Government Philosophy

Spanning from the nation’s earliest years through the New Deal to the Covid pandemic, a groundbreaking work that interrogates how pivotal decisions have established and continued discriminatory practices in the United States, even as the rise of disinformation and other modern advertising techniques have plunged democracy into an ever-deepening crisis.

In his most important book to date, award-winning author Timothy Ferris — “the best popular science writer in the English language today” (Christian Science Monitor) — makes a passionate case for science as the inspiration behind the rise of liberalism and democracy.

Trying to reason with a Republican (or Democrat) is like teaching a snapping turtle how to chew bubblegum. This conclusion birthed the title of my book. Teaching Snapping Turtles is an opinionated nonfiction book about American society in the 21st Century. The problem with politics is that both parties believe they're right. No matter what. Only the other person needs to change. The shell is a happy place.

Can harsh interrogation techniques and torture ever be morally justified for a nation at war or under the threat of imminent attack? In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, the United States and other democracies were forced to grapple once again with the issue of balancing national security concerns against the protection of individual civil and political rights.

More than 2,000 years ago the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu advised us to know our enemies. The question has always been how. In A Sense of the Enemy, the historian Zachary Shore demonstrates that leaders can best understand an opponent not simply from his pattern of past behavior, but from his behavior at pattern breaks. Meaningful pattern breaks occur during dramatic deviations from the routine, when the enemy imposes costs upon himself. It's at these unexpected moments, Shore explains, that successful leaders can learn what makes their rivals truly tick.

Published to commemorate the bicentennial of Thomas Paine's death, these texts have remained two of the most influential arguments for liberty in political thought. Common Sense is a pamphlet that Paine wrote in support of American independence. Thanks to its original and simple style, it spread like wildfire through the colonies, helping to inspire the American Revolution. Rights of Man is Paine's passionate defence of the French Revolution that led to his trial for sedition and libel.

Within the discipline of American political science and the field of political theory, African American prophetic political critique as a form of political theorizing has been largely neglected. Stephen Marshall, in The City on the Hill from Below, interrogates the political thought of David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison to reveal a vital tradition of American political theorizing and engagement with an American political imaginary forged by the City on the Hill.

A Woman’s Life Is a Human Life is the story of the movements that transformed the politics of reproductive rights: the fight to decriminalize abortion and the campaign against sterilization abuse, at a time when sterilization was disproportionately proposed as birth control to Black, Latinx, and poor women. Their victories occurred just before and after Roe v. Wade, and their histories cast new light on the case and the fate of reproductive rights and justice today.

The Communist Manifesto (officially *Manifesto of the Communist Party*) is a groundbreaking political work by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, first published in 1848 amidst the revolutionary upheavals sweeping Europe. Written for the Communist League, this manifesto has become one of the most influential political documents in history. The manifesto provides a thorough analysis of class struggle, both in historical and contemporary contexts, and critiques the capitalist system of production.

To listen to most pundits and political writers, evolution, stem cells, and climate change are the only scientific issues worth mentioning and the only people who are anti-science are conservatives. Now for the first time, science writers Dr. Alex B. Berezow and Hank Campbell have drawn open the curtain on the left’s fear of science. As Science Left Behind reveals, vague inclinations about the wholesomeness of all things natural, the unhealthiness of the unnatural, and many other seductive fallacies have led to an epidemic of misinformation.

The Left seems to be dying a slow death. Bestselling historian Shlomo Sand argues that the global decline of the Left is linked to the waning of the idea of equality that has united citizens in the past and inspired them to engage in collective action. Sand retraces the evolution of this idea in a wide-ranging account that includes seventeenth-century England, the French Revolution, the birth of anarchism and Marxism, the decolonial, feminist, and civil rights revolts, and the left populism of our time.

Many people talk about Donald Trump. Some people love him, and some people hate him. Some people try to explain why people love or hate Trump. Despite the copious conversation and plenteous explanations, there’s a lack of clarity about why people support Trump. Neither academia nor the political pundits can adequately explain the phenomenon that is Trump.

As a boy, severely disabled after contracting polio as a baby in working class Liverpool, Bert Massie found himself wondering why disabled people were expected to adapt to the world around them, and not the other way round. In his teens, he began to campaign for rights for disabled people, and having battled his way through prejudice and the education system to become a Bachelor of Arts and a qualified social worker, he became a prominent figure in the fight for fair treatment for disabled people leading to the ground breaking Disability Discrimination Act.

This book is a critical assessment of five years of the brand of economics Prime Minister Narendra Modi has championed, often referred to as "Modinomics". Brought into power with the biggest political mandate in almost three decades, did the NDA government succeed in gainfully transforming India's economic trajectory or did it squander a once-in-a-generation opportunity? The book conjectures it is the latter, and analyses why the Modi government's stewardship of the economy is a "great disappointment".

The Marvel of Martyrdom takes a broad perspective on self-sacrifice and martyrdom, bringing together religion, popular culture, history, psychology, and mythology. Stories of individuals both famous (Gandhi) and obscure (Rodrigo Rosenberg) intertwine with research on altruism, happiness, and radicalization to terrorism. The changing landscape of the book's setting - from The Roman Empire to 19th-century Russia to Nazi Germany to post-World War II India to present day Ukraine - makes the power of self-sacrifice and martyrdom come alive.

Convinced that the American political system was endangered by complacency, demagoguery, party propaganda, and the tyranny of public opinion, James Fenimore Cooper felt compelled to write this minor classic of American political theory. Fascinated with deception, he wrote in order to express "the voice of simple, honest and...fearless truth" on the peculiarities of the American system of government.

Widely debated since its publication in 1848, The Communist Manifesto is one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Presenting an analytical approach to the problems of capitalism and the resulting class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the text lays out the rationale and goals of communism as conceived by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Boiling Mad is Kate Zernike's eye-opening look inside the Tea Party, introducing us to a cast of unlikely activists and the philosophy that animates them. She shows how the Tea Party movement emerged from an unusual alliance of young Internet-savvy conservatives and older people alarmed at a country they no longer recognize. The movement is the latest manifestation of a long history of conservative discontent in America, breeding on a distrust of government that is older than the nation itself.

Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Morgan Spurlock is a jittery father-to-be with a simple question: If OBL is behind 9/11 and all the ensuing worldwide chaos, why can't we just catch him? And furthermore, why is his message so compelling to so many people?

In the earliest days of our nation, a handful of unsung heroes - including women, slaves, and an Iroquois chief - made crucial contributions to our republic. They pioneered the ideas that led to the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, and the abolition of slavery. Yet their faces haven't been printed on our currency or carved into any cliffs. Instead they were marginalized, silenced, or forgotten - sometimes by an accident of history, sometimes by design.