American Political Science

Investigating the historical roots of our peculiar brand of political paranoia, Arthur Goldwag helps us make sense of the senseless and, in so doing, uncovers three uncomfortable truths: that it is older than Trumpism and will outlast it; that theocratic authoritarianism is as hardwired in our American heritage as the principles of the Enlightenment; and that the fear that our system is “rigged” is not altogether unfounded. A probing, surprising, and critical examination of America’s paranoid style, The Politics of Fear sheds new light on the age-old question: What exactly are we so afraid of?

The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn't come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism. In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society.

On February 22, 1855, the Elizabeth Jennings v. Third Avenue Rail Road case was settled: The jury stunned the courtroom with a $250 verdict in Lizzie’s favor. Future president Chester A. Arthur was Jennings’ attorney, and their lives would be forever intertwined. This is the story of what happened that day. It’s also the story of Jennings and Arthur’s families, the struggle for equality, and race relations. It’s the history of America at its most despicable and exhilarating. Yet few historians know of Elizabeth Jennings or her impact on desegregating public transit.

The Far Right's rise to power has ignited a digital civil war that rages across multiple fronts and multiple platforms. It is waged with words and images that are designed to inflict psychological harm, to injure through verbal violence, to intimidate and incite, to wreak havoc with rhetoric. The combatants are citizens, activists, politicians, pundits, coders, conspiracists, trolls, agitators, hackers, and journalists. At stake are the nation's bedrock principles: equal rights, fair elections, freedom of speech, racial justice, and the rule of law.

A social activist, journalist, public theologian, and international speaker who has become a powerful and brilliant voice of her generation offers a bold path to liberation and healing for people of African descent struggling in the shadows of the American Dream.

It has been called the political crime of the century: a foreign government, led by a brutal authoritarian leader, secretly interfering with the American presidential election to help elect the candidate of its choice. Now, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post national security reporter Greg Miller investigates the truth about the Kremlin’s covert attempt to destroy Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump win the presidency, Trump’s steadfast allegiance to Vladimir Putin, and Robert Mueller’s ensuing investigation of the president and those close to him.

The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore is a firsthand account of the events that shaped the 2016 presidential election and the cultural forces that powered Donald Trump into the White House. Featuring in-the-field reports as well as deep analysis, Sexton's book is not just the story of the most unexpected and divisive election in modern political history. It is also a sobering chronicle of our democracy's political polarization - a result of our self-constructed, technologically assisted echo chambers.

Impeachment is a double-edged sword. Though it was designed to check tyrants, Thomas Jefferson also called impeachment “the most formidable weapon for the purpose of a dominant faction that was ever contrived”. On the one hand, it nullifies the will of voters, the basic foundation of all representative democracies. On the other, its absence from the Constitution would leave the country vulnerable to despotic leadership.

Here is a tour de force of American politics from one of journalism's most acclaimed commentators. History turns on a dime. A missed meeting, a different choice of words, and the outcome changes dramatically. Nowhere is this truer than in American politics, and in three dramatic narratives based on memoirs, histories, oral histories, fresh reporting with journalists and key participants, and Jeff Greenfield's own knowledge of the principal players, he shows just how extraordinary those changes would have been.

Of all the Americans who became renowned for expeditions to the West, few were as famous - or infamous - as John Charles Fremont, whose work produced some of the region’s most detailed maps and propelled him to national fame. Among other things, he taught mathematics to midshipmen on a Navy warship on a long cruise off South America, served as governor of two states and a Senator for one, was court-martialed for insubordination, issued the first emancipation proclamation, and eloped with the daughter of a powerful U.S. Senator.

Democracy Matters is Cornel West's bold and powerful critique of the troubling deterioration of democracy in America in this threatening post-9/11 age of terrorist rage and imperial overreach, and an inspiring call for a resurgence of the deep democratic tradition in our country, which has waged war on the forces of imperialist corruption throughout our history.

For the past eight decades, we have lived in "the American Century"-a period during which the US has enjoyed unrivaled power-be it political, economic, or military-on the global stage. Born on the cusp of this new era, Joseph S. Nye Jr. has spent a lifetime illuminating our understanding of the changing contours of America power and world affairs. His many books on the nature of power and political leadership have rightly earned him his reputation as one of the most influential international relations scholars in the world today.

Popular consensus says that the US rose over two centuries to Cold War victory and world domination, and is now in slow decline. But is this right? History's great civilizations have always lasted much longer, and for all its colossal power, American culture was overshadowed by Europe until recently. What if this isn't the end? In History Has Begun, Bruno Maçães offers a compelling vision of America's future, both fascinating and unnerving. From the early American Republic, he takes us to the turbulent present, when, he argues, America is finally forging its own path.

The NBC journalist who covered - and took fire from - Donald Trump on the campaign trail offers an inside look at the most shocking presidential election in American history. Intriguing, disturbing, and powerful, Unbelievable is an unprecedented eyewitness account of the 2016 election from an intelligent, dedicated journalist at the center of it - a thoughtful historical record that offers eye-opening insights and details on our political process, the media, and the mercurial 45th president of the United States.

His assignment was to write about a real-estate frenzy lighting up the Redneck Riviera. So Ryan Dezember settled in and bought a home nearby himself. Then the market crashed, and he became one of the millions of Americans who suddenly owed more on their homes than they were worth. A flood of foreclosures made it impossible to sell. It didn't help that his quaint neighborhood fell into disrepair and drug-induced despair. He had no choice but to become a reluctant and wildly unprofitable landlord to move on.

Robert L. Fleegler's narrative history of the 1988 election draws from untapped archival sources and revealing oral history interviews to uncover just how consequential this moment was for American politics. Identifying the seeds of political issues to come, Fleegler delivers an engaging review of an election that set a template for the political dynamics that define our lives to this day.

These days, English professors prefer to teach anything and everything but classic English literature. They indoctrinate their students in Marxism and radical feminism, show them Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and teach them the "post-colonial literature" of South Asia. When they do teach a genuine work of English or American literature, they use it to propagandize against our "oppressive" Western culture.

In what is being hailed by many, probably, as the best literary work since the New Testament, PFT Commenter takes you on a realistic-fiction journey through the backdoor politics of today's NFL. Set in the 2014 offseason, Roger Goodell and President Barack Obama become locked in a mano-a-mano battle over the future of the Dallas Cowboys, culminating in a literal fight to the death.

In this illuminating work, immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends.

This book explores the idea that America has only one political party, the Republican Party....