American Doctrines

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.

In this brilliant exploration of American history and contemporary conservative politics, foreign policy expert John Hulsman draws on his years at the heart of Washington to present a compelling new vision of conservative realism. In our current Age of Insecurity, Hulsman suggests, there has never been a bigger need for the re-ascendance of realist principles in conservative circles. By drawing on U.S. history to illustrate realist precepts at the heart of the American story, The Last Best Hope provides a practical, realist foreign policy for a new age of American politics.

When Lafayette at the invitation of President Monroe visited the United States in 1824 through 1825, the reaction of widespread adulation for the Guest of The Nation, the Hero of Two Worlds was amazing and virtually unanimous in the United States. It may well be that the crowned heads of Europe were less than enthusiastic about the popularity of this advocate for democracy and human rights. Did they have the resources to stage a highly public assassination? And who was there to prevent it? And why does history not record the attempt? In the spirit of Day of The Jackal and The Eagle Has ...

In Trump, White Evangelical Christians, and American Politics, political scientists Anand Edward Sokhey and Paul A. Djupe bring together a wide range of scholars and writers to examine the relationship between former President Donald Trump and white American evangelical Christians.

Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies, Kathryn Olmsted tells us that it was only in the 20th century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics, In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself.

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.

Intellectual history has never been more relevant and more important to public life in the United States. In complicated and confounding times, people look for the principles that drive action and the foundations that support national ideals. American Labyrinth demonstrates the power of intellectual history to illuminate our public life and examine our ideological assumptions.

The first European settlers saw America as a paradise regained. The continent seemed to offer a God-given opportunity to start again and build the perfect community. Those messianic days are gone. But as Alex Krieger argues in City on a Hill, any attempt at deep understanding of how the country has developed must recognize the persistent and dramatic consequences of utopian dreaming. Even as ideals have changed, idealism itself has for better and worse shaped our world of bricks and mortar, macadam, parks, and farmland.

What's happening in global politics? As if overnight, many Democrats revolted and passionately backed a socialist named Bernie Sanders; the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union; the vituperative billionaire Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of the Republican party; and a slew of rebellious parties continued to win elections in Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Austria, and Greece. John B. Judis, one of America's most respected political analysts, tells us why we need to learn about the populist movement.

The golden key to understanding the last 75 years of American political development, the eminent labor-relations scholar Michael Goldfield argues, lies in the contests between labor and capital in the American South during the 1930s and 1940s. Labor agitation and unionization efforts in the South in the New Deal era were extensive and bitterly fought and ranged across all of the major industries of the region. Goldfield shows how the broad-based failure to organize the South during this period made it what it is today.

The child of an Irish man and an Irish American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hardworking single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon.

Thirty years ago, “greed is good” and “maximizing shareholder value” became the new mantras woven into the fabric of our business culture, economy, and politics. Although, around the world, free-market capitalism has lifted more than a billion people from poverty, in the US, most of the benefits of economic growth have been captured by the richest 10 percent, along with providing justification for squeezing workers, cheating customers, avoiding taxes, and leaving communities in the lurch. As a result, Americans are losing faith that a free-market economy is the best system.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter pillories American liberals for their views on Republicans and conservative causes. Author of the best-selling anti-Clinton book High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Coulter summons pages of footnotes to support her highly original thesis that most of the media condemn even the most moderate of conservative views.

Not since the Great Depression have so many Americans questioned the fundamental tenets of capitalism and expressed openness to a socialist alternative. We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism-American Style offers a road map to making this alternative a reality, giving listeners a practical vision of a future that is more democratic, egalitarian, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.

When Ronald Reagan warned that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction, was he pointing to Generation Z? Today’s young adults have been indoctrinated since preschool in the lie that America is fundamentally unjust. They have watched their parents hand over their freedom to big government, and they themselves are captivated by a deceptive ideology of unprecedented radicalism.

Our Divided Political Heart will be the must-listen book of the 2012 election campaign. Offering an incisive analysis of how hyper-individualism is poisoning the nation's political atmosphere, E. J. Dionne Jr., argues that Americans can't agree on who we are because we can't agree on who we've been, or what it is, philosophically and spiritually, that makes us Americans.

Since the eviction of Occupy protestors from encampments in many cities throughout the world, smaller and more targeted occupations have continued. Workers in a Chicago factory occupied - with the support of their union - to protest layoffs. Teachers and students in Tucson staged a walkout to protest the removal of Chicano history books from the curriculum. Home foreclosures were disrupted, even avoided, by direct community action. But what does it all mean? What do we talk about when we talk about "revolution", if we talk about it at all?

America seems to be crumbling from within. Having abandoned the Judeo-Christian values that are the foundation of its culture, our nation, in the eyes of many, is going the way of the great civilizations of the past. If our 250-year experiment in ordered liberty has really run its course, is it time to recognize the inevitable, pack up our families, and head for the hills, hunkering down through the dark days to come? Or is there hope for an American restoration?

New York Times best-selling author David Talbot and New Yorker journalist Margaret Talbot illuminate “America’s second revolutionary generation” in this gripping history of one of the most dynamic eras of the 20th century - brought to life through seven defining radical moments that offer vibrant parallels and lessons for today.

During the last days of July, 1967, Detroit experienced a week of devastating urban collapse - one of the worst civil disorders in 20th-century America. Forty-three people were killed, over $50 million in property was destroyed, and the city itself was left in a state of panic and confusion, the scars of which are still present today.