Understanding and encouraging the development of good leaders are so important that schools of business administration, public administration, public policy, and organizational development teach courses in leadership. Within the public administration literature, scholars have discussed the value of studying outstanding individuals who have been uniquely effective in fulfilling their formal duties, as well as ethical in leading their organizations. Public Service Exemplars is the first book to highlight the decision-making styles of American public servants who serve as models of excellence in public service. While the roles they held, eras in which they served, formal training for the job, personalities, and relative levels of fame differ widely, the figures profiled in this book are united in their strong belief in the efficacy of government service and a willingness to employ innovative methods for accomplishing objectives. Examining three theories of decision-making by effective leaders (autocratic leadership, democratic leadership, and delegative leadership), this book explores the way that unelected leaders working within public agencies—and, in a couple of cases, the US military—reached decisions that are widely considered to be highly effective. Profiling leaders as diverse as Robert Moses, Frances Perkins, James Webb, Colin Powell, and Anthony Fauci, to name a few, Public Service Exemplars questions whether great leadership truly is, as it is often assumed, an elusive, almost indefinable quality. Can it be taught? Are effective leaders born, made, or a combination thereof? This book will be of keen interest to both current and future public service leaders, including students enrolled in public administration and nonprofit management courses.
Longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry Winner of the National Poetry Series Competition, selected by Cornelius Eady--an exploration in verse of imperial appropriation and Mexican American cultural identity "Marvelous, argumentative, and curiosity-provoking" --The New York Times Book Review The poems in J. Michael Martinez's third collection of poetry circle around how the perceived body comes to be coded with the trans-historical consequences of an imperial narrative. Engaging beautiful and otherworldly Mexican casta paintings, morbid photographic postcards depicting the bodies of dead Mexicans, the strange journey of the wood and cork leg of General Santa Anna, and Martinez's own family lineage, Museum of the Americas gives accounts of migrant bodies caught beneath, and fashioned under, a racializing aesthetic gaze. Martinez questions how "knowledge" of the body is organized through visual perception of that body, hypothesizing the corporeal as a repository of the human situation, a nexus of culture. Museum of the Americas' poetic revives and repurposes the persecuted ethnic body from the appropriations that render it an art object and, therefore, diposable.
From the 8-time All Star and 3-time Cy Young Award-winning pitcher, a bold, no-holds-barred memoir of his career, from his hardscrabble upbringing in the Dominican Republic to becoming one of the greatest pitchers of all time
A suite of poems that channels the legendary singer-songwriter Ritchie Valens to examine and question mid-twentieth-century conceptions of race and art, identity and desire Ragged and raging across the spectrums of cognition, race, and gender, Tarta Americana lyrically envisions forms of survival outside neuronormative perceptions and histories. Against the recent tide of white nationalism in the United States, Tarta Americana finds a rhinestone in Ritchie Valens, the rock and roll legend, surfacing across time and bodies, genders and sounds, displacing the linear unfolding of desire and biography. Valens, the embodiment of corporeal transcendence, guides Martinez as he expresses his own neurodiversity, his struggles and triumphs, interrogating memory, gender, and race, traversing pain in search of compassion and joy. Tarta Americana, tarred and glittering, melodic in its screams, overdrives text and space in chase of American politics that could, at last, harmonize love with redemption.
Coming for to Carry Me Home examines the history of the politics surrounding U.S. race relations during the half century between the rise of the abolitionist movement in the 1830s and the dawn of the Jim Crow era in the 1880s. J. Michael Martinez argues that Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republicans in Congress were the pivotal actors, albeit not the architects, that influenced this evolution. To understand how Lincoln and his contemporaries viewed race, Martinez first explains the origins of abolitionism and the tumultuous decade of the 1830s, when that generation of political leaders came of age. He then follows the trail through Reconstruction, Redemption, and the beginnings of legal segregation in the 1880s. This book addresses the central question of how and why the concept of race changed during this period.
This volume establishes a foundation for a uniform code of professional ethics for public administrators in the United States. Public Administration Ethics for the 21st Century lays the ethical foundations for a uniform professional code of ethics for public administrators, civil servants, and non-profit administrators in the US. Martinez synthesizes five disparate schools of ethical thought as to how public administrators can come to know the good and behave in ways that advance the values of citizenship, equity, and public interest within their respective organizations. Using case studies, he teaches American administrators how to combine the approaches of all five schools to evaluate and resolve complex ethical dilemmas within the constraints of the U.S. democratic values set. Martinez enunciates the common ethical principles that guide public administrators in their practice within the specific ethical parameters and organizational cultures of a myriad entities at the federal, state, and local levels of government in the United States, as well as in non-profit organizations. Along the way, Martinez addresses a number of crucial issues, including personal gain, conflict of interest, transparency, democratic impartiality, hiring, hierarchical discipline, media relations, partisan pressure, appointments by elected officials, and whistle-blowing. The striking, high-profile case studies—Nathan Bedford Forrest, Adolph Eichmann, Lieutenant William Calley, and Mary Ann Wright—illustrate ethical dilemmas where, for better or worse, the individual was at odds with the organization.
The Congress of the United States operates in the shadow of the American presidency, which can make the legislative branch appear less important than the executive in our constitutional system of government. And yet Congress is a co-equal branch of government, deriving its powers from Article I of the United States Constitution. Love it or hate it, the institution is a source of incredible power. It behooves all Americans to learn more about Congress. Although a single slender volume cannot provide information on all there is to know about Congress, it can begin the journey. In Congressional Giants, political scientist J. Michael Martinez explores the careers and achievements of 14 influential leaders of Congress—men who either held formal positions within the chambers of Congress, such as speaker of the House of Representatives or Senate majority leader, or who served on important committees--to determine how they shaped the course of American history.
For a brief time following the end of the U.S. Civil War, American political leaders had an opportunity—slim, to be sure, but not beyond the realm of possibility—to remake society so that black Americans and other persons of color could enjoy equal opportunity in civil and political life. It was not to be. With each passing year after the war—and especially after Reconstruction ended during the 1870s—American society witnessed the evolution of a new white republic as national leaders abandoned the promise of Reconstruction and justified their racial biases based on political, economic, social, and religious values that supplanted the old North-South/slavery-abolitionist schism of the antebellum era. A Long Dark Night provides a sweeping history of this too often overlooked period of African American history that followed the collapse of Reconstruction—from the beginnings of legal segregation through the end of World War II. Michael J. Martinez argues that the 1880s ushered in the dark night of the American Negro—a night so dark and so long that the better part of a century would elapse before sunlight broke through. Combining both a “top down” perspective on crucial political issues and public policy decisions as well as a “bottom up” discussion of the lives of black and white Americans between the 1880s and the 1940s, A Long Dark Night will be of interest to all readers seeking to better understand this crucial era that continues to resonate throughout American life today.
Congressional Pathfinders: “First” Members of Congress and How They Shaped American History discusses those men and women whose service in the United States Congress, as improbable as it was, marked a turning point in history. To be the first black American or the first woman to serve in a largely white, male-dominated institution requires a level of moral courage seldom found in ordinary people. To be openly gay, to subscribe to the Muslim faith in a nation often fearful and ignorant of Islam, or to navigate the hallways of power with physical disabilities is to be cognizant of one’s separateness. To be an “other” is to feel the stigma of that difference, and yet to persevere is to forge a path for later generations of others to follow. The service of these courageous men and women forever changed Congress and, by extension, the nation: they truly were congressional pathfinders. Nancy Pelosi, Daniel Inouye, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Ilhan Omar, and Hillary Clinton are among the many figures profiled in Congressional Pathfinders.
In his award-winning first book, J. Michael Martinez reenvisions Latino poetics and its current conceptions of cultural identity. In Heredities, he opens a historically ravaged continental body through a metaphysical dissection into Being and silence. The hand manipulates a surgical etymology through the spine: the longitude where "history gathers in the name we never are." The poems seek to speak beyond codified aesthetics and dictated identity politics in order to recognize a territory of "irreducible otherness" where the self's sinew may be "reeved through revelation" and where, finally, one finds "obscurity bonded to light." This stunning collection heralds the arrival of an important new voice in American poetry.
In some places during Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was a social fraternity whose members enjoyed sophomoric high jinks and homemade liquor. In other areas, the KKK was a paramilitary group intent on keeping former slaves away from white women and Republicans away from ballot boxes. South Carolina saw the worst Klan violence and, in 1871, President Grant sent federal troops under the command of Major Lewis Merrill to restore law and order. Merrill did not eradicate the Klan, but he arguably did more than any other person or entity to expose the identity of the Invisible Empire as a group of hooded, brutish, homegrown terrorists. In compiling evidence to prosecute the leading Klansmen and restoring at least a semblance of order to South Carolina, Merrill and his men demonstrated that the portrayal of the KKK as a chivalric organization was at best a myth and at worst a lie. Book jacket.
Protecting the natural environment and promoting sustainability have become important objectives, but achieving such goals presents myriad challenges for even the most committed environmentalist. American Environmentalism: Philosophy, History, and Public Policy examines whether competing interests can be reconciled while developing consistent, cohe
In his award-winning first book, J. Michael Martinez reenvisions Latino poetics and its current conceptions of cultural identity. In Heredities, he opens a historically ravaged continental body through a metaphysical dissection into Being and silence. The hand manipulates a surgical etymology through the spine: the longitude where “history gathers in the name we never are.” The poems seek to speak beyond codified aesthetics and dictated identity politics in order to recognize a territory of “irreducible otherness” where the self’s sinew may be “reeved through revelation” and where, finally, one finds “obscurity bonded to light.” This stunning collection heralds the arrival of an important new voice in American poetry.
American history buffs will savor this detailed yet accessible roundup of political imbroglios." —Publishers Weekly Political scandals have become an indelible feature of the American political system since the creation of the republic more than two centuries ago. In his previous book, Libertines: American Political Sex Scandals from Alexander Hamilton to Donald Trump, Michael Martinez explored why public figures sometimes take extraordinary risks, sullying their good names, humiliating their families, placing themselves in legal jeopardy, and potentially destroying their political careers as they seek to gratify their sexual desires. In Scoundrels, Martinez examines thirteen of the most famous (or infamous) and not-so-famous political scandals of other sorts in American history, including the Teapot Dome case from the 1920s, the Watergate break-in and cover-up in the 1970s, the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, and Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Combining riveting storytelling with insights into 200 years of American political corruption, Martinez has once again written a book that will enlighten all readers interested in human nature and political history.
Sing a New Song is Martinez's fifth book, and his third to be centered around poetry. In this collection, the poems alternate between works inspired by (but not based off of or translated from) psalms and original poems straight from the mind of Michael T. Martinez.
In some periods of American history, members of the legislative branch have been as influential, and sometimes more influential, than a particular president in crafting public policy and reacting to world events. Congressional Lions examines twelve influential members of Congress throughout American history to understand their role in shaping the life of the nation. The book does not focus exclusively on the biographical details of these lawmakers, although biography invariably plays a role in recalling their triumphs and tragedies. Instead, the book highlights members’ legislative accomplishments as well as the circumstances surrounding their congressional service.
Understanding the context of terrorism requires a trek through history, in this case the history of terrorist activity in the United States since the Civil War. Because the topic is large and complex, Terrorists Attacks on American Soil: From the Civil War to the Present does not claim to be an exhaustive history of terrorism or the definitive account of how and why terrorists do what they do. Instead, this book takes a representative sampling of the most horrific terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in an effort to understand the context in which they occurred and the lessons that can be learned from these events.
The long, dark history of political violence in the United States Violence has been employed to achieve political objectives throughout history. Taking the life of a perceived enemy is as old as mankind. Antiquity is filled with examples of political murders, such as when Julius Caesar was felled by assassins in 44 BCE. While assassinations and assassination attempts are not unique to the American way of life, denizens of other nations sometimes look upon the US as populated by reckless cowboys owing to a “Wild West” attitude about violence, especially episodes involving guns. In this book, J. Michael Martinez focuses on assassinations and attempts in the American republic. Nine American presidents—Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan—have been the targets of assassins. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was also a target shortly before he was sworn into office in 1933. Moreover, three presidential candidates—Theodore Roosevelt, Robert F. Kennedy, and George Wallace—were shot by assailants. In addition to presidents and candidates for the presidency, eight governors, seven U.S. senators, nine U.S. House members, eleven mayors, seventeen state legislators, and eleven judges have been victims of political violence. Not all political assassinations involve elected officials. Some of those targeted, such as Joseph Smith, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., were public figures who influenced political issues. But their cases are instructive because of their connection to, and influence on, the political process. No other nation with a population of over 50 million people has witnessed as many political assassinations or attempts. These violent episodes trigger a series of important questions. First, why has the United States—a country constructed on a bedrock of the rule of law and firmly committed to due process—been so susceptible to political violence? Martinez addresses these questions as he examines twenty-five instances of violence against elected officials and public figures in American history.
This fascinating book recounts the compelling stories behind 14 of the most important criminal procedure cases in American legal history. Many constitutional protections that Americans take for granted today—the right to exclude illegally obtained evidence, the right to government-financed counsel, and the right to remain silent, among others—were not part of the original Bill of Rights, but were the result of criminal trials and judicial interpretations. The untold stories behind these cases reveal circumstances far more interesting than any legal dossier can evoke. Author J. Michael Martinez provides a brief introduction to the drama and intrigue behind 14 leading court cases in American law. This engaging text presents a short summary of high-profile legal proceedings from the late 19th century through recent times and includes key landmark cases in which the court established the parameters of probable cause for searches, the features of due process, and the legality of electronic surveillance. The work offers concise explanations and analysis of the facts as well as the lasting significance of the cases to criminal procedure.
Libertines seeks to understand why public figures sometimes take extraordinary risks, sullying their good names, humiliating their families, placing themselves in legal jeopardy, and potentially destroying their political careers as they seek to gratify their sexual desires. From Hamilton to Trump and the many in between, each case of sexual misconduct in this book shows the seamy side of political lives, with calculations about covering discretions or portraying them favorably occurring only after the fact.
One of the broadest and most balanced accounts of the capital punishment debate, The Leviathan's Choice explores the death penalty from four distinct perspectives--philosophical, theological, social science, and legal--and includes scholarly essays on both sides of the debate. An ideal reader for students and policy makers, this book is essential for everyone following the arguments surrounding the death penalty.
A team of superhuman covert operatives emerges from the ashes of World War II in a Cold War-era paranormal espionage thriller from acclaimed genre-bender Michael J. Martinez. It is a new world, stunned by the horrors that linger in the aftermath of total war. The United States and Soviet Union are squaring off in a different kind of conflict, one that’s fought in the shadows, where there are whispers of strange and mysterious developments. . . Normal people across the United States have inexplicably gained paranormal abilities. A factory worker can heal the sick and injured. A schoolteacher bends emotions to her will. A car salesman alters matter with a simple touch. A former soldier speaks to the dying and gains their memories as they pass on. They are the Variants, controlled by a secret government program called MAJESTIC-12 to open a new front in the Cold War. From the deserts of Nevada to the palaces of Istanbul, the halls of power in Washington to the dark, oppressive streets of Prague, the Variants are thrown into a deadly game of shifting alliances. Amidst the seedy underbelly of nations, these once-ordinary Americans dropped in extraordinary circumstances will struggle to come to terms with their abilities as they fight to carve out a place for themselves in a world that may ultimately turn against them. And as the MAJESTIC-12 program will soon discover, there are others out there like them, some with far more malevolent goals. . . Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
Ever since Alfred Binet invented the first IQ test more than a century ago, we have thought of intelligence as fixed from birth and unalterable-as genetically programmed and immutable as eye color. If our IQ was 115 at the age of eighteen, it would be 115 at age thirty-two and at age seventy-two. But as Michael Martinez reveals in Future Bright, human intelligence is not at all a static quality. Drawing on cutting-edge research, Martinez shows that not only can we improve our IQ scores--with the right approach, we can improve intelligence itself. Future Bright introduces the radical view that intelligence can be learned. Ranging from the search for Einstein's brain to the curious case of a railroad worker whose frontal lobe was pierced by a tamping iron, Martinez looks at some of the most fascinating stories in the history of cognitive science, revealing how researchers have sought insight into intelligence by understanding more about the brain. We see how the physical structures of the brain relate to how we think, discover how memories are made, and examine the several kinds of intelligence. Martinez then explores the astonishing evidence from recent cognitive science that intelligence can be learned. Equally important, he concludes with ten strategies for enhancing our intelligence, beginning with the all-important idea of making improved intelligence a conscious goal, and including such ideas as reading books, learning to be an expert, finding where our talents lie and, not least, eating well and exercising, both of which improve brain function significantly. Genetics is only one of the factors that shape our intelligence. Future Bright highlights the many ways that the environment and education can increase our brain power, promoting the growth of a more intelligent society--one that will lead us into a brighter future indeed.
In Windows to Minds, Martinez masterfully uses free form poetry to present perspectives of life that range from pleasantly endearing to shockingly confrontational. He invites readers to open their minds and consider his perspectives, while ultimately challenging them to think for themselves and not take anything he or anyone else says for granted. At the end, he even invites them to put their own perspectives on life into words! Windows to Minds has the power to either demand you turn the pages quickly, or force you to slow down and think. Its brutal honesty may have the same person who nods their head in agreement at some points, shake their head and curse under their breath at others. Perhaps not since Walt Whitman has free form poetry taken such a powerful form. But Martinez is not the next Walt Whitman-he is the first Michael Martinez, and this manifesto of his opinions and perspectives attests to this.
Protecting the natural environment and promoting environmental sustainability have become important objectives for U.S. policymakers and public administrators at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Institutions of American government, especially at the federal level, and the public administrators who work inside of those institutions, play a crucial role in developing and implementing environmental sustainability policies. This book explores these salient issues logically. First, it explores fundamental concepts such as what it means to be environmentally sustainable, how economic issues affect environmental policy, and the philosophical schools of thought about what policies ought to be considered sustainable. From there, it focuses on processes and institutions affecting public administration and its role in the policy process. Accordingly, it summarizes the rise of the administrative state in the United States and then reviews the development of federal environmental laws and policies with an emphasis on late twentieth century developments. This book also discusses the evolution of American environmentalism by outlining the history of the environmental movement and the growth of the environmental lobby. Finally, this book synthesizes the information to discuss how public administration can promote environmental sustainability.
The horrendous events of September 11, 2001, heightened awareness of terrorism unlike all but a handful of major catastrophes in American history. Like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, 9/11 is a date forever enshrined in our national memory. But 9/11 once again raised the question: What should government do to eliminate or reduce the likelihood of a future attack? How should national leadership balance its responsibility to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens with its sworn duty to protect their lives? In The Safety of the Kingdom, J. Michael Martinez takes up the question of how the United States government has responded to terrorist attacks and, in the absence of an attack, the fear of foreign and subversive elements that may harm the nation. In some cases, the government “overreaction” led to a series of abuses that amplified the severity of the original threat. Rather than selecting every instance of government reaction to threats, Martinez examines representative cases, from the alien and sedition acts in the eighteenth century to the post-9/11 “war on terror.” Edward Snowden’s disclosure of classified information related to the NSA’s surveillance program brought to the fore an important debate about government scrutiny of its citizens. As J. Michael Martinez makes clear in this book, it is a debate that has been ongoing for centuries. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
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