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A Way Out: America's Ghettos and the Legacy of Racism
by Owen FissAfter decades of hand-wringing and well-intentioned efforts to improve inner cities, ghettos remain places of degrading poverty with few jobs, much crime, failing schools, and dilapidated housing. Stepping around fruitless arguments over whether or not ghettos are dysfunctional communities that exacerbate poverty, and beyond modest proposals to ameliorate their problems, one of America's leading experts on civil rights gives us a stunning but commonsensical solution: give residents the means to leave. Inner cities, writes Owen Fiss, are structures of subordination. The only way to end the poverty they transmit across generations is to help people move out of them--and into neighborhoods with higher employment rates and decent schools. Based on programs tried successfully in Chicago and elsewhere, Fiss's proposal is for a provocative national policy initiative that would give inner-city residents rent vouchers so they can move to better neighborhoods. This would end at last the informal segregation, by race and income, of our metropolitan regions. Given the government's role in creating and maintaining segregation, Fiss argues, justice demands no less than such sweeping federal action. To sample the heated controversy that Fiss's ideas will ignite, the book includes ten responses from scholars, journalists, and practicing lawyers. Some endorse Fiss's proposal in general terms but take issue with particulars. Others concur with his diagnosis of the problem but argue that his policy response is wrongheaded. Still others accuse Fiss of underestimating the internal strength of inner-city communities as well as the hostility of white suburbs. Fiss's bold views should set off a debate that will help shape urban social policy into the foreseeable future. It is indispensable reading for anyone interested in social justice, domestic policy, or the fate of our cities.
A Way Out of No Way: A Memoir of Truth, Transformation, and the New American Story
by Raphael G. WarnockOn the heels of his historic election to the United States Senate, Raphael G. Warnock shares his remarkable spiritual and personal journey.&“A compelling, insightful memoir that details an extraordinary journey.&” —Bryan Stevenson Senator Reverend Raphael G. Warnock occupies a singular place in American life. As senior pastor of Atlanta&’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and now as a senator from Georgia, he is the rare voice who can call out the uncomfortable truths that shape contemporary American life and, at a time of division, summon us all to a higher moral ground. Senator Warnock grew up in the Kayton Homes housing projects in Savannah, the eleventh of twelve children. His dad was a World War II veteran, and as a teenager his mom picked tobacco and cotton in rural Georgia. Both were Pentecostal preachers. After graduating from Morehouse College, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.&’s alma mater, Senator Warnock studied for a decade at Union Theological Seminary while serving at Harlem&’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. At thirty-five, he became the senior pastor at Ebenezer, where Dr. King had preached and served. In January 2021, Senator Warnock won a runoff election that flipped control of the Senate at one of the most pivotal moments in recent American history. He is the first Black senator from Georgia, only the eleventh Black senator in American history, and just the second Black senator from the South since Reconstruction. As he said in his maiden speech from the well of the senate, Senator Warnock&’s improbable journey reflects the ongoing toggle between the pain and promise of the American story. A powerful preacher and a leading voice for voting rights and democracy, Senator Warnock has a once-in-a-generation gift to inspire and lead us forward. A Way Out of No Way tells his remarkable story for the first time.
The Way Out of Obamacare
by Sally C. PipesPresident Barack Obama has declared that his signature health reform law - the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - is "here to stay. " But his days in the White House are numbered, and the law has failed: insurance premiums and deductibles have skyrocketed, patients are losing access to doctors, and economic growth has been crushed. In this Broadside, Sally C. Pipes provides an actionable blueprint for health care reform this campaign season, which the next president can implement on Day One. This book provides a replacement plan for Obamacare - one that will provide affordable, accessible, quality health care for all Americans.
Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War
by Frances FitzgeraldWay Out There in the Blue is a major work of history by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Fire in the Lake. Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan, the most puzzling president of the last half of the twentieth century. Reagan's presidency and the man himself have always been difficult to fathom. His influence was enormous, and the few powerful ideas he espoused remain with us still -- yet he seemed nothing more than a charming, simple-minded, inattentive actor. FitzGerald shows us a Reagan far more complex than the man we thought we knew. A master of the American language and of self-presentation, the greatest storyteller ever to occupy the Oval Office, Reagan created a compelling public persona that bore little relationship to himself. The real Ronald Reagan -- the Reagan who emerges from FitzGerald's book -- was a gifted politician with a deep understanding of the American national psyche and at the same time an executive almost totally disengaged from the policies of his administration and from the people who surrounded him. The idea that America should have an impregnable shield against nuclear weapons was Reagan's invention. His famous Star Wars speech, in which he promised us such a shield and called upon scientists to produce it, gave rise to the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan used his sure understanding of American mythology, history and politics to persuade the country that a perfect defense against Soviet nuclear weapons would be possible, even though the technology did not exist and was not remotely feasible. His idea turned into a multibillion-dollar research program. SDI played a central role in U.S.-Soviet relations at a crucial juncture in the Cold War, and in a different form it survives to this day. Drawing on prodigious research, including interviews with the participants, FitzGerald offers new insights into American foreign policy in the Reagan era. She gives us revealing portraits of major players in Reagan's administration, including George Shultz, Caspar Weinberger, Donald Regan and Paul Nitze, and she provides a radically new view of what happened at the Reagan-Gorbachev summits in Geneva, Reykjavik, Washington and Moscow. FitzGerald describes the fierce battles among Reagan's advisers and the frightening increase of Cold War tensions during Reagan's first term. She shows how the president who presided over the greatest peacetime military buildup came to espouse the elimination of nuclear weapons, and how the man who insisted that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire" came to embrace the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and to proclaim an end to the Cold War long before most in Washington understood that it had ended. Way Out There in the Blue is a ground-breaking history of the American side of the end of the Cold War. Both appalling and funny, it is a black comedy in which Reagan, playing the role he wrote for himself, is the hero.
The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine
by Ben EhrenreichFrom an award-winning journalist, a brave and necessary immersion into the everyday struggles of Palestinian life Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages. Along the way he has written major stories for American outlets, including a remarkable New York Times Magazine cover story. Now comes the powerful new work that has always been his ultimate goal, The Way to the Spring. We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of people suffering from extremes of oppression and want: Katherine Boo, Ryszard Kapuściński, Ted Conover, and Philip Gourevitch among them. Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one's politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine. In a great act of bravery, empathy and understanding, Ben Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away.
The Way to Win
by Mark Halperin John F. HarrisIn The Way to Win, two of the country's most accomplished political reporters explain what separates the victors from the victims in the unforgiving environment of modern presidential campaigns.Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News, and John F. Harris, the national politics editor of The Washington Post, tell the story of how two families-the Bushes and the Clintons-have held the White House for nearly a generation and examine Hillary Clinton's prospects for extending this record in 2008. Based on years of research, including private campaign memos and White House communications, The Way to Win reveals the surprising details of how the Bushes and Clintons have closely studied each the other's successes and failures and used these lessons to shape their own strategies for winning elections and wielding power.In the case of George W. Bush, the strategic genius is Karl C. Rove, arguably the most influential White House aide in history. For the first time, Halperin and Harris cut through the myths and controversies surrounding Rove to illuminate in brilliant, behind-the-scenes detail what he actually does-his Trade Secrets for winning elections.In the case of the Clintons, the chief strategist is Bill Clinton himself. Drawing on their fifteen years reporting on and interviewing him, Halperin and Harris deconstruct and decipher the Clinton style, identifying the methods that all candidates can use in their pursuit of the White House.The Way to Win takes a lively and irreverent approach, but Halperin and Harris also show the disturbing ways that American politics has become a Freak Show-their name for a political culture that provides incentives for candidates, activists, interest groups, and the news media to emphasize ideological extremism and personal attack. For the first time, Halperin and Harris describe how Freak Show campaigns orchestrated by the likes of Internet pioneer Matt Drudge forced Al Gore and John Kerry to lose control of their public images (with considerable help from the candidates' own ineptitude) and lose the White House.On the brink of what will be one of the most intense, most exciting presidential elections in American history, The Way to Win is the book that armchair political junkies have been waiting for. Filled with peerless analysis and eye-opening revelations from the trenches, it is a must read for everyone who follows American politics.From the Hardcover edition.
The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory
by Amanda AndersonHow do the ways we argue represent a practical philosophy or a way of life? Are concepts of character and ethos pertinent to our understanding of academic debate? In this book, Amanda Anderson analyzes arguments in literary, cultural, and political theory, with special attention to the ways in which theorists understand ideals of critical distance, forms of subjective experience, and the determinants of belief and practice. Drawing on the resources of the liberal and rationalist tradition, Anderson interrogates the limits of identity politics and poststructuralism while holding to the importance of theory as a form of life. Considering high-profile trends as well as less noted patterns of argument, The Way We Argue Now addresses work in feminism, new historicism, queer theory, postcolonialism, cosmopolitanism, pragmatism, and proceduralism. The essays brought together here--lucid, precise, rigorously argued--combine pointed critique with an appreciative assessment of the productive internal contests and creative developments across these influential bodies of thought. Ultimately, The Way We Argue Now promotes a revitalized culture of argument through a richer understanding of the ways critical reason is practiced at the individual, collective, and institutional levels. Bringing to the fore the complexities of academic debate while shifting the terms by which we assess the continued influence of theory, it will appeal to readers interested in political theory, literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and the place of academic culture in society and politics.
The Way We Build: Restoring Dignity to Construction Work (Working Class in American History)
by Mark ErlichThe construction trades once provided unionized craftsmen a route to the middle class and a sense of pride and dignity often denied other blue-collar workers. Today, union members still earn wages and benefits that compare favorably to those of college graduates. But as union strength has declined over the last fifty years, a growing non-union sector offers lower compensation and more hazardous conditions, undermining the earlier tradition of upward mobility. Revitalization of the industry depends on unions shedding past racial and gender discriminatory practices, embracing organizing, diversity, and the new immigrant workforce, and preparing for technological changes. Mark Erlich blends long-view history with his personal experience inside the building trades to explain one of our economy’s least understood sectors. Erlich’s multifaceted account includes the dynamics of the industry, the backdrop of union policies, and powerful stories of everyday life inside the trades. He offers a much-needed overview of construction’s past and present while exploring roads to the future.
The Way We Live Now: from The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies (A Vintage Short)
by Susan JacobyIn this selection from her searing cultural history of the last half century, Susan Jacoby chronicles the menacing surge of anti-rationalism in contemporary American life and the degradation of public speech in presidential rhetoric, radio broadcast, television, and internet media where homogenized language and thought reinforce each other in circular fashion. At today's critical political juncture, in which boastful ignorance has infected public discourse at the highest levels of government and throughout ordinary social media, this impassioned, tough-minded work challenges Americans to face the painful truth about what the flight from intellectualism, facts, and truth have cost us as individuals and as a nation.A Vintage Shorts Selection. An ebook short.
The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today: 60 Of The World's Greatest Minds Share Their Visions of the Next Half-Century
by Mike WallaceThe world is an uncertain place, which is why the future and the unknown absolutely fascinate us. Veteran television journalist Mike Wallace asked the question "What will life be like 50 years from now?" to sixty of the world's greatest minds. Their responses offer a fascinating glimpse into the cultural, scientific, political, and spiritual moods of the times. Edited and with an introduction by Mike Wallace, this book provides an imaginative and thought-provoking look into our collective soul and the critical issues that underlie our hopes, prayers, fears, and dreams for life in the 21st century.Contributors include former presidents, leading scientists, noted writers and artists, respected religious leaders, and current political figures, including:Vint Cerf, Vice President of Google; known as a "Father of the Internet"Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., a geneticist who led the Human Genome ProjectDr. Wanda Jones, Director of the Office on Women's Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesRay Kurzweil, an inventor whose developments include the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind and the first text-to-speech synthesizerGeneral James E. Cartwright, Commander of United States Strategic CommandKim Dae-jung, the former President of the Republic of KoreaRonald Noble, Secretary General of InterpolNorman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize winner; called "the father of the Green Revolution"Carol Bellamy, former Executive Director UNICEF, first former volunteer to serve as director of Peace Corp, and current president and CEO of World LearningGerardus 't Hooft, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands; Nobel Prize in Physics Craig Newmark, Internet pioneer and founder of craigslist
The Way Women Are: Transformative Opinions and Dissents of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
by Cathy CambronA collection of US Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg&’s legal writings spanning her career, featuring her arguments, opinions, and dissents. US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent her life defying notions about women. She garnered the status of a cultural icon, the &“Notorious RBG.&” Her life story is inspirational, and her work ethic is aspirational. Ginsburg&’s dissents on behalf of liberal values have been lauded. She has been the subject of films and books, and her image has even been featured on everything from T-shirts to scented candles. But what is known about how her viewpoint shaped the development of law in the United States from the 1970s to 2020? The Way Women Are collects a broad range of Justice Ginsburg&’s legal writings, shedding light on who she was and what she contributed to American jurisprudence. The book begins with her arguments before the Supreme Court as a women&’s rights advocate in the 1970s. It proceeds to her opinions and dissents as a member of the Court. The opinions range from United States v. Virginia (1996) to Little Sisters of the Poor (2020)—a case she participated in from her hospital bed. Also included are a brief biography of Ginsburg and introductions to the writings that explain the background, issues, and laws involved in each case. Additionally, the collection includes oral arguments and bench announcements of decisions to make the issues more accessible. Altogether, The Way Women Are sketches an enlightening portrait of an extremely influential American jurist.
Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War
by Roger Lowenstein"Captivating…[Lowenstein] makes what subsequently occurred at Treasury and on Wall Street during the early 1860s seem as enthralling as what transpired on the battlefield or at the White House.&” —Harold Holzer, Wall Street JournalFrom renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country&’s historyUpon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy&’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity—the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the &“more perfect union&” that had first drawn him to politics. With Lincoln at the helm, the United States would now govern &“for&” its people: it would enact laws, establish a currency, raise armies, underwrite transportation and higher education, assist farmers, and impose taxes for them. Lincoln believed this agenda would foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans. Salmon Chase, Lincoln&’s vanquished rival and his new secretary of the Treasury, waged war on the financial front, levying taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. And while the Union and Rebel armies fought increasingly savage battles, the Republican-led Congress enacted a blizzard of legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. The impact was revolutionary. The activist 37th Congress legislated for homesteads and a transcontinental railroad and involved the federal government in education, agriculture, and eventually immigration policy. It established a progressive income tax and created the greenback—paper money. While the Union became self-sustaining, the South plunged into financial free fall, having failed to leverage its cotton wealth to finance the war. Founded in a crucible of anticentralism, the Confederacy was trapped in a static (and slave-based) agrarian economy without federal taxing power or other means of government financing, save for its overworked printing presses. This led to an epic collapse. Though Confederate troops continued to hold their own, the North&’s financial advantage over the South, where citizens increasingly went hungry, proved decisive; the war was won as much (or more) in the respective treasuries as on the battlefields. Roger Lowenstein reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet, and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The Ways of Federalism in Western Countries and the Horizons of Territorial Autonomy in Spain, Volume 1
by Alberto López Basaguren Leire Escajedo San EpifanioTerritorial autonomy in Spain has reached a crossroads. After over thirty years of development, the consensus regarding its appropriateness has started to crumble. The transformation project embodied by the reform of Statute of Catalonia (2006) has failed to achieve its most significant demands. Although the concept of Spain as a Federation is disputed -more within the country than beyond-, the evolution of the Spanish system needs to follow a markedly federalist path. In this perspective, reference models assume critical importance. This edition gathers the works of a broad group of European, American and Spanish experts who analyse the present-day challenges of their respective systems. The objective, thus, is to contribute ideas which might help to address the evolution of the Spanish system in the light of the experience of more established Federations. This first volume analyses the challenges facing federal systems in the age of globalisation from a global perspective. It also addresses current questions and the challenges faced today by, in the sphere of the internal division of powers, the most significant ‘western’ federal systems, on the one hand, and the Spanish system of territorial autonomy, on the other.
The Ways of Federalism in Western Countries and the Horizons of Territorial Autonomy in Spain, Volume 2
by Alberto López Basaguren Leire Escajedo San EpifanioTerritorial autonomy in Spain has reached a crossroads. After over thirty years of development, the consensus regarding its appropriateness has started to crumble. The transformation project embodied by the reform of Statute of Catalonia (2006) has failed to achieve its most significant demands. Although the concept of Spain as a Federation is disputed -more within the country than beyond-, the evolution of the Spanish system needs to follow a markedly federalist path. In this perspective, reference models assume critical importance. This edition gathers the works of a broad group of European, American and Spanish experts who analyse the present-day challenges of their respective systems. The objective, thus, is to contribute ideas which might help to address the evolution of the Spanish system in the light of the experience of more established Federations. This second volume focuses its attention on the difficulties and challenges faced in two particular fields. On the one hand, the field of intergovernmental relations and, on the other, questions related to the integration and acknowledgement of diversity and of Fundamental Rights, with special reference to the cases of Canada and Spain. Finally, there is analysis of other specific aspects of the system of territorial autonomy in Spain.
Ways of Residing in Transformation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
by Sten Gromark Mervi Ilmonen Katrin Paadam Eli StøaProfound transformations in residential practices are emerging in Europe as well as throughout the urban world. They can be observed in the unfolding diversity of residential architecture and spatially restructured cities. The complexity of urban and societal processes behind these changes requires new research approaches in order to fully grasp the significant changes in citizens lifestyles, their residential preferences, capacities and future opportunities for implementing resilient residential practices. The international case studies in this book examine why ways of residing have changed as well as the meaning and the significance of the social, economic, political, cultural and symbolic contexts. The volume brings together an interdisciplinary range of perspectives to reflect specifically upon the dynamic exchange between evolving ways of residing and professional practices in the fields of architecture and design, planning, policy-making, facilities management, property and market. In doing so, it provides a resourceful basis for further inquiries seeking an understanding of ways of residing in transformation as a reflection of diversifying residential cultures. This book will offer insights of interest to academics, policy-makers and professionals as well as students of urban studies, sociology, architecture, housing, planning, business and economics, engineering and facilities management.
Ways of Seeing in the Neoliberal State: A Controversial Play and Its Contexts
by Asbjørn Skarsvåg GrønstadThis book focuses on the theme of counter-surveillance in art through a multi-faceted engagement with the highly controversial Norwegian play Ways of Seeing. Denounced by the prime minister and subject to a police investigation, the play gained notoriety when it featured footage showing the homes of the country’s financial and political elite as part of its scenography. The book provides a thorough consideration of the work’s reception context before elucidating its relation to the politics of neoliberalism. What is foregrounded in this analysis are, first, the use of an aesthetics of sousveillance to visualize the material infrastructure of racism and right-wing populism, second, the tangled interrelations of art and law, third, questions of censorship and artistic freedom, and fourth, the promotion of an alternative mode of political governance – grounded in feminism and ecological awareness – through the example of the Rojava experiment.
The Ways Out: Utopian Communal Groups in an Age of Babylon (Routledge Library Editions: Utopias)
by John R. HallA comparative analysis of both secular and religious communal groups in contemporary America, this study, originally published in 1978, shows that contemporary communalists stand in relation to collectivism much the same as early Protestants stood in relation to individualism – as the self-proclaimed pioneers of the new age. There is great diversity among communal groups, a diversity which is found to stem from alternative orientations towards time and alternative assumptions about the cognitive status of the social world. The author has made use of a phenomenologically derived typological framework to organize the data he has obtained through living in and visiting a number of communal groups. Within this framework, Alfred Schutz’s ‘mundane’ phenomenology and Max Weber’s interpretive sociology are employed as ways of approaching the situated sociology of knowledge in various communal groups. Six ideal types of communal groups are described: the commune, the intentional association, the community, the warring sect, the other-worldly sect and the ecstatic association. Two of these types – the intentional association and the community – are identified as participants’ efforts to demonstrate ‘worldly utopian’ models for the reconstruction of society at large.
Ways Out of War
by Mona FixdalAn exploration of the individual work of ten diplomats who were charged with negotiating conclusions to intractable conflicts in the Middle East and Balkans, this book is the first study to combine the outlooks of practitioners and academics on new forms of war, especially asymmetrical warfare between state and non-state actors.
Ways to Hide in Winter
by Sarah St. VincentIn the wintery silences of Pennsylvania’s Blue Ridge Mountains, a woman befriends a mysterious foreigner—setting in motion this suspenseful, atmospheric, politically charged debut After surviving a life-altering accident at twenty-two, Kathleen recuperates by retreating to a remote campground lodge in a state park, where she works flipping burgers for deer hunters and hikers—happy, she insists, to be left alone. But when a hesitant, heavily accented stranger appears in the dead of winter—seemingly out of nowhere, kicking snow from his flimsy dress shoes—the wary Kathleen is intrigued, despite herself. He says he’s a student from Uzbekistan. To her he seems shell-shocked, clearly hiding from something that terrifies him. And as she becomes absorbed in his secrets, she’s forced to confront her own—even as her awareness of being in danger grows . . . Steeped in the rugged beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with America’s war on terror raging in the background, Sarah St.Vincent’s Ways to Hide in Winter is a powerful story about violence and redemption, betrayal and empathy . . . and how we reconcile the unforgivable in those we love.
Wayward Contracts: The Crisis of Political Obligation in England, 1640-1674
by Victoria KahnWhy did the language of contract become the dominant metaphor for the relationship between subject and sovereign in mid-seventeenth-century England? In Wayward Contracts, Victoria Kahn takes issue with the usual explanation for the emergence of contract theory in terms of the origins of liberalism, with its notions of autonomy, liberty, and equality before the law. Drawing on literature as well as political theory, state trials as well as religious debates, Kahn argues that the sudden prominence of contract theory was part of the linguistic turn of early modern culture, when government was imagined in terms of the poetic power to bring new artifacts into existence. But this new power also brought in its wake a tremendous anxiety about the contingency of obligation and the instability of the passions that induce individuals to consent to a sovereign power. In this wide-ranging analysis of the cultural significance of contract theory, the lover and the slave, the tyrant and the regicide, the fool and the liar emerge as some of the central, if wayward, protagonists of the new theory of political obligation. The result is must reading for students and scholars of early modern literature and early modern political theory, as well as historians of political thought and of liberalism.
We: Reviving Social Hope
by Ronald AronsonThe election of Donald Trump has exposed American society’s profound crisis of hope. By 2016 a generation of shrinking employment, rising inequality, the attack on public education, and the shredding of the social safety net, had set the stage for stunning insurgencies at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Against this dire background, Ronald Aronson offers an answer. He argues for a unique conception of social hope, one with the power for understanding and acting upon the present situation. Hope, he argues, is far more than a mood or feeling—it is the very basis of social will and political action. It is this kind of hope that Aronson sees brewing in the supporters of Bernie Sanders, who advocated the tough-minded and inspired disposition to act collectively to make the world more equal, more democratic, more peaceful, and more just. And it was directly contrasted by Trump’s supporters who showed a cynical and nostalgic faith in an authoritarian strongman replete with bigotry and misogyny. Beneath today’s crisis Aronson examines our heartbreaking story: a century of catastrophic violence and the bewildering ambiguity of progress—all of which have contributed to the evaporation of social hope. As he shows, we are now in a time when hope is increasingly privatized, when—despite all the ways we are connected to each other—we are desperately alone, struggling to weather the maelstrom around us, demoralized by the cynicism that permeates our culture and politics, and burdened with finding personal solutions to social problems. Yet, Aronson argues, even at a time when false hopes are rife, social hope still persists. Carefully exploring what we mean when we say we “hope” and teasing hope apart from its dangerously misconstrued sibling, “progress,” he locates seeds of real change. He argues that always underlying our experience—even if we completely ignore it—is the fact of our social belonging, and that this can be reactivated into a powerful collective force, an active we. He looks to various political movements, from the massive collective force of environmentalists to the movements around Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, as powerful examples of socially energized, politically determined, and actionably engaged forms of hope. Even in this age of Donald Trump, the result is an illuminating and inspiring call that anyone can clearly hear: we can still create a better future for everyone, but only if we resist false hopes and act together.
We Are Afghan Women
by Laura Bush George W. Bush InstituteHere are Afghan women in their own words. Words that are by turns inspiring, moving, courageous, and heartbreaking. Their powerful stories create a compelling portrait of the lives, struggles, and successes of this extraordinary nation and its extraordinarily resilient women. With an introduction by Laura Bush, honorary founding co-chair of the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council.Afghanistan has been described as "the worst nation in the world to be a woman." More than fifty percent of girls who are forced into marriage are sixteen or younger. Too many women live in fear and in many areas, education and employment for women are still condemned. The women featured in We Are Afghan Women are fighting to change all that. From rug weavers to domestic violence counselors to business owners, educators, and activists, these courageous women are charting a new path for themselves, their families, their communities, and their nation. Told in their own voices, their stories vividly capture a country undone by decades of war and now struggling to build a lasting peace. Meet Dr. Sakena Yacoobi, who ran underground schools for girls until the Taliban fell, and today has established educational centers across Afghanistan to teach women and girls basic literacy. Or Freshta Hazeq, who as a female business owner, has faced death threats, sabotage, and even kidnapping threats against her children. Naheed Farid is the youngest female member of Afghanistan's parliament. During her campaign, opponents cut Naheed's face out of campaign posters and her family risked complete ruin, but her husband and father-in-law never wavered, encouraging her to persevere. Here, too are compassionate women such as Masooma Jafari, who started a national midwives association. Her own mother was forced into marriage at age twelve and gave birth to her first child at age thirteen. With an introduction by former First Lady Laura Bush, We Are Afghan Women chronicles the lives of young and old, daughters and mothers, educated, and those who are still learning. These determined women are defying the odds to lead Afghanistan to a better future. Their stories are a stark reminder that in some corners of the world the struggle continues and that women's progress in society, business, and politics cannot be taken for granted. Their eloquent words challenge all of us to answer: What does it truly mean to be a woman in the twenty-first century?
"We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now": The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages
by Annelise OrleckThe story of low-wage workers rising up around the world to demand respect and a living wage.Tracing a new labor movement sparked and sustained by low-wage workers from across the globe, "We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now" is an urgent, illuminating look at globalization as seen through the eyes of workers-activists: small farmers, fast-food servers, retail workers, hotel housekeepers, home-healthcare aides, airport workers, and adjunct professors who are fighting for respect, safety, and a living wage. With original photographs by Liz Cooke and drawing on interviews with activists in many US cities and countries around the world, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Mexico, South Africa, and the Philippines, it features stories of resistance and rebellion, as well as reflections on hope and change as it rises from the bottom up.
We Are All Good People Here: A Novel
by Susan Rebecca WhiteFrom the author of A Place at the Table and A Soft Place to Land, an &“intense, complex, and wholly immersive&” (Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author) multigenerational novel that explores the complex relationship between two very different women and the secrets they bequeath to their daughters.Eve Whalen, privileged child of an old-money Atlanta family, meets Daniella Gold in the fall of 1962, on their first day at Belmont College. Paired as roommates, the two become fast friends. Daniella, raised in Georgetown by a Jewish father and a Methodist mother, has always felt caught between two worlds. But at Belmont, her bond with Eve allows her to finally experience a sense of belonging. That is, until the girls&’ expanding awareness of the South&’s systematic injustice forces them to question everything they thought they knew about the world and their places in it. Eve veers toward radicalism—a choice pragmatic Daniella cannot fathom. After a tragedy, Eve returns to Daniella for help in beginning anew, hoping to shed her past. But the past isn&’t so easily buried, as Daniella and Eve discover when their daughters are endangered by secrets meant to stay hidden. Spanning more than thirty years of American history, from the twilight of Kennedy&’s Camelot to the beginning of Bill Clinton&’s presidency, We Are All Good People Here is &“a captivating…meaningful, resonant story&” (Emily Giffin, author of All We Ever Wanted) about two flawed but well-meaning women clinging to a lifelong friendship that is tested by the rushing waters of history and their own good intentions.
We Are All Migrants: Political Action and the Ubiquitous Condition of Migrant-hood
by Gregory FeldmanNow more than ever, questions of citizenship, migration, and political action dominate public debate. In this powerful and polemical book, Gregory Feldman argues that We Are All Migrants. By challenging the division between those considered "citizens" and "migrants," Feldman shows that both subjects confront disempowerment, uncertainty, and atomization inseparable from the rise of mass society, the isolation of the laboring individual, and the global proliferation of rationalized practices of security and production. Yet, this very atomization--the ubiquitous condition of migrant-hood--pushes the individual to ask an existential and profoundly political question: "do I matter in this world?" Feldman argues that for particular individuals to answer this question affirmatively, they must be empowered to jointly constitute the places they inhabit with others. Feldman ultimately argues that to overcome the condition of migrant-hood, people must be empowered to constitute their own sovereign spaces from their particular standpoints. Rather than base these spaces on categorical types of people, these spaces emerge only as particular people present themselves to each other while questioning how they should inhabit it.