Showing titles in 21st Century

Bigger has turned out not to be better. Servicing the global economy has exacted a heavy toll in the erosion of our communities and the destruction of our environment. Increasingly, we are coming to realize that the way forward looks a lot like the way back — back to strong local economies, back to resilient, tight-knit communities, back to the land and work that is real. As we chart our course through these uncertain times, we are hungry for inspiration.

Barack Obama’s inspirational politics and personal mythology have overshadowed his fascinating history. Young Mr. Obama gives us the missing chapter: the portrait of the politician as a young leader, often too ambitious for his own good, but still equipped with a rare ability to inspire change. The route to the White House began on the streets of Chicago’s South Side. Edward McClelland, a veteran Chicago journalist, tells the real story of the first Black president’s political education in the capital of the African American political community.

Scott McClellan, the author of What Happened Inside the Bush White House and What's Going Wrong with Washington (Public Affairs, May, 2008), was White House Press Secretary from 2003-2006, and one of President Bush's closest aides. He speaks with veteran journalist Dan Rather, the managing editor and anchor of Dan Rather Reports on HDNet.

The United States' response to the terrible events of September 11, 2001 marked a watershed in American policy toward the Middle East region. Instead of pursuing stability, the country has practiced a strategy of destabilization in the hopes of democratization. What are the results, and what can we expect U.S. policy to be in the new administration?

A compelling new set of interviews on our changing and turbulent times with Noam Chomsky, one of the world's foremost thinkers In this collection of conversations, conducted from 2010 to 2012, Noam Chomsky explores the most immediate and urgent concerns: the future of democracy in the Arab world...

In May 2010, an intelligence analyst in the US Army's 10th Mountain Division was arrested on suspicion of leaking nearly half a million classified government documents, including the infamous "Collateral Murder" gunsight video and 260,000 State Department cables. After nine months in solitary confinement, the suspect now awaits court-martial in Fort Leavenworth. He is 24, comes from Crescent, Oklahoma, and his name is Bradley Manning.

In The New Counterinsurgency Era, David Ucko examines DoD's institutional obstacles and initially slow response to a changing strategic reality. Ucko also suggests how the military can better prepare for the unique challenges of modern warfare, where it is charged with everything from providing security to supporting reconstruction to establishing basic governance - all while stabilizing conquered territory and engaging with local populations.

The world stopped for America on September 11, 2001, the day of the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil. It was also the day America showed its true colors. Firefighters, police officers, paramedics, and EMTs sped to the scene. Concerned more about others' safety than their own, they raced into the very buildings workers were fleeing from. Hundreds gave their lives so that others might live.

"America had a secret weapon," writes Steve Call of the period immediately following September 11, 2001, as planners contemplated the invasion of Afghanistan. This weapon consisted of small teams of Special Forces operatives trained in close air support (CAS) who, in cooperation with the loose federation of Afghan rebels opposed to the Taliban regime, soon began achieving impressive - and unexpected - military victories over Taliban forces and the al-Qaeda terrorists they had sponsored....

Turmoil and Transition in Boston tells the personal and political story of Larry DiCara, the youngest person ever elected to the Boston City Council. DiCara's story is intimately woven into the fate of his hometown of Boston. As the federal court order mandating busing to achieve racial integration in the public schools ripped apart his city, he shows how public policy decisions and economic and demographic changes from that time transformed Boston into one of America's most diverse, affluent, and successful cities in the 21st century.

In this all new collection of conversations, Noam Chomsky explores the most immediate and urgent concerns: Iran’s challenge to the United States, the deterioration of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the rise of China, and the growing power of the left in Latin America, as well as the Democratic victory in the U.S. midterm elections and its ramifications for the future.

The author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, The New Yorker writer Steve Coll discusses his most recent book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century. Coll talks to David Remnick, the editor in chief of The New Yorker.

The casino was alive and well in Will Roger's time. It was called Wall Street then as well. But mainstream media allowed for the total exposure of the criminal greed of the Street. Bankers were determined not to allow that mistake to rain on their next financial orgy, so that Will Rogers would have had no voice in the days of the ponzi housing bubble and subsequent crash. Things are different now, and mainstreet is even more vulnerable than in the roaring twenties.

In 2000, after the Tribune Company acquired Times Mirror Corporation, it comprised the most powerful collection of newspapers in the world. How then did Tribune nosedive into bankruptcy and public scandal? In The Deal from Hell, veteran Tribune and Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea takes us behind the scenes of the decisions that led to disaster in boardrooms and newsrooms from coast to coast, based on access to key players, court testimony, and sworn depositions.

Quando ripensiamo ai fatti significativi della nostra vita tutti noi ormai siamo abituati a ragionare in termini di "prima" o "dopo" l'11 settembre 2001. È un dato di fatto oggettivo: quel giorno ha diviso la storia del mondo in un "prima" ed in "dopo". Ormai quando si usa l'espressione "undici settembre" non serve più nemmeno specificare di che anno si tratti: è chiaro per tutti che ci si riferisce all'11 settembre 2001.

Res Gestae Christiani: My Time as the President of the Cambridge University Korean Society 2002-2003by Christian Kim is a heart-warming real-life account of the struggle of Korean students at Cambridge University to empower themselves against all odds. At the helm of this endeavor is Christian Kim, who was the President of Cambridge University Korean Society from 2002 to 2003.

We have released the genie from the bottle: climate change is coming, and there's no stopping it. The question, according to Matthew Kahn, is not how were going to avoid a hotter future but how were going to adapt to it. In Climatopolis, Kahn, one of the worlds foremost experts on the economics of the environment, argues that cities and regions will adapt to rising temperatures over time, slowly transforming our everyday lives.

A groundbreaking -- and terrifying -- examination of the widespread resurgence of antisemitism in the 21st century, by the prize-winning and #1 internationally bestselling author of Hitler's Willing Executioners. Antisemitism never went away, but since the turn of the century it has multiplied...

In A Long Time Coming, a compelling narrative by Evan Thomas, Newsweek shares the inside stories from one of the most exciting elections in recent history, illuminating the personalities and events that influenced the outcome, and taking stock of the key players and key issues for the new administration.

Derided by the Right as dangerous and by the Left as spineless, Barack Obama puzzles observers. In Reading Obama, James T. Kloppenberg reveals the sources of Obama's ideas and explains why his principled aversion to absolutes does not fit contemporary partisan categories. Obama's commitments to deliberation and experimentation derive from sustained engagement with American democratic thought.