Political Culture

This collection brings together Finkelstein’s greatest writings from The Times, ranging from the personal - with his articles on growing up Jewish in Hendon Central and on the deaths of both of his parents - to the political, with columns on how to predict elections, the way political science showed us Ed Miliband was on his way to defeat and why the base rate of coups meant Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t be ousted before an election.

The American way - independence, entrepreneurialism, liberty - has been under assault for decades. The cultural foundations of the United States and its institutions are devolving along the line of some futuristic apocalyptic novel and producing social, moral, and economic dry rot that can lead only to chaos and ruin. Attacks on individuality, freedom, and personal responsibility for most of the last century have resulted, as Alexis de Tocqueville once predicted, in a gradual degradation of the people and the descent into slavery of once-free people.

From politics to the personal, from fashion to food, from the campus to the locker room, the desire to be cool has infected all aspects of our lives. At its most harmless, it is annoying. At its worst, it is deadly, on a massive scale. The Cool are the termites of life, infiltrating every nook and cranny and destroying it from within. The Cool report the news, write the scripts, teach our children, run our government - and each day they pass judgment on those who don’t worship their coolness.

On a remote island in the Aegean, Jacqueline is living alone in a cave accessible only at low tide. With nothing to protect her from the elements, and with the fabric between herself and the world around her increasingly frayed, she is permeated by sensory experiences of remarkable intensity: the need for shade in the relentless heat of the sun-baked island; hunger and the occasional bliss of release from it; the exquisite pleasure of diving into the sea. The pressing physical realities of the moment provide a deeper relief: the euphoric obliteration of memory and, with it, the unspeakable violence she has seen and from which she has miraculously escaped.

In a series of 10 essays, spanning five centuries of history, beginning with the conquest of Mexico by Hermán Cortés and ending in 1992 San Francisco, Rodriguez explores the conflicts of race, religion, and cultural identity for Mexican-Americans across the landscape of his beloved California.

The summer of 1898 is filled with ups and downs for 11-year-old Moses. He's growing apart from his best friend; his superstitious Boo-Nanny butts heads constantly with his pragmatic, educated father; and his mother is reeling from the discovery of a family secret. Yet there are good times, too. He's teaching his grandmother how to read. For the first time she's sharing stories about her life as a slave. And his father and his friends are finally getting the respect and positions of power they've earned. But not everyone is happy with the political changes at play....

During the pitched battle over slavery in the United States, Black writers - enslaved and free - allied themselves with the cause of abolition and used their art to advocate for emancipation and to envision the end of slavery as a world-historical moment of possibility.

A fascinating chronicle of radical feminism’s rise and fall from the mid-60s to the mid-70s, Daring to Be Bad is a must-listen for both students of gender history and activists of intersectionality. This 30th anniversary edition reveals how current debates about race, transgender rights, queer theory, and sexuality echo issues that galvanized and divided feminists 50 years ago.

When Sleepers, Wake! was released in Australia, it immediately became influential around the world. Now its author, the polymath and former politician Barry Jones, turns his attention to what has happened since - especially to politics, health, and our climate in the digital age - and to the challenges faced by increasingly fragile democracies and public institutions.

Ken Ilgunas, lifelong traveler, hitchhiker, and roamer, takes listeners back to the 19th century, when Americans were allowed to journey undisturbed across the country. Inspired by the United States' history of roaming, and taking guidance from present-day Europe, Ilgunas calls into question our entrenched understanding of private property and provocatively proposes something unheard of: opening up American private property for public recreation. He imagines a future in which folks everywhere will have the right to walk safely, explore freely, and roam boldly.

Stephen Mansfield, the acclaimed New York Times best-selling author, has highlighted the growing popularity of Mormonism—a belief system with cultic roots—and the implications of its critical rise. Mormons are moving into the spotlight in pop culture, politics, sports, and entertainment via presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, media personality Glenn Beck, mega-bestselling Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, and The Book of Mormon, the hottest show on Broadway.

Maureen Dowd's incendiary takes and takedowns from 2016 - the most divisive Presidential race in modern history. Trapped between two candidates with the highest recorded unfavorables, Americans are plunged into The Year of Voting Dangerously. In this perilous and shocking campaign season, The New York Times columnist traces the psychologies and pathologies in one of the nastiest and most significant battles of the sexes ever.

Identitätspolitik, Cancel Culture und Wokeness – was an den Universitäten seinen Ausgang nahm, beeinflusst mittlerweile nicht nur Medien, Kultureinrichtungen und Bildungsinstitutionen, sondern ist auch in der Politik und Wirtschaft angekommen. Angetreten, um gegen Rassismus und Diskriminierung zu kämpfen und sich für Demokratie und Zusammenhalt einzusetzen, bewirkt eine woke Linke das genaue Gegenteil.

Historian Doug Rossinow examines how the cooperation and the creative tension between left-wing radicals and liberal reformers advanced many of the most important political values of the 20th century, including free speech, freedom of conscience, and racial equality. Visions of Progress chronicles the broad alliances of radical and liberal figures who were driven by a particular concept of social progress - a transformative vision in which the country would become fundamentally more democratic.

Featuring current information and challenging perspectives on the latest issues and forces shaping the American educational system, with scholarship that is often cited as a primary source, the author introduces listeners to the historical, political, social, and legal foundations of education and to the profession of teaching in the United States.

In the early 21st century, “Englishness” suddenly became a hot topic. A rash of art exhibitions, pop albums, and coffee table books arrived on the scene, all desperate to recover England’s lost national soul. But when we sweep away the patriotic stereotypes, we begin to see that England is a country that does not - and perhaps should not - exist in any essential sense. In this provocative text combining polemic and memoir, Alex Niven argues that the map of the British Isles should be torn apart completely as we look towards a time of radical political reform.

Negli ultimi anni il tranquillo mondo delle discipline classiche è in subbuglio. Annibale è alle porte? Non proprio: questa volta il nemico sembrerebbe arrivare da oltre le colonne d'Ercole. Dagli Stati Uniti, infatti, giunge la richiesta di una radicale messa in discussione di questo campo, che affronti innanzitutto quelli che sembrano essere i suoi due maggiori limiti. Il primo è il ruolo che lo studio del mondo antico avrebbe svolto al servizio dell'idea che i valori della società bianca occidentale siano superiori agli altri e, di conseguenza, vadano diffusi anche con la forza.

How did people in our country, North and South, East and West, come to share a remarkably durable and consistent common vision of what it meant to be an American in the first 50 years after the Revolution? How did the nation respond to the problem of slavery in a republic?

In America's First Dynasty, Richard Brookhiser tells the story of America's longest and still-greatest dynasty, the Adamses, the only family in our history to play a leading role in American affairs for nearly two centuries.John Adams was only the first of the Adamses to occupy the highest office in the land; his son, John Quincy Adams, ascended to the presidency as an equal champion of liberty.

In an increasingly divided society, Iain examines why we've all become so disrespectful and intolerant. Using experiences from his career in politics and the media, he says it doesn't have to be this way and suggests how we can all emerge from tribalism and division and become more respectful to each other and those who govern us. It is a book that is optimistic about the fundamental decencies embedded in human nature and uses deeply personal anecdotes to explain why we can look forward in a positive way to a better life both in personal and material terms.