"The Last Nine Innings is the last word on the inside of baseball. It's full of wonderful revelations and perceptions that help us understand the game in ways that we might never have imagined. Charlie Euchner has done a marvelous job in getting players to talk, simply, about how they play, and we're the wiser for it."—Frank Deford"Charlie takes an unorthodox approach to an emotional week and succeeds at finding the heart of both the tension of the World Series and the tech...

Since its founding, activists have demanded that the United States lives up to its democratic promise. Now, with Rules of Activism, Charles Euchner offers a concise "field guide" to the critical place of political and social movements in American politics.Activists have always been at the center of democratic reform in America: abolitionism and suffragism, labor and urban reform, civil rights and antiwar protest, feminism and environmentalism. They have agitated and confro...

It's just like the pros: bright lights, screaming fans, squawking commentators and five million people watching you play your heart out on national television for the right to be called champions. But these are not pampered multimillion-dollar athletes; they are 11- to 13-year-old kids.The 2005 World Series was the most dramatic in the 58-year history of the Little League. With full access to the players, coaches and parents associated with both teams who played in that game, Charl...

Political protest and social movementstheir history; their cyclical development; their organization, strategies, and tacticsconstitute what Charles Euchner calls extraordinary politics, an antidote to the breakdown of politics-as-usual and a necessary, if not sufficient, condition of democracy. Activists have set the pace on every conceivable issue, including the environment, gay rights, feminism, abortion, states rights, religion, and multiculturalism. The president and Congress can barel...

On August 28, 1963, over a quarter-million people—about two-thirds black and one-third white—held the greatest civil rights demonstration ever. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” oration. And just blocks away, President Kennedy and Congress skirmished over landmark civil rights legislation. As Charles Euchner reveals, the importance of the march is more profound and complex than standard treatments of the 1963 March on Washington allow.In this major reint...

A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good?These are dangerous tim...

It is now more than three decades since the historic Supreme Court decision on desegregation, Brown v. Board of Education. Thomas Sowell takes a tough, factual look at what has actually happened over these decades -- as distinguished from the hopes with which they began or the rhetoric with which they continue, Who has gained and who has lost? Which of the assumptions behind the civil rights revolution have stood the test of time and which have proven to be mistaken or even catast...

This "excellent study of activist politics in the United States over the past century" challenges the conventional wisdom about participatory democracy ( Times Literary Supplement).Freedom Is an Endless Meeting offers vivid portraits of American experiments in participatory democracy throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on meticulous research and more than one hundred interviews with activists, Francesca Polletta upends the notion that partic...

Award-winning author Shelby Steele's essay collection A Dream Deferred reveals the untold story behind the polarized racial politics in America today.A New York Times Notable BookThrough thought-provoking insights, National Book Critics Circle Award Winner Shelby Steele argues that a second betrayal of black freedom in the United States—the first one being segregation—emerged from the civil rights era when the country was ov...

Facing a crisis unlike that of any other generation, young people are caught between the discourses of consumerism and a powerful crime-control-complex, and are viewed increasingly as commodities or are subjected to the dictates of an ever expanding criminal justice system. Drawing upon critical analyses, biography, and social theory, Disposable Youth explores the current conditions of young people now face within an emerging culture of privatization, insecurity, and commodificati...

Years of tremendous growth in response to complex emergencies have left a mark on the humanitarian sector. Various matters that once seemed settled are now subjects of intense debate. What is humanitarianism? Is it limited to the provision of relief to victims of conflict, or does it include broader objectives such as human rights, democracy promotion, development, and peacebuilding? For much of the last century, the principles of humanitarianism were guided by neutrality, impartiality, an...

Not since the Roman Empire has any nation had as much economic, cultural, and military power as the United States does today. Yet, as has become all too evident through the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the impending threat of the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, that power is not enough to solve global problems--like terrorism, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction--without involving other nations. Here Joseph S. Nye, Jr. focuses ...