Political Thought

This exhilarating collection of essays, interviews, and correspondence—spanning the years 1988 through 2018, and reaching back a decade more—is about the simple concept that ideas matter. They mutate, inform, create fuel for thought, and inspire actions. As Kelman says, the State relies on our suffocation, that we cannot hope to learn the truth. But whether we can or not is beside the point. We must grasp the nettle, we assume control and go forward.

This work is a landmark in American political thought. Preeminent Richard Hofstadter examines the passion for progress and reform that colored the entire period from 1890 to 1940 with startling and stimulating results. The Age of Reform searches out the moral and emotional motives of the reformers, the myths and dreams in which they believed, and the realities with which they had to compromise.

From the heyday of Occupy Wall Street through Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and beyond, young progressives have been increasingly drawn to socialist ideas. However, the movement’s goals need to be defined more sharply before it can effect real change on a national scale. Likewise, liberals and conservatives will benefit from a deeper understanding of the true nature of this ideology, whether they agree with it or not.

This is an ideal introduction to the ideas of a man whom many regard as the greatest thinker of our time. Here we encounter the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness, his key intellectual breakthroughs, his theory of history, and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age. The book provides a veritable catalog of the thinkers who created the intellectual foundation of the twentieth century.

In The Ideas That Rule Us, political theory researcher, author, and entrepreneur Nathan J. Murphy takes an eye-opening, multi-disciplinary deep dive into how others' ideologies, perceived societal norms, and pop culture influences shape our lives, through our decision-making, political affiliations, and consumer spending. Murphy deftly weaves over 4 years of political, cognitive, and sociological research into a very relatable and practical discussion about the fascinating origins of the many influential ideas and ideologies that rule our lives.

Modern conservatism was born in the crisis of the French Revolution that sought to overturn Christianity, monarchy, tradition, and a trust in experience rather than reason. In the name of reason and progress, the French Revolution led to the guillotine, the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte, and a decade of continental war. Today Western Civilization is again in crisis, with an ever-widening progressive campaign against religion, tradition, and ordered liberty.

In the years between her first public lecture in 1961 and her last in 1981, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as different as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. In The Voice of Reason, these pieces are gathered together in book form for the first time. Written in the last decades of Rand's life, they reflect a life lived on principle, a probing mind, and a passionate intensity. With them are five essays by Leonard Peikoff, Rand's longtime associate and literary executor.

From modern literature to menopause, from utopian thought to rodeos - in this classic collection of essays, Ursula K. Le Guin roves with her customary audacity over the intersecting arenas of literature, feminism, and social responsibility, exploding any received notions she comes across and revealing visionary possibilities in their stead.

Alyssa Mastromonaco is back with a bold, no-nonsense, and no-holds-barred 21st-century girl's guide to life, tackling the highs and lows of bodies, politics, relationships, moms, education, life on the internet, and pop culture. Whether discussing Barbra Streisand or The Bachelor, working in the West Wing or working on finding a wing woman, Alyssa leaves no stone unturned...and no awkward situation unexamined.

On Inhumanity is bracing and vital listen in a world lurching towards authoritarian political regimes, resurgent white nationalism, refugee crises that breed nativist hostility, and fast-spreading racist rhetoric. The book will open your eyes to the pervasive dangers of dehumanization and the prejudices that can too easily take root within us, and resist them before they spread into the wider world.

Deepak Chopra's passionate new book, Peace Is the Way, was inspired by a saying from Mahatma Gandhi: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." In a world where every path to peace has proved futile, the one strategy that hasn’t been tried is the way of peace itself. "We must not bring one war to an end, or thirty," Chopra tells us, "but the idea of war itself." How can this be done?

African Americans have had every reason to doubt America’s democratic experiment. Yet African American activists, intellectuals, and artists who have sought to transform the United States into a racially just society have put forward some of the most original and powerful ideas about how to make America live up to its democratic ideals. In The Darkened Light of Faith, Melvin Rogers provides a bold new account of African American political thought through the works and lives of individuals who built this vital tradition, which is urgently needed today.

In The Whigs' America, Joseph W. Pearson explores a variety of topics, including the Whigs' understanding of the role of the individual in American politics, their perceptions of political power and the rule of law, and their impressions of the past and what should be learned from history. Long dismissed as a party bereft of ideas, Pearson provides a counterbalance to this trend through an attentive examination of writings from party leaders, contemporaneous newspapers, and other sources.

Must the sins of America's past poison its hope for the future? Lately the American Left, withdrawing into the ivied halls of academe to rue the nation's shame, has answered "yes" in both word and deed. In Achieving Our Country, one of America's foremost philosophers challenges this lost generation of the Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers like Walt Whitman and John Dewey.

As a public speaker, Cameron Ash, "Cash," advocates a controversial foreign policy that should be read by the American president. Angered by the speech, a Middle Eastern government sends an assassin after Cash. After the recent loss of his wife and children in a mysterious plane crash, Cash takes over as president of Lone Pine Technologies in Colorado. He cleans house, uncovers accounting fraud, and grows the company through acquisitions.

America is broken. America is divided. 80% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. And everything you need to know about the divided states of America can be explained by two relentless forces: hyper-individualism and hyper-capitalism. This book explores how both hyper-individualism and hyper-capitalism are what is fundamentally ripping our country apart. Traditional solutions and status quo politicians can’t help us.

This essay explores the political theory of Ayn Rand, a topic that catapulted to the national stage during the last presidential election following the nomination of Rep. Paul Ryan (a self-described enthusiast of Rand's ideas and novels) to the Romney ticket. Ayn Rand's ideas continue to generate public debate in political and cultural circles, but those ideas are frequently misunderstood and misrepresented. This book provides a succinct summary of key aspects of her thought, enabling you to intelligently discuss Rand's ideas with others.

United States Senator Cory Booker makes the case that the virtues of empathy, responsibility, and action must guide our nation toward a brighter future. Raised in northern New Jersey, Cory Booker went to Stanford University on a football scholarship, accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, then studied at Yale Law School. Graduating from Yale, his options were limitless. He chose public service.

From the French Revolution of the 18th century to the Mexican, Russian, German, Chinese, anticolonial, and Iranian revolutions of the 20th, Chirot finds that moderate solutions to serious social, economic, and political problems were overwhelmed by radical ideologies that promised simpler, drastic remedies. But not all revolutions had this outcome. The American Revolution didn't, although its failure to resolve the problem of slavery eventually led to the Civil War, and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was relatively peaceful, except in Yugoslavia.

Until very recently, no society had seen marriage as anything other than a conjugal partnership: a male-female union. What Is Marriage? identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage as something other than the conjugal union of husband and wife is a mistake. Originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, this book’s core argument quickly became the year’s most widely read essay on the most prominent scholarly network in the social sciences.