A powerful case for democracy and how it can adapt and survive—if we want it toIs democracy in trouble, perhaps even dying? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country's system of governance is being "tested" or is "under attack." But is the future of democracy necessarily so dire? In The Civic Bargain, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober push back against the prevailing pessimism about the fate of democracy around the world. I...

Just a few years ago, people spoke of the US as a hyperpower—a titan stalking the world stage with more relative power than any empire in history. Yet as early as 1993, CIA director James Woolsey pointed out that although Western powers had "slain a large dragon" by defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, they now faced a "variety of poisonous snakes."In The Dragons and the Snakes, the eminent soldier-scholar David Kilcullen asks how, and what, opponents of the West ha...

A sweeping history of America during the tumultuous decades between the ends of World War I and World War II, when a mainly rural, isolationist republic was transformed into a nuclear superpower and the leader of the free world.Through the prosperous 1920s and its culture wars to the Great Crash and Depression of the Thirties, the fits and starts of the New Deal, and then the all-consuming fight to defeat fascism in World War II, the twenty-five years from 1920 thr...

Where do you get your values and sensibilities from? If you grew up in a Western democracy, the answer is probably liberalism. Conservatives are right about one thing: liberalism is the ideology of our times, as omnipresent as religion once was. Yet, as Alexandre Lefebvre argues in Liberalism as a Way of Life, many of us are liberal without fully realizing it—or grasping what it means. Misled into thinking that liberalism is confined to politics, we fail to recognize that it's the...

What does it take to have a truly happy retirement? Is it money? An active social life? A long-lasting marriage—or maybe a new one? Finance expert, author, and radio host Wes Moss asked more than 2,000 of the nation's happiest retirees to find out—and their answers may surprise you. Through a series of revealing surveys, Moss noticed a pattern of distinct, recognizable habits that the happiest retirees shared, from the simplest of lifestyle choices to the smartest of financial strategies. ...

Telecommunications networks are vast, intricate, hugely costly systems for exchanging messages and information—within cities and across continents. From the Post Office and the telegraph to today's internet, these networks have sown domestic division while also acting as sources of international power.In Crossed Wires, Dan Schiller, who has conducted archival research on United States telecommunications for more than forty years, recovers the extraordinary social history o...

Anthropology is the organized study of what makes humans human. It takes an objective step back to ask questions like: Given our common characteristics, why aren't all of us exactly the same? And how can knowing the reasons behind our differences—as well as our similarities—teach us useful lessons for the future? The updated edition of Anthropology For Dummies gives you a panoramic view of the fascinating fieldwork and theory that seeks to answer these questions—and helps you view...

From a New York Times bestselling historian comes a gripping account of the crisis that threatened to unravel the Weimar Republic.The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography: “I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.” He was referring to Germany in 1923, a “year of lunacy,” defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the v...

How Montessori's commitment to "follow the child" can be understood as a philosophical method for answering the great philosophical questions that confront human beingsIn Maria Montessori's Philosophy, Patrick R. Frierson discusses historical influences on Montessori's philosophical views, focusing on showing how her commitment to children led her to profound insights about a wide range of philosophical questions, from foundational metaphysics to applied e...

Chicago is a world-class city, but it is also a city in crisis.Crime is up, schools have repeatedly shut down due to conflict between City Hall and the powerful teachers' union, and COVID-19 only deepened the entrenched poverty, institutional racism, and endless tug of war between the city's haves and have nots.For four years, the person at the center of this storm was Lori Lightfoot. A groundbreaking figure—the first Black, gay woman to be elected mayor of...

While hardly a new phenomenon, masculinity—which includes elements of toughness, independence, and leadership, among others—roared onto the national political stage in America with the 2016 candidacy, election, and presidency of Donald Trump. Research into masculinity dates back over a century, but little attention has been paid to the specific role of masculinity in politics beyond the conventional wisdom that it, rather than femininity, is the dominant force. This lack of research has le...

In Unwelcome Guests, Harold S. Wechsler and Steven J. Diner argue that discrimination in college admissions has a long and troubling history in the US. Institutions of higher learning have vigorously sought to shape their mission and the experiences of their undergraduate students by paying careful attention to race and religion in admissions decisions. Wechsler and Diner explore how American colleges and universities sought to restrict enrollment of students they considered undes...