American Politics

Elbridge A. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of US defense strategy in a generation. Here he lays out how America's defense must change to address China's growing power and ambition. Based firmly in the realist tradition but deeply engaged in current policy, this book offers a clear framework for what America's goals in confronting China must be, how its military strategy must change, and how it must prioritize these goals over its lesser interests.

The American Empire is finished and will soon become another cautionary tale, tossed upon the trash heap of history, and destroyed by the very same societal issues that plagued the many former empires that share similar fates. It did not have to end this way, but when the most devious and ruthless members of a society are tasked with running the system, the outcome can hardly be in dispute.

One of the most pernicious and persistent myths in the United States is the association of Black skin with poverty. Though there are forty million more poor white people than Black people, most Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, continue to think of poverty—along with issues like welfare, unemployment, and food stamps—as solely a Black problem. Why is this so? What are the historical causes? And what are the political consequences that result?

Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy details of government into tedious discourse that would put even the president to sleep. American Government 101 cuts out the boring explanations, and instead provides a hands-on lesson that keeps you engaged as you learn. From the backstory of the Constitution to the institution of the Electoral College, this primer is packed with hundreds of entertaining tidbits and concepts to help you learn about how the government of the United States actually works.

Buck O'Neil once described him as "Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one". Among experts, he is regarded as the best player in Negro Leagues history. During his prime, he became a legend in Cuba and one of Black America's most popular figures. Yet even among serious sports fans, Oscar Charleston is virtually unknown today.

Structures of Indifference examines an Indigenous life and death in a Canadian city and what it reveals about the ongoing history of colonialism. At the heart of this story is a 34-hour period in September 2008. During that day and half, Brian Sinclair, a middle-aged, non-Status Anishinaabeg resident of Manitoba's capital city, arrived in the emergency room of the Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg's major downtown hospital, was left untreated and unattended to, and ultimately died from an easily treatable infection.

What if you can't afford nine-dollar tomatoes? That was the question award-winning journalist Tracie McMillan couldn't escape as she watched the debate about America's meals unfold, one that urges us to pay food's true cost-which is to say, pay more. So in 2009 McMillan embarked on a groundbreaking undercover journey to see what it takes to eat well in America. For nearly a year, she worked, ate, and lived alongside the working poor to examine how Americans eat when price matters.

In this classic work—a blend of memoir, social criticism, and political analysis that remains relevant today—the first Black Congresswoman to serve in American history, New York’s dynamic representative Shirley Chisholm, traces her extensive political struggle and examines the problems that have long plagued the American system of government.

Black men desperately need care and restoration. But what does that restoration look like when you’re a Black man in today’s world? How do you take care of your mental health when men who look like you die at the hands of police? How do you find peace and refuge when you’re not sure how to keep up with your partner? Or navigate a challenging workplace? While scrolling through social media feeds, you may feel like you don’t have access to wellness like women do. But Black men need a space for self-care too. In Self-Care for Black Men, you will find practical answers to your questions.

Over 4,000 students gathered at the University of Michigan to hear Republican Party candidate Ron Paul speak. As he began to address the topics of monetary policy and the coming depression, a chant rose from the crowd, "End the Fed! End the Fed!" As dollar bills were lit on fire and thrown into the night skies, it became clear that the real problem, one that nobody in the media was talking about, was the central bank-an unconstitutional entity and a political, economic, and moral disaster.

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.

Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs - including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, "Anything is possible: after all, it's the Year of the Monkey."

We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.

The best-selling Politically Incorrect Guide series provides an unvarnished, unapologetic overview of controversial topics every American should understand. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the American Revolution is a myth-busting review of America's violent struggle for independence.

In The Cause of All Nations, distinguished historian Don H. Doyle explains that the Civil War was more than an internal American conflict; it was a struggle that spanned the Atlantic Ocean. This audiobook follows the agents of the North and South who went abroad to tell the world what they were fighting for, and the foreign politicians, journalists, and intellectuals who told America and the world what they thought this war was really about - or ought to be about.

Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan.

One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of price-gouging, middlemen and a series of elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up.

In The Comedians, comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff brings to life a century of American comedy with real-life characters, forgotten stars, mainstream heroes and counterculture iconoclasts. Based on over 200 original interviews and extensive archival research, Nesteroff's groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past 100 years.

This book provides a complete overview of the American Founders' political theory, covering natural rights, natural law, state of nature, social compact, consent, and the policy implications of these ideas. The book is intended as a response to the current scholarly consensus, which holds that the Founders' political thought is best understood as an amalgam of liberalism, republicanism, and perhaps other traditions.

Using his unique lens as a critical race theorist and law professor, Khaled A. Beydoun captures the many ways in which law, policy, and official state rhetoric have fueled the frightening resurgence of Islamophobia in the US.