The underappreciated but surprisingly successful implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) helped rescue the economy during the Great Recession and represented one of the most important achievements of the Obama presidency. It tested all levels of government with urgent time frames and extensive accountability requirements. While ARRA passed most tests with comparatively little mismanagement or fraud, negative public and media perceptions of the initiative deprive...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, AND KIRKUS REVIEWSA scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis**Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer...

In this book (previously published as Crippled America), we’re going to look at the state of the world right now. It’s a terrible mess, and that’s putting it mildly. There has never been a more dangerous time. The politicians and special interests in Washington, DC, are directly responsible for the mess we are in. So why should we continue listening to them?It’s time to bring America back to its rightful owners—the American people.I’m not going to ...

In 1977 R W Johnson's best-selling How Long Will South Africa Survive? provided a controversial analysis of the survival prospects of the apartheid regime. Now, after more than twenty years of ANC rule, he believes the situation has become so critical that the question must be posed again. He moves from an analysis of Jacob Zuma's rule to the increasingly dire state of the South African economy, concluding that the country is heading towards a likely International Monetary Fund bail-out, w...

The iconic humorist offers his take on the stranger-than-fiction ( and stranger-than-fact) 2016 presidential election and its equally unbelievable aftermath.The 2016 election cycle was so absurd that celebrated political satirist, journalist, and die-hard Republican P. J. O'Rourke endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. As P. J. put it, "America is experiencing the most severe outbreak of mass psychosis since the Salem witch trials of 1692. So why n...

A historian debunks four-dozen PC myths about our nation's past.Over the last forty years, history textbooks have become more and more politically correct and distorted about our country's past, argues professor Larry Schweikart. The result, he says, is that students graduate from high school and even college with twisted beliefs about economics, foreign policy, war, religion, race relations, and many other subjects.As he did in his popular A Patriot's ...

The Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter, columnist, and bestselling author of In Fed We Trust, dissects the federal budget in this New York Times bestseller.In a sweeping narrative about the people and the politics behind the budget--a topic that is fiercely debated today in the halls of Congress and the media, and yet is often misunderstood by the American public--Wessel looks at the 2011 fiscal year (which ended September 30) to see where all the mo...

An explosive examination of the coalition of forces that threatens the nation, from the bestselling author of American DynastyIn his two most recent bestselling books, American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips established himself as a powerful critic of the political and economic forces that rule-and imperil-the United States, tracing the ever more alarming path of the emerging Republican majoritys rise to power. Now Phil...

Until recently, struggles for justice proceeded against the background of a taken-for-granted frame: the bounded territorial state. With that "Westphalian" picture of political space assumed by default, the scope of justice was rarely subject to open dispute. Today, however, human-rights activists and international feminists join critics of structural adjustment and the World Trade Organization in challenging the view that justice can only be a domestic relation among fellow citizens. Targ...

The study of two great demagogues in American history--Huey P. Long, a first-term United States Senator from the red-clay, piney-woods country of nothern Louisiana; and Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest from an industrial suburb near Detroit. Award-winning historian Alan Brinkely describes their modest origins and their parallel rise together in the early years of the Great Depression to become the two most successful leaders of national political dissidence of their era.*Winn...

What's wrong with the US food system? Why is half the world starving while the other half battles obesity? Who decides our food issues, and why can't we do better with labeling, safety, or school food? These are complex questions that are hard to answer in an engaging way for a broad audience. But everybody eats, and food politics affects us all.Marion Nestle, whom Michael Pollan ranked as the #2 most powerful foodie in America (after Michelle Obama) in Forbes, has always ...

A classic of twentieth-century political thought on the nature of justice.**“This is a humane and hopeful vision, and Mr. Walzer conveys it with a wry and gentle grace.” ―**New York Times Book ReviewIn this landmark work, Michael Walzer makes the provocative claim that the real enemy of a just society is not inequality itself but domination—the quiet way that wealth turns into power and power into deference until an advantage in on...