Social Democracy

The navy created by the people of Athens in ancient Greece was one of the finest fighting forces in the history of the world and the model for all other national navies to come. The Athenian navy built a civilization, empowered the world's first democracy, and led a band of ordinary citizens on a voyage of discovery that altered the course of history.

Backcountry Democracy and the Whiskey Insurrection treats the legal culture that informed the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 and its trials. Linda Myrsiades examines conflicts between state and federal courts and the judicial philosophy of Federalist judges, as well as grand jury charges, law reports, judges' bench notes, and defense notes for the trials, to develop a portrait of the hegemony of official interpretations of the law. At the same time, the book illuminates popular attitudes about the courts and the law and explores the nature of extralegal courts operated by the people.

In Words for Warriors, with her trademark wit and intelligence, Sam Sorbo shows exactly how radical left-wingers have manipulated language to fit their own socialistic and anti-freedom agenda. Sam Sorbo is on a mission to reclaim today’s hot button/culture war words for all freedom-loving Americans. Arranged in an accessible “A-Z” glossary style, listeners can dip in to discover the real meanings behind the acronyms, words, and phrases that the toxic liberal left loves to force on the rest of us.

In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem’s storied past.

Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America’s descent into a failed state and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides.

The decline and fall of America's global empire is the central feature of today's geopolitical landscape, and the nature of our response to it will determine much of our future trajectory, with implications that reach far beyond the limits of one nation's borders. Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America challenges the conventional wisdom of empire, using a wealth of historical examples combined with groundbreaking original analysis.

Our current democratic capitalist system is close to imploding. This book is the first to reveal the secret financial system dominating capitalism today and shows how we can create accountability to restore our democracy.

Is philanthropy, by its very nature, a threat to today's democracy? Though we may laud wealthy individuals who give away their money for society's benefit, Just Giving reveals how such generosity not only isn't the unassailable good we think it to be but might also undermine democratic values and set back aspirations of justice.

The 2015 winner of the Brown Democracy Medal, Joan C. Tronto, argues in Who Cares? that we need to rethink American democracy, as well as our own fundamental values and commitments, from a caring perspective. Asserting that Americans are facing a "caring deficit" - that there are simply too many demands on our time to care adequately for children, elderly people, and ourselves - she asks us to reconsider how we allocate care responsibilities.

Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country's vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan.

The Ghosts of Langley is a provocative and panoramic new history of the Central Intelligence Agency that relates the agency's current predicament to its founding and earlier years, telling the story of the agency through the eyes of key figures in CIA history, including some of its most troubling covert actions around the world. It reveals how the agency, over seven decades, has resisted government accountability, going rogue in a series of highly questionable ventures that reach their apotheosis with secret overseas prisons and torture programs.

In our current age of hyper-partisan politics, nearly everyone takes sides. This is especially true with regard to the Trump presidency, which did not cause this profound division but has drawn it to the surface, making it the dominant paradigm of political debate. Both sides scream lock 'em up, criminalizing political difference instead of making substantive criticisms of opposing views. This deeply undemocratic fallacy - that political sins must be investigated and prosecuted as criminal - is an exceedingly dangerous trend.

The story of America is the struggle between our liberal ideal and illiberal resistance. Donald Trump catalyzed a reactionary revolution by tapping into the dark, shadowy side of American democracy that embraces exclusion and inequality. Throughout American history these alarming impulses have come to the forefront of our culture — during the Civil War, the era of the Robber Barons, and the Civil Rights Movement — but have now come to fruition in the presidency of Donald Trump.

In a collection of original essays, the venerated television journalist, Dan Rather, celebrates our shared values and what matters most in our great country, and shows us what patriotism looks like. Writing about the institutions that sustain us, such as public libraries, public schools, and national parks; the values that have transformed us, such as the struggle for civil rights; and the drive toward science and innovation that has made the US great, Rather brings his experience on the frontlines of the world's biggest stories, and offers listeners a way forward.

An epic narrative chronicling the fracturing of the Republican Party, Jeremy Peters’s Insurgency is the story of a party establishment that believed it could control the dark energy it helped foment—right up until it suddenly couldn’t. How, Peters asks, did conservative values that Republicans claimed to cherish, like small government, fiscal responsibility, and morality in public service, get completely eroded as an unshakable faith in Donald Trump grew to define the party?

Public opinion polling is the ultimate democratic process; it gives every person an equal voice in letting elected leaders know what they need and want. But in the eyes of the public, polls today are tarnished. Recent election forecasts have routinely missed the mark and media coverage of polls has focused solely on predicting winners and losers. In Strength in Numbers, data journalist G. Elliott Morris argues that the larger purpose of political polls is to improve democracy, not just predict elections.

Everyone knows that democracy is in trouble, but do we know what democracy actually is? Jan-Werner Müller, author of the widely translated and acclaimed What Is Populism?, takes us back to basics in Democracy Rules. In this short, elegant volume, he explains how democracy is founded not just on liberty and equality, but also on uncertainty.

Famed journalist, satirist, and cultural critic Henry Louis (H. L.) Mencken is known as the chief heretic of the American civic religion for a reason. From the corruption of politicians to the dangers of mob rule, Mencken explores the pitfalls of democracy with his trademark irreverence and insight. In our age of demagogues, Notes on Democracy is as relevant today as it was nearly a century ago.

The effort to destroy facts and make America ungovernable didn't come out of nowhere. It is the culmination of seventy years of strategic denialism. In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society.

Larry Diamond has made it his life's work to secure democracy's future by understanding its past and by advising dissidents fighting autocracy around the world. Ill Winds' core argument is stark: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on US global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the 21st century into a dark time of despotism.