the least, provocative. In one essay he casts a scathing look at democracy, that “festival of mediocrity”; in another he turns his uncompromising gaze on Russia, its history, its evolution, and what he calls “the virtues of liberty.” In the dark shadow of Stalin and Hitler, he writes of tyrants and tyranny with rare lucidity and convincing logic.

In early February of 1885, the robbery of the Pensacola and Atlantic train could not have come at a worse time for Florida panhandle railroad magnate William Chipley. He had put time, money, and both his personal and business reputation on the line to host the first Gulf Chautauqua in DeFuniak Springs. Now, with the murder of two guards, and the theft of both a payroll and a shipment of new US Army rifles, the success of the Chautauqua was at risk.

International security and American supremacy are at stake—and now is the time for the US to take action. China's global power and influence grows every day. Working from a deep sense of national identity, the Chinese Communist Party is leading its country toward what it deems "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation," and executing a long-term Grand Strategy to topple over its chief adversary, the US. As China becomes increasingly repressive domestically and aggressive overseas, it threatens to upend America's global dominance at every turn.

In Real Americans, Jared A. Goldstein boldly challenges the conventional wisdom that a shared devotion to the Constitution is the essence of what it means to be American.

Frustrated with an increasingly polarized social landscape, award-winning photographer John Noltner set out on a 40,000-mile road trip across the United States to rediscover the common humanity that connects us. He did so by asking people one simple question: "What does peace mean to you?" Through difficult conversations, gentle humor, and a keen eye for beauty, Noltner's Portraits of Peace captures a rich collage of who we are as a nation.

This collection of "eloquent essays that examine the relationship between the American landscape and the national character" serves to remind us that despite our differences we all belong to the same land (Publishers Weekly).

Efforts to reduce gun violence in the United States face formidable political and constitutional barriers. Legislation that would ban or broadly restrict firearms runs afoul of the Supreme Court's current interpretation of the Second Amendment. And gun rights advocates have joined a politically savvy firearm industry in a powerful coalition that stymies reform. Ian Ayres and Fredrick Vars suggest a new way forward. We can decrease the number of gun deaths, they argue, by empowering individual citizens to choose common-sense gun reforms for themselves.

Based on extensive interviews with conservative opponents of the president, Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles reveal why such a wide range of committed partisans chose to break with their longtime comrades in arms.

A laidback Caribbean saga of an innocent, Buck Devore, who sails into the middle of a killing field. Devore is in deep with good-looking women, a killer, and trouble.

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.

Did the Black Death destroy medieval Europe? Did cholera pave the way for modern Manhattan? Did yellow fever help end the slave trade? Remarkably, the answer to all of these questions is "Yes". Time and again, diseases have impacted the course of human history in surprisingly powerful ways. From influenza to smallpox, from tuberculosis to yellow fever, Bryn Barnard describes the symptoms and paths of the world’s worst diseases - and how the epidemics they spawned have changed history forever.

In Citizenship: What Everyone Needs to Know, legal scholar Peter J. Spiro explains citizenship through accessible terms and questions: what citizenship means, how you obtain citizenship (and how you lose it), how it has changed through history, what benefits citizenship gets you, and what obligations it extracts from you - all in comparative perspective.

From the author of The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons - a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, white seashells in dry desert sand, boulders impossibly balanced. Craig Childs delves into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more-than-human.

The Electoral College that governs America has been with us since 1804, when Thomas Jefferson's supporters redesigned it for his re-election. The Jeffersonians were motivated by the principle of majority rule. Gone were the days when a president would be elected by acclamation, as George Washington had been. Instead, given the emergence of intense two-party competition, the Jeffersonians wanted to make sure that the Electoral College awarded the presidency to the candidate of the majority, rather than minority, party.