Author: Thomas E. Mann Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465096735 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Acrimony and hyperpartisanship have seeped into every part of the political process. Congress is deadlocked and its approval ratings are at record lows. America's two main political parties have given up their traditions of compromise, endangering our very system of constitutional democracy. And one of these parties has taken on the role of insurgent outlier; the Republicans have become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and ardently opposed to the established social and economic policy regime.In It's Even Worse Than It Looks, congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress -- and the United States -- to the brink of institutional collapse. The first is the serious mismatch between our political parties, which have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act. Second, while both parties participate in tribal warfare, both sides are not equally culpable. The political system faces what the authors call &"asymmetric polarization," with the Republican Party implacably refusing to allow anything that might help the Democrats politically, no matter the cost.With dysfunction rooted in long-term political trends, a coarsened political culture and a new partisan media, the authors conclude that there is no &"silver bullet"; reform that can solve everything. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring of the House and Senate, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public at large to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle. Until voters learn to act strategically to reward problem solving and punish obstruction, American democracy will remain in serious danger.
Author: Thomas Norman DeWolf Publisher: Beacon Press ISBN: 9780807072813 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 286
Book Description
In 2001, at forty-seven, Thomas DeWolf was astounded to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in American history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans to the Americas. His infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, Rhode Island, curried favor with President Thomas Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed. When James DeWolf died in 1837, he was the second-richest man in America. When Katrina Browne, Thomas DeWolf's cousin, learned about their family's history, she resolved to confront it head-on, producing and directing a documentary feature film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. Inheriting the Trade is Tom DeWolf's powerful and disarmingly honest memoir of the journey in which ten family members retraced the steps of their ancestors and uncovered the hidden history of New England and the other northern states. Their journey through the notorious Triangle Trade-from New England to West Africa to Cuba-proved life-altering, forcing DeWolf to face the horrors of slavery directly for the first time. It also inspired him to contend with the complicated legacy that continues to affect black and white Americans, Africans, and Cubans today. Inheriting the Trade reveals that the North's involvement in slavery was as common as the South's. Not only were black people enslaved in the North for over two hundred years, but the vast majority of all slave trading in America was done by northerners. Remarkably, half of all North American voyages involved in the slave trade originated in Rhode Island, and all the northern states benefited. With searing candor, DeWolf tackles both the internal and external challenges of his journey-writing frankly about feelings of shame, white male privilege, the complicity of churches, America's historic amnesia regarding slavery-and our nation's desperate need for healing. An urgent call for meaningful and honest dialogue, Inheriting the Trade illuminates a path toward a more hopeful future and provides a persuasive argument that the legacy of slavery isn't merely a southern issue but an enduring American one. "Exploring the links between a grand Rhode Island mansion and dungeons in Ghana, Tom DeWolf traces the infernal trade that gave his family, and this country, great wealth and power. His journey into the past forces painful questions to the surface, and illuminates our present." -Henry Wiencek, Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award and author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America "Thomas DeWolf's personal journey into his family's long hidden slave trading past is a compelling invitation to explore how our country and many institutions, including churches, benefited from this dark chapter. Such exploration is essential if we are to move forward to a place of repair and racial reconciliation." -Frank T. Griswold, 25th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church "Tom DeWolf's deeply personal story, of his own journey as well as his family's, is required reading for anyone interested in reconciliation. Healing from our historic wounds, that continue to separate us, requires us to walk this road together." -Myrlie Evers-Williams, civil rights leader, chairman emeritus of the NAACP (1995-98), and author of The Autobiography of Medgar Evers, Watch Me Fly, and For Us the Living "Inheriting the Trade is like a slow-motion mash-up, a first-person view from within one of the country's founding families as it splinters, then puts itself back together again." -Edward Ball, author of Slaves in the Family "Inheriting the Trade is a candid, powerful and insightful book about how one family de
Author: CPP/PSP/CSC, Thomas L. Norman Publisher: CRC Press ISBN: 1420078712 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 412
Book Description
When properly conducted, risk analysis enlightens, informs, and illuminates, helping management organize their thinking into properly prioritized, cost-effective action. Poor analysis, on the other hand, usually results in vague programs with no clear direction and no metrics for measurement. Although there is plenty of information on risk analysis
Author: Raymond F. Gregory Publisher: Algora Publishing ISBN: 0875866239 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 311
Book Description
A conscientious objector in two world wars and a relentless advocate for world peace as well as social justice, Norman Thomas was tear-gassed, arrested, and jailed as he stood up for the rights of minorities, immigrants, and the working poor. In addition to being a civil rights activist, Thomas headed the Socialist Party for 18 years, ran for president six times, was a pacifist, and created several institutions to advance world peace and universal disarmament. He strongly and vocally opposed the Vietnam War. This biography highlights the values that lay behind his actions, values which included aspects of socialism but which also conflicted with the views of many Leftists.
Author: Thomas L. Jeffers Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521198143 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 409
Book Description
This is the first biography of the Jewish-American intellectual Norman Podhoretz, longtime editor of the influential magazine Commentary. As both an editor and a writer, he spearheaded the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and - after he "broke ranks" - the neoconservative response. For years he defined what was at stake in the struggle against communism; recently he has nerved America for a new struggle against jihadist Islam; always he has given substance to debates over the function of religion, ethics, and the arts in our society. The turning point of his life occurred, at the age of forty near a farmhouse in upstate New York, in a mystic clarification. It compelled him to "unlearn" much that he had earlier been taught to value, and it also made him enemies. Revealing the private as well as the public man, Thomas L. Jeffers chronicles a heroically coherent life.
Author: Norman Thomas Di Giovanni Publisher: A&C Black ISBN: 9780826476258 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 210
Book Description
Jorge Luis Borges wrote: "Fame is a form of incomprehension, perhaps the worst." Since his death Borges has been inducted into the world literary canon through the efforts of a number of influential critics and the Borges estate. Central to this project has been the publication of a group of grand volumes whose greatest achievement has been to make available in English works that had previously remained obscure, even in Spanish. The five-year collaboration (1967-1972) between Borges and Norman Thomas di Giovanni produced the translations that brought Borges his burgeoning global English readership. The Lesson of the Master--a memoir and essays--is an indispensable work for Borges readers and his growing legion of students and scholars. Di Giovanni was the only translator to have Borges on hand on a daily basis to contradict or authorize his work. In addition di Giovanni is not burdened with an over-reverence for his subject but is on the contrary playful, robust, and witty. The Lesson of the Master is an essential illumination of one of the great masters of twentieth-century literature.
Author: Norman E. Thomas Publisher: ISBN: Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 374
Book Description
Classic Texts in Mission & World Christianity, a unique sourcebook on the history and mission of the church. Nearly two hundred selections covering the two millennia of the Christian era are represented, including both classic and contemporary voices of persons in mission - women and men, from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe - and key texts for understanding the mission of Christ, the vocation of the church, and the nature of Christianity. Following the outline of David Bosch's monumental Transforming Mission, Classic Texts offers its readers the full texts cited throughout that best-seller, as well as dozens of additional primary sources from every era and every part of the world. From the seventh century abbess Bertilla of Chelles (who directed both women and men missionaries in England) to the Nestorian Monument detailing struggles with issues of contextualization in 8th century China, to David Livingstone's oft-cited espousal of civilization, commerce, and Christianity (seldom quoted in its entirety), Classic Texts provides a depth and breadth of resources unparalleled elsewhere.
Author: Jack Ross Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 1612344917 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 825
Book Description
At a time when the word “socialist” is but one of numerous political epithets that are generally divorced from the historical context of America’s political history, The Socialist Party of America presents a new, mature understanding of America’s most important minor political party of the twentieth century. From the party’s origins in the labor and populist movements at the end of the nineteenth century, to its heyday with the charismatic Eugene V. Debs, and to its persistence through the Depression and the Second World War under the steady leadership of “America’s conscience,” Norman Thomas, The Socialist Party of America guides readers through the party’s twilight, ultimate demise, and the successor groups that arose following its collapse. Based on archival research, Jack Ross’s study challenges the orthodoxies of both sides of the historiographical debate as well as assumptions about the Socialist Party in historical memory. Ross similarly covers the related emergence of neoconservatism and other facets of contemporary American politics and assesses some of the more sensational charges from the right about contemporary liberalism and the “radicalism” of Barack Obama.
Author: Thomas E. Mann
Author: Thomas Norman DeWolf
Author: William Andrew Swanberg
Author: CPP/PSP/CSC, Thomas L. Norman
Author: Raymond F. Gregory
Author: Thomas L. Jeffers
Author: Norman Thomas Di Giovanni
Author: Norman Thomas
Author: Norman E. Thomas
Author: Jack Ross