Whatever his ratings, Obama remains personally popular, widely acknowledged for his soaring oratory. His words were one of the lasting legacies of his presidential campaign and are proving to be among his most effective governing weapons.In Power in Words, distinguished historian and civil rights activist Mary Frances Berry and former presidential speechwriter Josh Gottheimer introduce Obama’s most memorable speeches, from his October 2002 speech against the war in Iraq an...

The gripping inside story of the 2008 presidential election, by two of the best political reporters in the country."It's one of the best books on politics of any kind I've read. For entertainment value, I put it up there with Catch 22." — The Financial Times"It transports you to a parallel universe in which everything in the National Enquirer is true….More interesting is what we learn about the candidates ...

**Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • Nominated for the National Book Award for NonfictionFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars and The Achilles Trap, the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11**Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanista...

From the bestselling author of The Battle for America 2008 and longtime Washington Post correspondent, an inside view and analysis of the Obama-Romney presidential raceIn 2008 a bright young candidate triumphed on a theme of change and hope. Four years later an embattled President struggled against an apocalyptically divided and divisive Congress, a war that won’t end, and an economy that casts a dark penumbra over every spark of good new...

Why are Southeast Asia's richest countries such as Malaysia riddled with corruption? Why do Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines harbour unresolved violent insurgencies? How do deepening religious divisions in Indonesia and Malaysia, and China's growing influence, affect the region and the rest of the world?Thought-provoking and eye-opening, Blood and Silk is an accessible, personal look at modern Southeast Asia, written by one of the region's most experienced outside obs...

Conventional wisdom holds that the Bush administration was able to convince the American public to support a war in Iraq on the basis of specious claims and a shifting rationale because Democratic politicians decided not to voice opposition and the press simply failed to do its job.Drawing on the most comprehensive survey of public reactions to the war, Stanley Feldman, Leonie Huddy, and George E. Marcus revisit this critical period and come back with a very different story. Polling...

How Obama overestimated the power of rhetoric and persuasion during his presidencyWhen Barack Obama became president, many Americans embraced him as a transformational leader who would fundamentally change the politics and policy of the country. Yet, two years into his administration, the public resisted his calls for support and Congress was deadlocked over many of his major policy proposals. How could this capable new president have difficulty attaining his goals...

Germany's and Italy's belated national unifications continue to loom large in contemporary debates. Often regarded as Europe's paradigmatic instances of failed modernization, the two countries form the basis of many of our most prized theories of social science. Structuring the State undertakes one of the first systematic comparisons of the two cases, putting the origins of these nation-states and the nature of European political development in new light.Daniel Ziblatt beg...

In the months leading up to the American invasion of Iraq, this New Yorker correspondent “embedded’ himself among the people of Baghdad and, along with a small number of other Western reporters, rode out the entire invasion and much of the subsequent occupation from inside the city. Jon Lee Anderson’s dispatches from Baghdad were immediately and widely recognized as the most important writing anyone was doing on the war anywhere, for any publication. In recognition of its signific...

With its rock-bottom approval ratings, acrimonious partisan battles, and apparent inability to do its legislative business, the U.S. Senate might easily be deemed unworthy of attention, if not downright irrelevant. This book tells us that would be a mistake. Because the Senate has become the place where the policy-making process most frequently stalls, any effective resolution to our polarized politics demands a clear understanding of how the formerly august legislative body once worked an...

A broadly interdisciplinary study of the pervasive secrecy in America cultural, political, and religious discourse.The occult has traditionally been understood as the study of secrets of the practice of mysticism or magic. This book broadens our understanding of the occult by treating it as a rhetorical phenomenon tied to language and symbols and more central to American culture than is commonly assumed.Joshua Gunn approaches the occult as an idiom, examining the ways in wh...

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 re...