Modern States

Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers traces the journeys of the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present. Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited.

In the 1970s, many campus radicals raised in Christian homes brought neo-Marxist ideas from college back to church with them. At first, figures like Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, and Richard Mouw made great gains for their progressive evangelical cause. But, after the defeat of Jimmy Carter, the religious right stole the headlines. Today, a new crop of mainstream evangelicals has taken up the cause of the New Left, whether they know it or not.

Lawrence M. Friedman is Professor of Law at Stanford University and author of 23 books about law and legal history. Hailed as American law's greatest living historian, Friedman traces the evolution of America's legal system from the colonial period to the present. A Modern Library Chronicle, this book is concise, insightful, and graced with wit.

How do you get people to appreciate what is right in front of them? In The Tale of the Mandarin Duck, it takes a mysterious, beautiful duck and a clear-eyed kid to point out the obvious! This audiobook will have listeners of all ages coming back to visit the fantastical interpretation of New York City and its odd ducks - both feathered and human.

"America at the Crossroads: Parallels with the Roman Empire’s Fall" explores the economic, military, political, and social factors that contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire, drawing comparisons with modern-day America.

God Save Texas is a journey through the most controversial state in America. It is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation has produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become.

Starting during the renowned 1920s, we’re going to look at what life in the United States was like back then and even find some remarkable mirror images that are a reflection of what life is like during this day and age. We’ll look at the importance of alcohol and at how much one decade could be the driving force for the next. We’ll take a look at how small inventions made a big difference in America and the idea of whether a nation should use its power to look after itself or make a mark internationally.

John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a "positive good" and for his famous doctrine of "state interposition", which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union - and arguably set the nation on course for civil war. The strain of radical politics he developed has found expression once again in the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right.

It is an era that redefined history. As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink of oblivion, Russia towered as a vast imperial power, and France plunged into monumental revolution. But none of these remarkable events occurred in isolation. In The Great Upheaval, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization.

In the period between the Civil War and the New Deal, American governance was transformed, with momentous implications for social and economic life. Legal reforms gradually brought an end to traditions of local self-government and associative citizenship, replacing them with positive statecraft: governmental activism intended to change how Americans lived and worked. William J. Novak shows how Americans translated new conceptions of citizenship, social welfare, and economic democracy into demands for law and policy that delivered public services and vindicated people's rights.

This comprehensive book presents a political philosophy from the perspective that the Gospel pertains to all of life, including politics. Politics—According to the Bible is an in-depth analysis of conservative and liberal plans to do good for the nation, evaluated in light of the Bible and common sense.

Oh, Florida! To some people it's a paradise. To others it's a punch line. As Oh, Florida! shows, it's both of these, and, more important, it's a Petri dish, producing trends that end up influencing the rest of the country. Without Florida there would be no NASCAR, no Bettie Page pinups, no Glenn Beck radio rants, no USA Today, no "Stand Your Ground" - you get the idea.

What if the state as we know it didn't exist? Our air would be poisonous, our votes uncounted, and our markets dysfunctional. Yet across the world, in countries as diverse as Hungary, Israel, the UK, and the US, attacks on the modern state and its workforce are intensifying. They are morphing into power grabs by self-aggrandizing politicians who attempt to seize control of the state for themselves and their cronies. What replaces the modern state once it is fatally undermined is not the free market and the flowering of personal liberty.

Empezando por los renombrados años 20, vamos a ver cómo era la vida en los Estados Unidos en aquella época e incluso encontramos algunas notables imágenes espectaculares que son un reflejo de cómo era la vida en esta época. Veremos la importancia del alcohol y hasta qué punto una década pudo ser el motor de la siguiente. Analizaremos cómo los pequeños inventos marcaron una gran diferencia en Estados Unidos y la idea de si una nación debe utilizar su poder para cuidarse a sí misma o para dejar huella a nivel internacional.

In this groundbreaking book, Aldon D. Morris’ ambition is truly monumental: to help rewrite the history of sociology and to acknowledge the primacy of W. E. B. Du Bois’ work in the founding of the discipline. Calling into question the prevailing narrative of how sociology developed, Morris, a major scholar of social movements, probes the way in which the history of the discipline has traditionally given credit to Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago, who worked with the conservative Black leader Booker T. Washington to render Du Bois invisible.

Another young, African-American man is shot and killed by local law enforcement. As rioters take to the streets in outrage, a group that has waited for this very moment moves and takes control, effectively shutting down an entire city. The demand is simple: "Give us what we have been promised for over a century...EQUALITY."

Driven by eyewitness accounts and combining urban history with a life-and-death drama and a technological detective story, Floodpath grippingly reanimates the reality behind LA noir fictions like the classic film Chinatown. In an era of climate change, increasing demand on water resources, and a neglected American infrastructure, the tragedy of the St. Francis Dam has never been more relevant.

When Eugene Kim assembles his three estranged daughters at his deathbed, he means to put them to the test. Vicious and pathetic in equal measure, he wants to test who will abject themselves for his favor—and, more importantly, his fortune. Each isolated and desperate to escape their circumstances, the sisters wrestle with the legacy of their abusive father as they attempt to imagine a future with others—colleagues, lovers, friends, family—as rage and shame courses through their blood.

Pocos matrimonios en la historia europea han tenido tal impacto e influencia en la vida y surgimiento de una nación como la de los afamados Reyes Católicos, Isabel De Castilla y Fernando de Aragón, en el siglo XV. Unidos en matrimonio en 1469, no sólo unieron las coronas de los reinos de Castilla y Aragón, sino que bajo su égida iniciaron el nacimiento de una nueva época para España.

In this engaging history, James MacGregor Burns brings to vivid life the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, during which audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World, transforming thought, bringing down governments, and inspiring visionary political experiments that would ultimately reach every corner of the globe. Unlike most historians, Burns pays particular attention to America's intellectual revolution, beginning and ending his story on American soil.