Dr. David Reagan answers the following questions and many more concerning the signs of the times that point to the soon return of Jesus. Can we know the date when Jesus will return? Can we know the season of His return? What are the key biblical signs of His return? What signs, if any, have already been fulfilled? Are there any signs that are unique to our day and time? What is the most convincing sign of the Lord’s soon return? A unique feature of the book is a prophecy forum composed of 22 Bible prophecy experts who reply to 11 questions concerning the biblical signs of the times that are supposed to signal the imminent return of Jesus. Experts included are: Daymond Duck, Gary Fisher, Jim Fletcher, Ray Gano, Al Gist, Phillip Goodman, J.R. Hall, Mark Hitchcock, David Hocking, Ken Humphries, Terry James, Nathan Jones, Jack Kinsella, Tim LaHaye, Jan Markell, Caryl Matrisciana, Don McGee, Dennis Pollock, Ron Rhodes, August Rosado, Bill Salus, and Brian Thomas.
This exciting book focuses on the rise and fall of the Antichrist during the Great Tribulation. A unique feature of this book is that it features the opinions of 22 Bible prophecy experts who were interviewed by Dr. Reagan regarding key questions about the Antichrist, such as: Will he be a Jew or a Gentile? Could he be a Muslim? Will he be killed and resurrected from the dead? Where will his headquarters be located? Is he alive today? Experts included are: Daymond Duck, Gary Fisher, Gary Frazier, Arnold Fruchtenbaum, Ray Gano, Al Gist, Phillip Goodman, Ed Hindson, Mark Hitchcock, David Hocking, David Hunt, Noah Hutchings, Terry James, Nathan Jones, Tim LaHaye, Caryl Matrisciana, Don McGee, Chuck Missler, Don Perkins, Ron Rhodes, Bill Salus, and Todd Strandberg.
Never before in the history of mankind have so few people had so much power over so many. The people at the top of the American national security establishment, the President and his principal advisors, the core team at the helm of the National Security Council, are without question the most powerful committee in the history of the world. Yet, in many respects, they are among the least understood. A former senior official in the Clinton Administration himself, David Rothkopf served with and knows personally many of the NSC's key players of the past twenty-five years. In Running the World he pulls back the curtain on this shadowy world to explore its inner workings, its people, their relationships, their contributions and the occasions when they have gone wrong. He traces the group's evolution from the final days of the Second World War to the post-Cold War realities of global terror -- exploring its triumphs, its human dramas and most recently, what many consider to be its breakdown at a time when we needed it most. Drawing on an extraordinary series of insider interviews with policy makers including Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, senior officials of the Bush Administration, and over 130 others, the book offers unprecedented insights into what must change if America is to maintain its unprecedented worldwide leadership in the decades ahead.
No person involved in so much history received so little attention as the late Robert C. Byrd, the longest-serving U.S. senator. In The Last Great Senator, David A. Corbin examines ByrdÆs complex and fascinating relationships with eleven presidents of the United States, from Eisenhower to Obama. Furthermore, Byrd had an impact on nearly every significant event of the last half century, including the Cold War, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, KennedyÆs New Frontier, the Watergate scandal, the Reagan Revolution, the impeachment of President Clinton, and the Iraq War. Holding several Senate records, Byrd also cast more votes than any other U.S. senator. In his sweeping portrait of this eloquent and persuasive manÆs epic life and career, Corbin describes Senator ByrdÆs humble background in the coalfields of southern West Virginia (including his brief membership in the Ku Klux Klan). He covers ByrdÆs encounters and personal relationship with each president and his effect on events during their administrations. Additionally, the book discusses ByrdÆs interactions with other notable senators, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Russell, Mike Mansfield, and especially Robert and Edward Kennedy. Going beyond the boundaries of West Virginia and Capitol Hill, The Last Great Senator presents Byrd in a larger historical context, where he rose to the height of power in America.
Liking Ike reveals the prominent role that celebrities and advertising agencies played in Dwight Eisenhower's presidency. Guided by Madison Avenue executives and television pioneers, Eisenhower cultivated famous supporters as a way of building the broad-based support that had eluded Republicans for twenty years. While we often think of John F. Kennedy and his Rat Pack entourage as the beginning of presidential glamour in the United States, celebrities from Ethel Merman and Irving Berlin to Jimmy Stewart and Helen Hayes regularly appeared in Eisenhower's campaigns. Ike's political career was so saturated with stardom that opponents from the right and left accused him of being a glamour candidate. Author David Haven Blake tells the story of how Madison Avenue executives strategically brought celebrities into the political process. Based on original interviews and long neglected archival materials, Liking Ike explores the changing dynamics of celebrity politics as Americans adjusted to the television age. By the 1920s, entertainers were routinely drawing publicity to their favorite candidates, but with the rise of television and mass advertising, political advisers began to professionalize the way that celebrities brought attention to presidential campaigns. In meetings, memos, and television scripts, they charted a strategy for leavening political programming with celebrity interviews, musical performances, and elaborate television spectaculars. Commentators worried about the seemingly superficial values that television had introduced to political campaigns, and writers, filmmakers, and fellow politicians criticized the influence of glamour and publicity. But despite these complaints, Eisenhower's legacy would live on in the subsequent careers of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan-and, ultimately, provide a template for the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, John McCain, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton.
A complete look at every President’s who, what, when, where, why, and, how. From George Washington to Barrack Obama and John Adams to Woodrow Wilson, The Handy Presidents Answer Book offers a fascinating look at the lives of each U.S. president, along with a large array of factual, anecdotal, and historic perspectives on the American presidency. Early life and career are covered, along with important highlights from each presidency. The Handy Presidents Answer Book addresses more than 1,600 broad, fundamental questions on the presidents, vice presidents, first ladies, administration staff, families, campaigns and elections, major issues, wars, scandals, tragedies, and entertaining White House trivia such as . . . What three presidents died on the Fourth of July? Which president regularly swam naked in the Potomac River? Which president executed criminals? What president was called “His Fraudulency” because of the controversial way he was elected? Which president later became chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court? Which president was the first to appoint a woman to his cabinet? Whose campaign pledge was to bring about a “kinder, gentler nation?” The Handy Presidents Answer Book is a must-have reference in the truest sense of the word. Covering not just the individuals, but also the origins of the presidency, political parties, elections, and trivia, the book gives depth and context to the office as well as to those who have become president. With many photos, illustrations, and other graphics, this tome is richly illustrated, and its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness.
The nail-biting story of when the hardhats of downtown Manhattan beat scores of hippies bloody in May 1970, four days after Kent State, and how the nation reacted. In May 1970, four days after Kent State, construction workers chased students through downtown Manhattan, beating scores of protestors bloody. As hardhats clashed with hippies, it soon became clear that something larger was happening; Democrats were at war with themselves. In The Hardhat Riot, David Paul Kuhn tells the fateful story-how chaotic it was, when it began, when the white working class first turned against liberalism, when Richard Nixon seized the breach, and America was forever changed. It was unthinkable one generation before: FDR's "forgotten man" siding with the party of Big Business and, ultimately, paving the way for presidencies from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. In the shadow of the half-built Twin Towers, on the same day the Knicks rallied against the odds and won their first championship, we relive the schism that tore liberalism apart. We experience the tumult of Nixon's America and John Lindsay's New York City, as festering division explodes into violence. Nixon's advisors realize that this tragic turn is their chance, that the Democratic coalition has collapsed and that "these, quite candidly, are our people now." In this nail-biting story, Kuhn delivers on meticulous research and reporting, drawing from thousands of pages of never-before-seen records. We go back to a harrowing day that explains the politics of today. We experience the battle between two tribes fighting different wars, soon to become different Americas, ultimately reliving a liberal war that maimed both sides. We come to see how it all was laid bare one brutal day, when the Democratic Party's future was bludgeoned by its past, as if it was a last gasp to say that we once mattered too.
Unto a Good Land offers a distinctive narrative history of the American people -- from the first contacts between Europeans and North America's native inhabitants, through the creation of a modern nation, to the standing of the United States as a world power. Written by a team of distinguished historians led by David Edwin Harrell, Jr. and Edwin S. Gaustad, this textbook shows how grasping the uniqueness of the bAmerican experimentb depends on understanding the role of religion as well as social, cultural, political, and economic factors in shaping U.S. history. A common shortcoming of most United States history textbooks is that while, in recent decades, they have expanded their coverage of social and cultural history, they still tend to shortchange the role of religious ideas, practices, and movements in the American past. "Unto a Good Land addresses this shortcoming in a balanced way. The authors recognize that religion is only one of many factors that have influenced our past -- one, however, that has often been neglected in textbook accounts. This volume gives religion its appropriate place in the story. "Unprecedented coverage of the forces that have shaped the history of the United States While none of America's rich history is left out, this volume is the first U.S. history textbook to give serious attention to the religious dimension of American life. This textbook is not a religious history; instead, it offers an account of American history that includes religious ideas, practices, and movements whenever they played a shaping role. "Comprehensive and current This volume traces the American story from the earliest encounters between the first North Americaninhabitants and Europeans through the 2004 presidential election. Complete and balanced treatment is also given to issues of gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as cultural, political, and economic forces. "A clear and compelling narrative The authors are more than expert historians; they are also talented writers who recognize history to be the retelling of human life. United by a seamless narrative structure, these chapters restore the bstoryb to history. "Multiple formats specially designed for flexible classroom use "Unto a Good Land is available as a single hardcover edition or as two paperback volumes, offering maximum flexibility when adapting curriculum for one- and two-semester courses in U.S. history. The two paperback volumes can be used for U.S. history survey courses divided at 1865 or 1900 -- or at any date in between. "Informative special features to complement the text In addition to the book's exceptional narrative, an array of special features enhances the instructional value of the text and points students to resources for further study. "Includes assistance for teaching and test preparation The instructor's manual for "Unto a Good Land provides helpful suggestions for lesson plans and assignments, and the test bank provides multiple-choice and essay questions for use as study aids, quizzes, or tests. "Suitable for instruction at both secular and religious colleges and universities Drawing on their experience in both secular and religious schools, the authors have ensured that this textbook is suitable for U.S. history classes in a wide variety of settings.
This book profiles eighteen of our funniest elections, from 1828, the first election in which all states had electors, to the election from hell in 2000. The book also includes chapters on Watergate and impeachment, and a gallery of official photographs.
Looking across more than three centuries of want and prosperity, war and peace, Shi introduces a rich cast of practitioners and proponents of the simple life, among them Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Jane Addams, Scott and Helen Nearing, and Jimmy Carter.
This book is a true account of the events on a long ago night when two angels from heaven "visited" me. It is the story of that "angelic encounter" as I experienced it. It happened many years ago, but the impressions are still vivid in my memory. It was not a fleeting glimpse of ethereal beings clothed in cloudy mist. Those angels were "real." If seen from a distance they probably would have seemed like ordinary men. Close up, however, no one could have mistaken them for men. Anyone would have known they were angels who had come down from heaven. During their first appearance, it seemed to me their speech to me lasted a long time. In retrospect that time period probably could have been measured in minutes. That is true even though they seemed like very "long" minutes. They were silent during their brief second appearance; albeit puzzled and inquisitive. These angels had about them a mysterious air of another world. They stood in front of my chair, in my living room with an indescribable and lofty majesty. Their posture and demeanor "spoke" of another sphere of existence. A sphere about which writers have speculated for thousands of years. They somehow "reeked" of an indescribable physical and mental power that was beyond my comprehension. My initial reaction was fright. A fright so great it overwhelmed my senses. I thought they had come to kill me. That was a certainty in my numbed mind. That fear quickly became life threatening. I did not know it at the time but their actions and speech would be forever impressed on my memory. During their first visit, they were extremely anxious to reassure me. They did not wish me to fear them. Their speech was sympathetic and reassuring. They told me they had not come to injure me in any way. They then explained the reason for their "intrusion" into my presence. Nothing that I have found anywhere in literature, except perhaps the bible, tells a similar story. My personality underwent a complete change that night. The brief account of that experience is now told for the first time in the 40 years since that encounter.
From Nixon to Clinton, Watergate to Whitewater, few Americans have observed the ups and downs of presidential leadership more closely over the past thirty years than David Gergen. A White House adviser to four presidents, both Republican and Democrat, he offers a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of their struggles to exercise power and draws from them key lessons for leaders of the future. Gergen begins Eyewitness to Power with his reminiscence of being the thirty-year-old chief of the White House speechwriting team under Richard Nixon, a young man at the center of the Watergate storm. He analyzes what made Nixon strong -- and then brought him crashing down: Why Nixon was the best global strategist among recent presidents. How others may gain his strategic sense. How Nixon allowed his presidency to spin out of control. Why the demons within destroyed him. What lessons there are in Nixon's disaster. Gergen recounts how President Ford recruited him to help shore up his White House as special counsel. Here Gergen considers: Why Ford is one of our most underrated presidents. Why his pardon of Nixon was right on the merits but was so mishandled that it cost him his presidency. Even in his brief tenure, Ford offers lessons of leadership for others, as Gergen explains. Though Gergen had worked in two campaigns against him, Ronald Reagan called him back to the White House again, where he served as the Gipper's first director of communications. Here he describes: How Reagan succeeded where others have failed. Why his temperament was more important than his intelligence. How he mastered relations with Congress and the press. The secrets of "the Great Communicator" and why his speeches were the most effective since those of John Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. In 1993, Bill Clinton surprised Gergen -- and the political world -- when he recruited the veteran of Republican White Houses to join him as counselor after his early stumbles. Gergen reveals: Why Clinton could have been one of our best presidents but fell short. How the Bill-and-Hillary seesaw rocked the White House. How failures to understand the past brought Ken Starr to the door. Why the new ways in which leadership was developed by the Clinton White House hold out hope, and what dangers they threaten. As the twenty-first century opens, Gergen argues, a new golden age may be dawning in America, but its realization will depend heavily upon the success of a new generation at the top. Drawing upon all his many experiences in the White House, he offers seven key lessons for leaders of the future. What they must have, he says, are: inner mastery; a central, compelling purpose rooted in moral values; a capacity to persuade; skills in working within the system; a fast start; a strong, effective team; and a passion that inspires others to keep the flame alive. Eyewitness to Power is a down-to-earth, authoritative guide to leadership in the tradition of Richard Neustadt's Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents.
In the 1960s, the Republican Party began to win over a crucial demographic: white male voters. Presidential politics was transformed for a generation. David Paul Kuhn explains this fundamental fact behind the rise of the Republicans and the decline of the Democrats, and reminds the political left that midterm victories (1986, 2006) do not always equal sustainable success. In revealing, lucid prose, Kuhn explains how America's conservative party came to win a majority of workingmen and the White House. Grounded in practical politics, The Neglected Voter presciently reconfigures the American political landscape. Equipped with unprecedented research data, reporting, and exclusive interviews with such figures as Jimmy Carter, Norman Mailer, Mark Warner, and Pat Robertson, Kuhn examines the role of gender and racial identity in presidential politics through the social changes that have defined the last half century.
Temple Mount is believed by some Jews to be the locus of their ancient Temple. Known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), this site is home to two mosques, one of which is the third most holy shrine in all of Islam. Jewish fundamentalists want to destroy the mosques on Temple Mount and rebuild the Temple. Christian apocalypticists are financing and supporting their efforts. If the mosques are destroyed, Islamic fundamentalists have vowed to destroy Israel, resulting in the possibility of nuclear war. This book addresses the idea that the recent rise of militant Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalisms and their interaction are endangering peace in the Middle East. It fully examines the thesis that apocalypticist fundamentalists--Christians in America, Jews in Israel and America--are working together to hasten the coming of the Messiah by instigating a Holy War in the Middle East. Several chapters focus on three U.S. political figures--Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan, and Pat Robertson--who helped bring Christian fundamentalism into the mainstream of American politics. One chapter tells of Jewish preparations for rebuilding the Temple on Temple Mount. Other chapters document the rise of religious fundamentalism in Israel since 1967, Haram al-Sharif-Temple Mount crises involving Christian-Jewish cooperation, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Separate chapters are devoted to Israel's nuclear program and political psychology, and the fact that nuclear weapons are leaving Russia and finding their way to Islamic nations and Islamic terrorists.
The late Ambassador David Abshire lived a quintessentially American life, one that spanned the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. He graduated from West Point, fought in the Korean War, earned a doctorate in history from Georgetown University, and served in government during the Vietnam War. He also co-founded one of the world’s preeminent think tanks in the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Along the way he became a personal adviser to multiple presidents, earning a reputation as one of Washington, D.C.’s truly wise men. All of which makes the warnings contained in these memoirs so topical. Writing near the end of his life, Abshire concludes that our country has lost its sense of strategic direction and common purpose. Our domestic politics have entered an era of hyper-partisanship and gridlock, even as dangerous challenges to U.S. interests gather overseas. America, Abshire concludes, is in deep trouble. In this extraordinary final love letter to his country, Abshire tells his fellow citizens how to reclaim American exceptionalism. That journey begins with rejecting the great incivility that has infected our national discourse. That fundamental lack respect among political partisans has eroded our trust in each other, and faith in our leaders. The only way to recapture them, Abshire argues persuasively, is to reinvigorate a politics of lively, robust debate within a framework of respect and civil behavior. Before it is too late.
Amid the tangles of far-out speculation about Christ's Second Coming, and its equally harmful twin, indifference, lies a clear, biblical picture of the end times. In this uncommonly frank, instructional, and enlightening book, Dr. David Reagan presents that biblical picture, and in the process enables both seekers and believers to clearly see the importance of prophetic events unfolding in our time.
Authentic Fakes explores the religious dimensions of American popular culture in unexpected places: baseball, the Human Genome Project, Coca-Cola, rock 'n' roll, the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the charisma of Jim Jones, Tupperware, and the free market, to name a few. Chidester travels through the cultural landscape and discovers the role that fakery—in the guise of frauds, charlatans, inventions, and simulations—plays in creating religious experience. His book is at once an incisive analysis of the relationship between religion and popular culture and a celebration of the myriad ways in which invention can stimulate the religious imagination. Moving beyond American borders, Chidester considers the religion of McDonald’s and Disney, the discourse of W.E.B. Du Bois and the American movement in Southern Africa, the messianic promise of Nelson Mandela’s 1990 tour to America, and more. He also looks at the creative possibilities of the Internet in such phenomena as Discordianism, the Holy Order of the Cheeseburger, and a range of similar inventions. Arguing throughout that religious fakes can do authentic religious work, and that American popular culture is the space of that creative labor, Chidester looks toward a future "pregnant with the possibilities of new kinds of authenticity.
God Wills It is a comprehensive study of presidential religious rhetoric. Using careful analysis of hundreds of transcripts, David O'Connell reveals the hidden strategy behind presidential religious speech. He asks when and why religious language is used, and when it is, whether such language is influential.Case studies explore the religious arguments presidents have made to defend their decisions on issues like defense spending, environmental protection, and presidential scandals. O'Connell provides strong evidence that when religious rhetoric is used public opinion typically goes against the president, the media reacts harshly to his words, and Congress fails to do as he wants. An experimental chapter casts even further doubt on the persuasiveness of religious rhetoric.God Wills It shows that presidents do not talk this way because they want to. Presidents like Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were quite uncomfortable using faith to promote their agendas. They did so because they felt they must. God Wills It shows that even if presidents attempt to call on the deity, the more important question remains: Will God come when they do?
In 1981, a Right Wing Republican at long last resided in the White House, presiding over what may prove to be the most fundamental restructuring of American political life since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Fortunately, The Republican Right since 1945 now provides us with the necessary historical understanding of conservative Republicans. David Reinhard's dispassionate yet lively book recounts the Republican Right's political struggles from the death of FDR in 1945 to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. Younger readers will discover that Right Wing Republicans are older than Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater and that some conservative Republicans once feared the overextension of American power abroad and the rise of the "garrison state" at home. Those old enough to remember when the Republican Right was called the "Old Guard" will rediscover the events and personalities of those earlier years, thanks to Reinhard's use of more than thirty five manuscript collections and the most recent historical writing. Not content to let this history end where traditional manuscript sources run thin, Reinhard has brought the story of the Republican Right Wing forward to President Ronald Reagan's inauguration, placing Right Wing Republican reaction to the Johnson and the Nixon-Ford years within the context of the earlier period and chronicling the electoral triumph of Ronald Reagan and the Republican Right. Students of the past and observers of the present will appreciate Reinhard's treatment of the always-troubled Nixon-Republican Right association; challenger Ronald Reagan's battle against President Gerald Ford in 1976; the decline of GOP moderation; and the rise of the New Right-Moral Majority forces and their relationship to the now ascendant Republican Right. Reinhard illuminates the conservative Republican past and thereby makes the current political scene more understandable. Thoroughly researched and brilliantly written, The Republican Right since 1945 will fascinate scholars and general readers alike.
A portrait of the 700 Club host and co-founder of the Christian Coalition considers his role as a reviled figure in the secular world and a formidable role model among Christian fundamentalists, in a profile that lauds his achievements while questioning some of his decisions.
For an element so firmly fixed in American culture, the frontier myth is surprisingly flexible. How else to explain its having taken two such different guises in the twentieth century—the progressive, forward-looking politics of Rough Rider president Teddy Roosevelt and the conservative, old-fashioned character and Cold War politics of Ronald Reagan? This is the conundrum at the heart of Cowboy Presidents, which explores the deployment and consequent transformation of the frontier myth by four U.S. presidents: Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. Behind the shape-shifting of this myth, historian David A. Smith finds major events in American and world history that have made various aspects of the “Old West” frontier more relevant, and more useful, for promoting radically different political ideologies and agendas. And these divergent adaptations of frontier symbolism have altered the frontier myth. Theodore Roosevelt, with his vigorous pursuit of an activist federal government, helped establish a version of the frontier myth that today would be considered liberal. But then, Smith shows, a series of events from the Lyndon Johnson through Jimmy Carter presidencies—including Vietnam, race riots, and stagflation—seemed to give the lie to the progressive frontier myth. In the wake of these crises, Smith’s analysis reveals, the entire structure and popular representation of frontier symbols and images in American politics shifted dramatically from left to right, and from liberal to conservative, with profound implications for the history of American thought and presidential politics. The now popular idea that “frontier American” leaders and politicians are naturally Republicans with conservative ideals flows directly from the Reagan era. Cowboy Presidents gives us a new, clarifying perspective on how Americans shape and understand their national identity and sense of purpose; at the same time, reflecting on the essential mutability of a quintessentially national myth, the book suggests that the next iteration of the frontier myth may well be on the horizon.
The Cold War dominated history for nearly half a century, locking two superpowers in a global rivalry that ended only with the collapse of the Soviet Union. For millennia, the outcomes of war had been determined on the battlefield, but the most decisive moments of the Cold War occurred in the carefully worded exchanges of world leaders meeting face to face. In the shadow of the bomb, the summit meeting offered an opportunity for heads of state to rattle sabers and cross swords without triggering nuclear apocalypse. Drawing on extensive archival material, prizewinning historian David Reynolds describes the outsized personalities who negotiated the course of twentieth-century history: Neville Chamberlain, Adolph Hitler, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon, Leonid Brezhnev, Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Ronald Reagan. While these men addressed epochal issues, the outcome of each meeting was often determined more by individual personality than by international politics. Mishandled summits-Munich in 1938 and Yalta in 1945-brought about World War II and the Cold War, respectively. Kennedy's disastrous performance in Vienna in 1961 nearly brought about World War III. But successful summits in Moscow (1972), Camp David (1978), and Geneva (1985) led to dénte, a partial settlement in the Middle East, and a peaceful end to the Cold War. Written with verve and insight, Summits vividly describes the statesmen who stood, if only briefly, on top of the world. By revealing both the promise and the pitfalls of international diplomacy, David Reynolds offers valuable lessons as we find ourselves confronting once again a war without end.
What does it take to win the White House? This book helps students understand both the issues and how and why people vote for one candidate. After discussing the dynamics of the primary campaigns, the authors examine three broad sets of issues that play a key role in voting: foreign policy, domestic policies, and the culture wars. This sets the foundations for an examination of regional similarities and differences in voting patterns, as the varying salience and valence of issues-whether general or specific-is explored across and within regions. Special attention is paid to battleground states. Drawing on concepts from political science, this book advances students' understanding both of the field and the phenomenon.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE The first full account of how the Cold War arms race finally came to a close, this riveting narrative history sheds new light on the people who struggled to end this era of massive overkill, and examines the legacy of the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that remain a threat today. Drawing on memoirs, interviews in both Russia and the US, and classified documents from deep inside the Kremlin, David E. Hoffman examines the inner motives and secret decisions of each side and details the deadly stockpiles that remained unsecured as the Soviet Union collapsed. This is the fascinating story of how Reagan, Gorbachev, and a previously unheralded collection of scientists, soldiers, diplomats, and spies changed the course of history.
Dr. James David Barber's well-known, provocative examination of who has the potential to be voted into the highest office in the land - and why - is being reissued as the newest addition to the "Longman Classics in Political Science" series. Arguing that patterns in a person's character, world view, and style can allow us to anticipate their performance as president, The Presidential Character offers explanations and predictions of the performance of presidents and presidential candidates. Drawing on historical, biographical, and psychological research, Dr. Barber hoped to help voters make judicious choices in determining the country's highest leaders. Revisiting this classic work in today's important presidential election season begs a reconsideration of Barber's probing and enduring query, "What should we look for in a president?
Looks at the role of faith in the lives of the twelve presidents who have served since the end of World War II, examining not only the beliefs professed by each president but also the variety of possible influences on their religious faith.
If Not Us, Who? is both the story of an architect of the modern conservative movement and a colorful journey through a half century of high-level politics. Best known as the longtime publisher of National Review, William Rusher (1923–2011) was more than just a crucial figure in the history of the Right’s leading magazine. He was a political intellectual, tactician, and strategist who helped shape the historic rise of conservatism. To write If Not Us, Who?, David B. Frisk pored over Rusher’s voluminous papers at the Library of Congress and interviewed dozens of insiders, including National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., in addition to Rusher himself. The result is a gripping biography that shines new light on Rusher’s significance as an observer and an activiast while bringing to life more than a generation’s worth of political hopes, fears, and controversies. Frisk vividly captures the joys and struggles at National Review, including Rusher’s complex relationship with the legendary Buckley. Here we see the powerful blend of wit, erudition, dedication, shrewdness, and earnestness that made Rusher an influential figure at NR and an indispensable link between conservatism’s leading theorists and its political practitioners. “If not us, who? If not now, when?”—a maxim often attributed to Ronald Reagan—could have been Rusher’s motto. In everything he did—publishing National Review, recruiting and advising political candidates, organizing cadres of young conservatives, taking on liberal advocates in a popular television debate program, writing a syndicated column—his objective was to build a movement. His tireless efforts proved essential to conservatism’s ascendancy, from the pivotal Goldwater campaign through the Reagan era. Largely unexamined until now, Rusher’s career opens a new window onto the history of the conservative movement. This comprehensive biography reintroduces readers to a remarkable man of thought and action.
The quest for unanimity -- Specters of fracture -- Conservative intentions -- The interregnum -- A moral and emotional purpose -- The montage effect -- Crackpot theories -- This is America!
Few question the “right turn” America took after 1966, when liberal political power began to wane. But if they did, No Right Turn suggests, they might discover that all was not really “right” with the conservative golden age. A provocative overview of a half century of American politics, the book takes a hard look at the counterrevolutionary dreams of liberalism’s enemies—to overturn people’s reliance on expanding government, reverse the moral and sexual revolutions, and win the Culture War—and finds them largely unfulfilled. David Courtwright deftly profiles celebrated and controversial figures, from Clare Boothe Luce, Barry Goldwater, and the Kennedy brothers to Jerry Falwell, David Stockman, and Lee Atwater. He shows us Richard Nixon’s keen talent for turning popular anxieties about morality and federal meddling to Republican advantage—and his inability to translate this advantage into reactionary policies. Corporate interests, boomer lifestyles, and the media weighed heavily against Nixon and his successors, who placated their base with high-profile attacks on crime, drugs, and welfare dependency. Meanwhile, religious conservatives floundered on abortion and school prayer, obscenity, gay rights, and legalized vices like gambling, and fiscal conservatives watched in dismay as the bills mounted. We see how President Reagan’s mélange of big government, strong defense, lower taxes, higher deficits, mass imprisonment, and patriotic symbolism proved an illusory form of conservatism. Ultimately, conservatives themselves rebelled against George W. Bush’s profligate brand of Reaganism. Courtwright’s account is both surprising and compelling, a bracing argument against some of our most cherished clichés about recent American history.
Arthur Fletcher (1924–2005) was the most important civil rights leader you've (probably) never heard of. The first black player for the Baltimore Colts, the father of affirmative action and adviser to four presidents, he coined the United Negro College Fund's motto: "A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste." Modern readers might be surprised to learn that Fletcher was also a Republican. Fletcher's story, told in full for the first time in this book, embodies the conundrum of the post–World War II black Republican—the civil rights leader who remained loyal to the party even as it abandoned the principles he espoused. The upward arc of Fletcher's political narrative begins with his first youthful protest—a boycott of his high school yearbook—and culminates with his appointment as assistant secretary of Labor under Richard Nixon. The Republican Party he embraced after returning from the war was "the Party of Lincoln"—a big tent, truly welcoming African Americans. A Terrible Thing to Waste shows us those heady days, from Brown v. Board of Education to Fletcher's implementing of the Philadelphia Plan, the first major national affirmative action initiative. Though successes and accomplishments followed through successive Republican administrations—as chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights under George H. W. Bush, for example, Fletcher's ability to promote civil rights policy eroded along with the GOP's engagement, as New Movement Conservatism and Nixon's Southern Strategy steadily alienated black voters. The book follows Fletcher to the bitter end, his ideals and party in direct conflict and his signature achievement under threat. In telling Fletcher's story, A Terrible Thing to Waste brings to light a little known chapter in the history of the civil rights movement—and with it, insights especially timely for a nation so dramatically divided over issues of race and party.
A survey of US foreign relations and its perceived crusade to spread liberty and democracy in the 200 years since the American Revolution. This book explores whether consciousness and "spirit" has been driven by materialism as Marx believed all history has been. David Ryan undertakes a systematic and material analysis of US foreign policy, whilst also explaining the policymakers' grand ideologies and the ideas that have shaped US diplomacy. It explores these arguments by taking a thematic approach structured around central episodes and ideas in the history of US foreign relations and policy making, including: the Monroe Doctrine, its philosophical goals and impact; Imperialism and expansionism; the Cold War; Third World development; the "evil empires" of Nasser, the Sandinistas and Saddam Hussein; and the place of goal for economic integration within foreign affairs.
This book discusses how the ideas, expectations and mind-sets that formed within different US foreign policy making institutions during the Cold War have continued to influence US foreign policy making vis-à-vis Russia in the post-Cold War era, with detrimental consequences for US–Russia relations. It analyses what these ideas, expectations and mind-sets are, explores how they have influenced US foreign policy towards Russia as ideational legacies, including the ideas that Russia is untrustworthy, has to be contained and that in some aspects the relationship is necessarily adversarial, and outlines the consequences for US–Russian relations. It considers these ideational legacies in depth in relation to NATO enlargement, democracy promotion, and arms control and sets the subject in its wider context where other factors, such as increasingly assertive Russian foreign policy, impact on the relationship. It concludes by demonstrating how tension and mistrust have continued to grow during the Trump administration and considers the future for US–Russian relations.
The definitive history of the covert struggle between Russia and America to influence elections, why the threat to American democracy is greater than ever, and what we can do about it. This is "the first book to put the story of Russian interference into a broader context.... Extraordinary and gripping" (The New York Times Book Review). Russia's interference in the 2016 elections marked only the latest chapter of a hidden and revelatory history. In Rigged, David Shimer tells the sweeping story of covert electoral interference past and present. He exposes decades of secret operations—by the KGB, the CIA, and Vladimir Putin's Russia—to shape electoral outcomes, melding deep historical research with groundbreaking interviews with more than 130 key players, from leading officials in both the Trump and Obama administrations to CIA and NSA directors to a former KGB general. Throughout history and in 2016, both Russian and American operations achieved their greatest success by influencing the way voters think, rather than tampering with actual vote tallies. Understanding 2016 as one battle in a much longer war is essential to comprehending the critical threat currently posed to America's electoral sovereignty and how to defend against it. Illuminating how the lessons of the past can be used to protect our democracy in the future, Rigged is an essential book for readers of every political persuasion.
Co-founder of The Carlyle Group and patriotic philanthropist David M. Rubenstein takes readers on a sweeping journey across the grand arc of the American story through revealing conversations with our greatest historians. In these lively dialogues, the biggest names in American history explore the subjects they’ve come to so intimately know and understand. — David McCullough on John Adams — Jon Meacham on Thomas Jefferson — Ron Chernow on Alexander Hamilton — Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin — Doris Kearns Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln — A. Scott Berg on Charles Lindbergh — Taylor Branch on Martin Luther King — Robert Caro on Lyndon B. Johnson — Bob Woodward on Richard Nixon —And many others, including a special conversation with Chief Justice John Roberts Through his popular program The David Rubenstein Show, David Rubenstein has established himself as one of our most thoughtful interviewers. Now, in The American Story, David captures the brilliance of our most esteemed historians, as well as the souls of their subjects. The book features introductions by Rubenstein as well a foreword by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead our national library. Richly illustrated with archival images from the Library of Congress, the book is destined to become a classic for serious readers of American history. Through these captivating exchanges, these bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning authors offer fresh insight on pivotal moments from the Founding Era to the late 20th century.
In the United States, political argumentation occurs in institutionalized settings and the broader public forum, in efforts to resolve conflict and efforts to foster it, in settings with time limits and controversies that extend over centuries. From the ratification of the U.S. Constitution to the presidency of Barack Obama, this book contains twenty studies of U.S. political argumentation, grouped under four themes: early American political discourse, Abraham Lincoln’s political argumentation, argumentation about foreign policy, and public policy argumentation since the 1960s. Deploying methods of rhetorical criticism, argument analysis and evaluation, the studies are rich in contextual grounding and critical perspective. They integrate the European emphasis on politics as an argumentative context with the U.S. tradition of public address studies. Two essays have never before been published. The others are retrieved from journals and books published between 1979 and 2014. The introductory essay is new for this volume.
David A. J. Richards’s Resisting Injustice and The Feminist Ethics of Care in The Age of Obama: "Suddenly,...All The Truth Was Coming Out" builds on his and Carol Gilligan’s The Deepening Darkness to examine the roots of the resistance movements of the 1960s, the political psychology behind contemporary conservatism, and President Obama’s present-day appeal as well as the reasons for the reactionary politics against him. Richards begins by laying out the basics of the ethics of care and proposing an alternative basis for ethics: relationality, which is based in convergent findings in infant research, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. He critically analyzes patriarchal politics and states that they are rooted in a reactionary psychology that attacks human relationality and ethics. From there, the book examines the 1960s resistance movements and argues that they were fundamentally oriented around challenging patriarchy. Richards asserts that the reactionary politics in America from the 1960s to the present are in service of an American patriarchy threatened by the resistance movements ranging from the 1960s civil rights movements to the present gay rights movement. Reactionary politics intend to marginalize and even reverse the ethical achievements accomplished by resistance movements—creating, in effect, a system of patriarchy hiding in democracy. Richards consequently argues that Obama’s appeal is connected to his challenge to this system of patriarchy and will examine both Obama’s appeal and the reactions against him in light of the 2012 presidential election. This book positions recent American political development in a broad analysis of the role of patriarchy in human oppression throughout history, and argues that a feminist-based ethics of care is necessary to form a more humane and inclusive democratic politics.
This book provides an understanding of Russia’s geopolitical strategic interests as well as a larger picture of its political realities. It shares insights on how to understand and solve the problems affecting US-Russian relations and the world.The book addresses three primary questions relevant to the current global context: Will current geopolitical shifts greatly benefit Russia’s long-term global objectives? What foreign policy will Russia pursue in the Middle East and the Baltic regions to guarantee the security of its strategic interests? And will major powers confront one another over resources that could trigger military conflict, or will they choose appeasement to maintain peace and stability in this new era? Thus, the book offers insights into the future geopolitical landscape. It therefore is a must-read for scholars, researchers of international relations and political science, as well as professionals, practitioners and analysts, interested in a better understanding of the changing global order and Russia’s geopolitical strategic interests.
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