- Table View
- List View
A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics, and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream
by Marc GarneauA captivating and inspiring memoir by Canada's first man in space.On October 5th, 1984, Marc Garneau made history. Blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center aboard the U.S. Space Shuttle and reaching a speed of 28,000 km/hour, he became the first Canadian to fly to outer space. That monumental achievement, now etched in Canadian history as one of our country&’s proudest moments, inspired a nation and ushered in a new era of space exploration for Canada. Twenty-four years later, Garneau made history yet again, becoming the first astronaut to be elected as a Member of Parliament.In between those two milestones in Garneau&’s unprecedented career, he was the first Canadian, and the first non-American, to serve as CAPCOM, the voice of Mission Control for the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle. In the years that followed his historic first voyage to space, Garneau returned to space two more times, becoming the first Canadian to log three trips into orbit, and led the Canadian Space Agency through its most dynamic years.In the House of Commons, Garneau would ultimately serve in two cabinet posts as Minister of Transport and Minister of Foreign Affairs during some of the biggest events of the past decade: the onset of one of the worst pandemics in modern times; the arbitrary detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor by China; the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban; and the death of 85 Canadian citizens and permanent residents aboard Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752, shot down by Iran.It was no surprise, then, that when Marc Garneau announced his retirement after fourteen years in government, many Canadians lamented the loss of an upstanding parliamentarian who was not afraid to speak up for causes he believed in, even if that meant bucking his own party and its leader. In A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics, and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream, Garneau chronicles his once-improbable ascent from a mischievous teenager and rebellious naval midshipman to a decorated astronaut and statesman who represented Canada on the world stage – both on and off the planet. With candour and humour, Garneau describes the highs and lows of his life and career, including the awe he experienced first seeing the earth from space, the tragic loss of his first wife to mental illness and suicide, sailing across the Atlantic and back in a sailboat called "the Pickle," and witnessing the tragedy of the doomed shuttle Challenger.Honest and illuminating, A Most Extraordinary Ride is a rare journey into the early years of Canada&’s space program and an inside account of the joys and challenges of governing from one of Canada&’s most distinguished citizens.
A Most Glorious Ride: The Diaries of Theodore Roosevelt, 1877-1886 (Excelsior Editions)
by Edward P. KohnFinalist for the 2015 ForeWord INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award in the History CategoryA Most Glorious Ride presents the complete diaries of Theodore Roosevelt from 1877 to 1886. Covering the formative years of his life, Roosevelt's entries show the transformation of a sickly and solitary Harvard freshman into a confident and increasingly robust young adult. He writes about his grief over the premature death of his father, his courtship and marriage to his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, and later the death of Alice and his mother on the same day. The diaries chronicle his burgeoning political career in New York City and his election to the New York State Assembly. With his descriptions of balls, dinner parties, and nights at the opera, they offer a glimpse into life among the Gilded Age elite in Boston and New York. They also recount Roosevelt's first birding and hunting trips to the Adirondacks, the Maine woods, and the American West. Ending with Roosevelt's secret engagement to his second wife, Edith Kermit Carow, A Most Glorious Ride provides an intimate look into the life of the man who would become America's twenty-sixth president.Brought together for the first time in a single volume, the diaries have been meticulously transcribed, annotated, and introduced by Edward P. Kohn. Twenty-four black-and-white photographs are also included.
A Most Masculine State
by Madawi Al-RasheedWomen in Saudi Arabia are often described as either victims of patriarchal religion and society or successful survivors of discrimination imposed on them by others. Madawi Al-Rasheed's new book goes beyond these conventional tropes to probe the historical, political, and religious forces that have, across the years, delayed and thwarted their emancipation. The book demonstrates how, under the patronage of the state and its religious nationalism, women have become hostage to contradictory political projects that on the one hand demand female piety, and on the other hand encourage modernity. Drawing on state documents, media sources, and interviews with women from across Saudi society, the book examines the intersection between gender, religion, and politics to explain these contradictions and to show that, despite these restraints, vibrant debates on the question of women are opening up as the struggle for recognition and equality finally gets under way.
A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation
by Rachel Louise MartinA &“masterful&” (Taylor Branch) and &“striking&” (The New Yorker) portrait of a small town living through tumultuous times, this propulsive piece of forgotten civil rights history—about the first school to attempt court-ordered desegregation in the wake of Brown v. Board—will forever change how you think of the end of racial segregation in America.In graduate school, Rachel Martin was sent to a small town in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of September 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy to attempt court mandated desegregation. But not everyone wanted to talk. As one founder of the Tennessee White Youth told her, &“Honey, there was a lot of ugliness down at the school that year; best we just move on and forget it.&” For years, Martin wondered what it was some white residents of Clinton didn&’t want remembered. So, she went back, eventually interviewing over sixty townsfolk—including nearly a dozen of the first students to desegregate Clinton High—to piece together what happened back in 1956: the death threats and beatings, picket lines and cross burnings, neighbors turned on neighbors and preachers for the first time at a loss for words. The National Guard rushed to town, along with national journalists like Edward R. Morrow and even evangelist Billy Graham. But that wasn&’t the most explosive secret Martin learned... In A Most Tolerant Little Town, Rachel Martin weaves together over a dozen perspectives in an intimate, kaleidoscopic portrait of a small town living through a turbulent turning point for America. The result is at once a &“gripping&” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) mystery and a moving piece of forgotten civil rights history, rendered &“with precision, lucidity and, most of all, a heart inured to false hope&” (The New York Times). You may never before have heard of Clinton, Tennessee—but you won&’t be forgetting the town anytime soon.
A Most Wicked Conspiracy: The Last Great Swindle of the Gilded Age
by Paul StarobinA tale of Gilded Age corruption and greed from the frontier of Alaska to America's capital.In the feverish, money-making age of railroad barons, political machines, and gold rushes, corruption was the rule, not the exception. Yet the Republican mogul "Big Alex" McKenzie defied even the era's standard for avarice. Charismatic and shameless, he arrived in the new Alaskan territory intent on controlling gold mines and draining them of their ore. Miners who had rushed to the frozen tundra to strike gold were appalled at his unabashed deviousness.A Most Wicked Conspiracy recounts McKenzie's plot to rob the gold fields. It's a story of how America's political and economic life was in the grip of domineering, self-dealing, seemingly-untouchable party bosses in cahoots with robber barons, Senators and even Presidents. Yet it is also the tale of a righteous resistance of working-class miners, muckraking journalists, and courageous judges who fought to expose a conspiracy and reassert the rule of law.Through a bold set of characters and a captivating narrative, Paul Starobin examines power and rampant corruption during a pivotal time in America, drawing undoubted parallels with present-day politics and society.
A Mother's Cry: A Memoir of Politics, Prison, and Torture Under the Brazilian Military Dictatorship
by Lina Penna SattaminiDuring the late 1960s and early 1970s, Brazil's dictatorship arrested, tortured, and interrogated many people it suspected of subversion; hundreds of those arrested were killed in prison. In May 1970, Marcos P. S. Arruda, a young political activist, was seized in So Paulo, imprisoned, and tortured. A Mother's Cry is the harrowing story of Marcos's incarceration and his family's efforts to locate him and obtain his release. Marcos's mother, Lina Penna Sattamini, was living in the United States and working for the U. S. State Department when her son was captured. After learning of his arrest, she and her family mobilized every resource and contact to discover where he was being held, and then they launched an equally intense effort to have him released. Marcos was freed from prison in 1971. Fearing that he would be arrested and tortured again, he left the country, beginning eight years of exile. Lina Penna Sattamini describes her son's tribulations through letters exchanged among family members, including Marcos, during the year that he was imprisoned. Her narrative is enhanced by Marcos's account of his arrest, imprisonment, and torture. James N. Green's introduction provides an overview of the political situation in Brazil, and Latin America more broadly, during that tumultuous era. In the 1990s, some Brazilians began to suggest that it would be best to forget the trauma of that era and move on. Lina Penna Sattamini wrote her memoir as a protest against historical amnesia. First published in Brazil in 2000, A Mother's Cry is testimonial literature at its best. It conveys the experiences of a family united by love and determination during years of political repression.
A Mother's War: One Woman's Fight for the Truth Behind Her Son's Death at Deepcut
by Yvonne Collinson HeathYvonne Collinson Heath will never forget the telephone call that changed her life for ever. On 23 March 2002, her eldest son, James – a private with the Royal Logistic Corps – was found dead in mysterious circumstances at the notorious Deepcut barracks. He had a single gunshot wound to the head. It was a tragedy that to this day raises questions.A Mother’s War recounts Yvonne’s anguish at losing her son, a boy who dreamed of serving his country but died before he had even reached his 18th birthday. It is also the powerful story of an extraordinary woman who overcame adversity – including the hurt of being abandoned by her father, bullied as a child and abused by a trusted uncle – to find love and raise a son, only to see him cruelly taken from her within weeks of his joining the Army. It reveals how her decade-long quest for answers uncovered sinister secrets and a series of cover-ups that went right to the heart of Whitehall.Above all else, A Mother’s War is the story of how Yvonne’s grief triggered a search for the truth that took her to Downing Street and captured the hearts of the nation.
A Multi-Gear Strategy for Economic Recovery
by R. A. RaymanVolume II proposes radical reform (1) of the accounting system - to bring corporate management under the control of market forces; and (2) of the tax system - to enable the economy to grow to its full potential and to establish an automatic mechanism for price stability without any arbitrary intervention.
A Multi-Industrial Linkages Approach to Cluster Building in East Asia: Targeting the Agriculture, Food, and Tourism Industry
by Akifumi Kuchiki Tetsuo Mizobe Toshitaka GokanThis book proposes measures to promote regional industrial development in East Asia from the perspective of three industries: agriculture, food, and tourism. The authors argue that for regional agriculture to develop, collaboration with the food industry is essential. Further, by linking tourism, economic collaboration between the three industries is strengthened. The first part of the book introduces a basic model for the formation of the agriculture, food, and tourism industry cluster. Contributions from leading academics in agricultural economics then go on to discuss the relevance of this multi-industry cluster in countries such as Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Cambodia, amongst others. The final part sets out new approaches for further development in the cluster through quantitative analyses of the 'economies of sequence' concept. Readers will discover that from establishing linkages between different industries and other economic sectors, important positive externalities can be generated and these processes can be triggered on the local or cluster level.
A Multidimensional Economic Assessment of Africa (Frontiers in African Business Research)
by Jacob Wood Olivier HabimanaThis book is a useful resource for government policy analysts, academics, students of higher education and business practitioners interested in African economies and the key economic issues these economies are facing in 2020. In the face of weak governance and growth globally, there is still a window of opportunity for countries in Africa to build on not only their traditional industrial capabilities, but also pave the way for positive developments in international trade and in the way governments tackle poverty and inequality. By focusing on four areas: (1) agriculture and livestock, (2) consumption, poverty and inequality, (3) financial services, employment and corporate governance, and (4) economic integration, international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), this book presents a series of empirical studies that examine important contemporary economic issues facing Africa. The book incorporates a range of methodological approaches, with some chapters providing case study analyses while others embrace more traditional forms of econometric testing.
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Capability in Age and Ageing (International Perspectives on Aging #31)
by Hanna Falk Erhag Ulrika Lagerlöf Nilsson Therese Rydberg Sterner Ingmar SkoogThis open access book provides insight on how to interpret capability in ageing – one’s individual ability to perform actions in order to reach goals one has reason to value – from a multidisciplinary approach. With for the first time in history there being more people in the world aged 60 years and over than there are children below the age of 5, the book describes this demographic trends as well as the large global challenges and important societal implications this will have such as a worldwide increase in the number of persons affected with dementia, and in the ratio of retired persons to those still in the labor market. Through contributions from many different research areas, it discussed how capability depends on interactions between the individual (e.g. health, genetics, personality, intellectual capacity), environment (e.g. family, friends, home, work place), and society (e.g. political decisions, ageism, historical period). The final chapter summarizes the differences and similarities in these contributions. As such this book provides an interesting read for students, teachers and researchers at different levels and from different fields interested in capability and multidisciplinary research.
A Multivariate Filter for Measuring Potential Output and the NAIRU: Application to the Czech Republic
by Papa N'Diaye Jaromir BenesA report from the International Monetary Fund.
A Murder of Crows
by Terrence MccauleyTHE CROWS ARE GATHERING. WAR IS COMING.For years, every intelligence agency in the world has been chasing the elusive terrorist known only as The Moroccan. But when James Hicks and his clandestine group known as the University thwart a bio-terror attack against New York City and capture The Moroccan, they find themselves in the crosshairs of their own intelligence community.The CIA, NSA, DIA and the Mossad are still hunting for for The Moroccan and will stop at nothing to get him. Hicks must find a way to keep the other agencies at bay while he tries to break The terrorist and uncover what else he is planning.When he ultimately surrenders information that leads to the most wanted terrorist in the world, Hicks and his team find themselves in a strange new world where allies become enemies, enemies become allies and the fate of the University - perhaps even the Western world - may hang in the balance.Can Hicks and the University survive an onslaught from A MURDER OF CROWS?
A Muslim Conspiracy in British India?: Politics and Paranoia in the Early Nineteenth-Century Deccan
by Chandra MallampalliAs the British prepared for war in Afghanistan in 1839, rumours spread of a Muslim conspiracy based in India's Deccan region. Colonial officials were convinced that itinerant preachers of jihad - whom they labelled 'Wahhabis' - were collaborating with Russian and Persian armies and inspiring Muslim princes to revolt. Officials detained and interrogated Muslim travellers, conducted weapons inspections at princely forts, surveyed mosques, and ultimately annexed territories of the accused. Using untapped archival materials, Chandra Mallampalli describes how local intrigues, often having little to do with 'religion', manufactured belief in a global conspiracy against British rule. By skilfully narrating stories of the alleged conspirators, he shows how fears of the dreaded 'Wahhabi' sometimes prompted colonial authorities to act upon thin evidence, while also inspiring Muslim plots against princes not of their liking. At stake were not only questions about Muslim loyalty, but also the very ideals of a liberal empire.
A Mysterious Country: The Grace and Fragility of American Democracy
by Norman MailerPublished on the centenary of Norman Mailer&’s birth, a timely and urgent call to preserve our democracy From his bestselling first novel, The Naked and the Dead, to his last work, American democracy was a lifelong project for Norman Mailer. It was his grand theme. Nearly all of his books touched on the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses, the grace (to use his word) and fragility of the American experiment as well as the threats to it—from autocratic leaders and a complacent citizenry, from violent protest and radical conservative assaults on it, from &“soft fascism&” and the ills of racism and poverty. In the sharp and impassioned language of a political Cassandra and with the eye of a novelist and journalist, he explored the underlying psychological, social, and economic causes of the country&’s fragile polity and offered urgent prescriptions for its reinvigoration.A Mysterious Country is a carefully selected collection of Mailer&’s most incisive—and sometimes remarkably prophetic—commentary on American democracy and what must be done to safeguard it. The anthology draws on both published and unpublished sources, from Mailer&’s great works of narrative nonfiction and novels as well as essays, interviews, letters, speeches, and talk show appearances. It includes pungent remarks on every president from FDR through George W. Bush, as well as correspondence with several. Throughout, what shines through is Mailer&’s passion for our democratic project—as well as the freedom that comes with it—and a keen awareness of its potential for failure, its virtues, and what is required of us to keep it intact.
A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the "Mexican Drug War"
by Mike Wallace Carmen BoullosaThe term "Mexican Drug War" misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair.But this diverts attention from the U.S. role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It's not just that Americans buy drugs from, and sell weapons to, Mexico's murderous cartels. It's that ever since the U.S. prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer-with increasingly deadly consequences.Mexico was not a helpless victim. Powerful forces within the country profited hugely from supplying Americans with what their government forbade them. But the policies that spawned the drug war have proved disastrous for both countries.Written by two award-winning authors, one American and the other Mexican, A Narco History reviews the interlocking twentieth-century histories that produced this twenty-first century calamity, and proposes how to end it.
A Narrative Inquiry into the Experiences of Vietnamese Children and Mothers in Canada: Composing Lives in Transition (Global Vietnam: Across Time, Space and Community)
by Thi Thuy TranThis book recounts the understanding of three Vietnamese children and their mothers’ experiences as they navigate being newcomers to Canada. It explores the cultural, traditional, familial, intergenerational, personal, social, institutional, political, historical, community, and linguistic narratives shaping Vietnamese children and mothers as they compose their lives. The author employs narrative inquiry as a methodological approach, beginning by positioning herself through her narrative beginnings, delving deep into philosophical and methodological underpinnings. The author lays out the three child–mother pairs’ experiences as they negotiated a new culture in Canada, particularly the spaces of home, schools, and communities. The book brings a holistic and relational way of understanding familial curriculum-making as support for children’s school curriculum-making and for the ways in which Vietnamese families’ sustain their ongoing life making. It also looks at the influence of the homeland’s language, culture, and educational traditions. Through the complex interplay between the children and mothers’ narratives and the writer’s own stories, this book discusses multiperspectival and multidimensional ways of supporting Vietnamese newcomers and other ‘arrivals’ composing their lives in similar landscapes. The book is relevant to educators, researchers, cultural brokers, and policymakers, opening avenues for understanding cultural ethics within the relational ethics of narrative inquiry, as well as familial narratives in relation to institutional and social narratives.
A Nation Beyond Borders: Lionel Groulx on French-Canadian Minorities (Biographies et mémoires)
by Michel BockThis book, first published as Quand la nation débordait les frontières (Hurtubise HMH, 2004), is considered the most comprehensive analysis of Lionel Groulx's work and vision as an intellectual leader of a nationalist school that extended well beyond the borders of Québec. Recipient of the 2005 Governor General's Literary Award in non-fiction, the original French edition also won the Michel-Brunet Award (Institut d'histoire de l'Amérique française), the Prix Champlain (Conseil de la vie française en Amérique), and a medal awarded by the Québec National Assembly. It was also shortlisted for the Jean-Charles-Falardeau Award (Fédération canadienne des sciences humaines du Canada) and the City of Ottawa Book Award. For over five decades, historians and intellectuals have defined the nationalist discourse primarily in territorial terms. In this regard, Groulx has been portrayed—more often than not—as the architect of Québécois nationalism. Translated by Ferdinanda Van Gennip, A Nation Beyond Borders will continue to spark debate on Groulx's description of the parameters of the French-Canadian nation. Highlighting the often neglected role of French-Canadian minorities in his thought, this book presents the Canon as an uncompromising advocate of solidarity between all French-Canadian communities.
A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History
by Jay SextonA concise new history of the United States revealing that crises--not unlike those of the present day--have determined our nation's course from the startIn A Nation Forged by Crisis, historian Jay Sexton contends that our national narrative is not one of halting yet inevitable progress, but of repeated disruptions brought about by shifts in the international system. Sexton shows that the American Revolution was a consequence of the increasing integration of the British and American economies; that a necessary precondition for the Civil War was the absence, for the first time in decades, of foreign threats; and that we cannot understand the New Deal without examining the role of European immigrants and their offspring in transforming the Democratic Party. A necessary corrective to conventional narratives of American history, A Nation Forged by Crisis argues that we can only prepare for our unpredictable future by first acknowledging the contingencies of our collective past.
A Nation Forsaken: The Escalating Threat of an American Catastrophe
by Michael MaloofThere have been warnings from scientists and other experts for years that the Nation's electrical grid system and other critical infrastructures that have almost complete dependency on electricity and electronic components are highly vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event either from natural or man-made causes. However, Congress and the administrations of previous and current presidents largely have ignored those warnings. Events such as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States and then the devastating Hurricane Katrina that revealed vulnerabilities to those infrastructures heightened that concern. Due to the lapse of time and a relatively calm period since those disasters, policymakers have been lulled back into complacency rather than take preventative action against what could be the biggest threat to US national and economic security in our lifetime. The threat from an EMP attack on our critical infrastructures either from an impending solar storm of serious intensity - expected between 2012 and 2014 - or a high-altitude nuclear explosion are threats that could have long-term catastrophic consequences for our society and our way of life. In 2008 a congressional commission studied the consequences of an EMP attack not only the power grid itself but also the consequences to every sector of our economy: telecommunications, banking, transportation, food, manufacturing, construction, and energy. While these critical infrastructures continue to face such an impending crisis, Congress has basically ignored its own commission report and instead has treated the threat of an EMP event as a political football to be punted whenever expedient for their own gain. To date, still nothing has been done to protect the nation. Michael Maloof breaks down that threat in his book A Nation Forsaken. He even outlines how our own military is similarly vulnerable to an EMP event due to its 99 percent dependency on the nation's electrical grid system for electricity and communications, raising the high prospect that it may not be able to function to defend the nation in its time of greatest need. While an EMP event on our civilian infrastructure could be serious, it can be managed if government at the federal, state, and local levels gives a high priority to undertake preventative action to lessen its impact to recover from such an event. Now is the time for Congress to act and stop forsaking our nation.
A Nation In Waiting: Indonesia's Search For Stability
by Adam SchwarzIn A Nation in Waiting, Adam Schwarz spans a wide variety of issues of concern in today's Indonesia, providing a detailed view of one of the world's most populous, yet least-understood, nations. He chronicles the major economic and political changes recorded during former President Suharto's thirty-one-year tenure, and the present economic and political crisis. In this fully updated second edition, Schwarz analyzes the impact of Suharto's resignation on the political, economic, and social life of Indonesia.
A Nation Like All Others: A Brief History of American Foreign Relations
by Warren I. CohenBelief in the United States as a force for good in the world runs deep. Yet an honest consideration reveals a history marred by great crimes and ordinary errors, alongside many achievements and triumphs. In this comprehensive account of American foreign relations from the nation’s founding through the present day, the diplomatic historian Warren I. Cohen calls attention to the uses—and abuses—of U.S. international leadership and the noble as well as the exploitative ends that American power has wrought.In A Nation Like All Others, Cohen offers a brisk, argumentative history that confronts the concept of American exceptionalism and decries the lack of moral imagination in American foreign policy. He begins with the foreign policy of colonial and postrevolutionary America, exploring interactions with European powers and Native Americans and the implications of slavery and westward expansion. He then traces the rise of American empire; the nation’s choices leading up to and in the wake of the First World War; and World War II and renewed military involvement in foreign affairs. Cohen provides a long history of the Cold War, from its roots under Truman through the Korean and Vietnam Wars to the transformation of the international system under Reagan and Gorbachev. Finally, he surveys America’s recent history in the Middle East, with particular attention to the mismanagement of the War on Terror and Abu Ghraib. Written with great depth of knowledge and moral clarity, A Nation Like All Others suggests that an unflinching look at the nation’s past is America’s best option to shape a better future.
A Nation Like No Other: Why American Exceptionalism Matters
by Newt GingrichIt's become fashionable among the liberal elite to downplay, deride, even deny America's greatness. The political correctness police insist that America is "hated" around the world for being too big, too powerful, too rich, too successful, too loud, too intrusive. And besides, it's not nice to brag.They are completely missing the point.America's greatness, America's exceptional greatness, is not based on that fact that we are the most powerful, most prosperous--and most generous--nation on earth. Rather, those things are the result of American Exceptionalism.To understand American Exceptionalism, as Newt Gingrich passionately argues in A Nation Like No Other, one must understand our unique birth as a nation. American Exceptionalism is found in the simple yet utterly remarkable principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness."Our nation is exceptional, continues Newt, because we--unlike any nation before or since--are united by the belief and the promise that no king, no government, no ruling class has the power to infringe upon the rights of the individual. And when such a government attempts to do so, we will vigorously reject them.Sadly, many politicians and leaders today have forgotten our sacred commitment to these ideals. Our government has strayed alarmingly far from the scope of limited powers framed by our Founders. Meanwhile, the liberal media seek out, and sometimes create, stories intended to portray America as a bully and a thief. Even our own president seems clueless, assuring us that yes, yes, he believes in American exceptionalism, just like the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism and the British in British exceptionalism.But American Exceptionalism is not about cheerleading for the home team. It's about recognizing and honoring the history-making, world-changing ideals our Founding Fathers enshrined to make this a nation of the people, by the people, for the people. And, as Lincoln warned, we must rededicate ourselves to those principles, lest our truly exceptional nation perish from this earth.
A Nation Unmade by War (TomDispatch Books)
by Tom Engelhardt&“In his searing new book . . . Engelhardt has composed a requiem for a nation turned upside down by the relentless pursuit of global power&” (Karen J. Greenberg, author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State). As veteran author Tom Engelhardt argues, despite having a more massive, technologically advanced, and better-funded military than any other power on the planet, in the last decade and a half of constant war across the greater Middle East and parts of Africa, the United States has won nothing. Its unending wars, in fact, have only contributed to a world growing more chaotic by the second. &“The violence, destruction, and suffering resulting from the imperial arrogance of Bush, Cheney, and cohorts have proceeded on their shocking course while most Americans, Tom Engelhardt writes, were &‘only half paying attention.&’ Regular readers of his incisive, lucid, and brutally informative columns could not fail to pay attention and to be appalled at what was revealed. Their impact is all the more forceful in this collection, which casts a brilliant and horrifying light on a sordid chapter of history, far from closed.&” —Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hopes and Prospects &“No one has had a keener eye for American militarism, hypocrisy, and flat-out folly than Tom Engelhardt.&” —John W. Dower, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering &“The mainstream media call it the &‘Age of Trump.&’ Tom Engelhardt knows better: It&’s the &‘Era of America Unhinged.&’ This new collection of essays gives us Engelhardt at his very best: incisive, impassioned, and funny even, in a time of great darkness.&” —Andrew J. Bacevich, New York Times–bestselling author &“Tom Engelhardt is a tireless analyst of the miseries of American Empire . . . [an] indispensable book.&” —Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan
A Nation Worth Ranting About
by Rick MercerAs with the massively bestselling Rick Mercer Report: The Book, Rick's newest collection will bring together his weekly "rants," interview excerpts and other choice items from his show, chosen from all of those broadcast since RMR went to press. But instead of the blog items and brief commentaries that graced the previous collection, this one will contain a much more attention-grabbing set of entirely new, 3,000-word pieces by Rick, including a hilarious behind-the-scenes account of his bungee-jump with Rick Hansen, his reflections on the "vote mob" response to his call for students to vote, and his moving reflections on the rant that has meant most to him, on the suicide of bullied gay teenager Jamie Hubley.The book's title is also the name of a new speech that Rick will be giving at private dinners and corporate and charity gatherings across Canada for the forseeable future. The book and the speech share a name but will contain quite different material. Rick has a LOT to rant about.