Through careful analysis of contemporary records in the engineering profession, the author shows how management invented itself and carved its own domain in the face of hostility and resistance from both manufacturers and workers. The book demonstrates how the new language and rhetoric of management emerged, and how it confronted and replaced the language of traditional capitalism: "system" instead of "individuals"; "jobs" instead of "natural rights"; "planning" instead of "free initiatives".

Looks at how the office of the presidency has changed, argues that the president has become too central to national politics, and suggests ways to restore the constitutional balance.

From the speechwriter and top adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson: A behind-the-scenes history of the most momentous decade in American politics. Richard N. Goodwin entered public service in 1958 as a law clerk for Supreme Court Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter. He left politics ten years later in the aftermath of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. Over the course of one extraordinary decade, Goodwin orchestrated some of the noblest achievements in the history of the US government and bore witness to two of its greatest tragedies. His eloquent and inspirational memoir is one of the most captivating chronicles of those turbulent years ever published. From the Twenty-One quiz-show scandal to the heady days of John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign to President Lyndon Johnson's heroic vote wrangling on behalf of civil rights legislation, Remembering America brings to life the most fascinating figures and events of the era. As a member of the Kennedy administration, Goodwin charted a new course for US relations with Latin America and met in secret with Che Guevara in Uruguay. He wrote Johnson's historic civil rights speech, "We Shall Overcome," in support of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and formulated the concept of the Great Society and its programs, which sought to eradicate poverty and racial injustice. After breaking with Johnson over the president's commitment to the Vietnam War, Goodwin played a pivotal role in bringing antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy to within a few hundred votes of victory in the 1968 New Hampshire primary. Three months later, he was with his good friend Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles the night that the young senator's life--and the progressive movement that had rapidly brought about such significant change--came to a devastating end. Throughout this critical decade, Goodwin held steadfast to the passions and principles that had first led him to public service. Remembering America is a thrilling account of the breathtaking victories and heartbreaking disappointments of the 1960s, and a rousing call to action for readers committed to justice today.

Social Darwinism in American Thought examines the overall influence of Darwin on American social theory and the notable battle waged among thinkers over the implications of evolutionary theory for social thought and political action. Theorists such as Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner adopted the idea of the struggle for existence as justification for the evils--as well as the benefits--of laissez-faire modern industrial society. Others, such as William James and John Dewey, argued that human planning was needed to direct social development and improve on the natural order. Hofstadter's classic study of the ramifications of Darwinism is a major analysis of the social philosophies that animated intellectual movements of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.

An Amazon Best History Book of 2019 "A splendid and beautifully written illustration of the tremendous importance public policy has for the daily lives of ordinary people." —Ryan Cooper, Washington Monthly Over the last generation, the United States has undergone seismic changes. Stable institutions have given way to frictionless transactions, which are celebrated no matter what collateral damage they generate. The concentration of great wealth has coincided with the fraying of social ties and the rise of inequality. How did all this come about? In Transaction Man , Nicholas Lemann explains the United States’—and the world’s—great transformation by examining three remarkable individuals who epitomized and helped create their eras. Adolf Berle, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s chief theorist of the economy, imagined a society dominated by large corporations, which a newly powerful federal government had forced to become benign and stable institutions, contributing to the public good by offering stable employment and generous pensions. By the 1970s, the corporations’ large stockholders grew restive under this regime, and their chief theoretician, Harvard Business School’s Michael Jensen, insisted that firms should maximize shareholder value, whatever the consequences. Today, Silicon Valley titans such as the LinkedIn cofounder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman hope “networks” can reknit our social fabric. Lemann interweaves these fresh and vivid profiles with a history of the Morgan Stanley investment bank from the 1930s through the financial crisis of 2008, while also tracking the rise and fall of a working-class Chicago neighborhood and the family-run car dealerships at its heart. Incisive and sweeping, Transaction Man is the definitive account of the reengineering of America and the enormous impact it has had on us all.

In this book the author researches the nature of the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. In seven succinct chapters followed by a meditation on prospects for change, Benjamin shines a light on one of the weirder, and most important, elements of American foreign policy. What is the origin of this strange alliance between two countries that have very little in common? Why does it persist, and what are its consequences? Why, over a period of decades and across various presidential administrations, has the United States consistently supported a regime shown time and again to be one of the most powerful forces working against American interests? Saudi Arabia is perhaps the single most important source of funds for terrorists worldwide, promoting an extreme interpretation of Islam along with anti-Western sentiment, while brutally repressing non-violent dissidents at home. With extremism spreading across the globe, a reduced U.S. need for Saudi oil, and a thawing of U.S. relations with Iran, the time is right for re-evaluation of America's close ties with the Saudi regime.

"Blending the historical, biographical and political, this wide-ranging "memoir + manifesto" describes how the values of the 1960s are shaping a new progressive majority in 2016 and beyond. Multi-faceted Mark Green--bestselling author, public interest lawyer, elected official--guides us through contemporary American politics as Johnson retaliates against his antiwar work; Nader launches the modern consumer movement; Clinton wins the 1992 New York primary and therefore the nomination; the author debates Castro in Havana on human rights; and Green loses the closest NYC mayoral election in a century to Bloomberg after 9/11 in a perfect storm of money, terrorism, and race. As Public Advocate for New York City, Green is Mayor Giuiliani's bête noir--he exposes the NYPD's racial profiling, kills off Joe Camel, inspires the city's 311 system, and shows how a person who believes in positive, progressive government can make it work for average citizens. Starting with the consequential movements of the 1960s, Bright, Infinite Future tracks how a rising tide of minority and Millennial voters, the GOP's lurch from mainstream to extreme, and the contrast between the disastrous presidency of Bush 43 and the successful ones of Clinton and Obama are leading to a new era of "progressive patriotism" that will culminate in the 2016 presidential election. Full of behind-the-scenes stories about boldfaced names, this will be the 2016 book for liberals looking to Leonard Bernstein's 'bright, infinite future," conservatives who want to know what they're up against, and readers who want to know what it takes and what it's like "in the arena." "--

“The intricacies of family and the complexities of the games they play mingle wonderfully here in a memoir quite unlike any other.”—George Plimpton, author of Truman Capote Katy Lederer grew up on the bucolic campus of an exclusive East Coast boarding school where her father taught English, her mother retreated into crosswords and scotch, and her much older siblings played “grown-up” games like gin rummy and chess. But Katy faced much more than the typical trials of childhood. Within the confines of the Lederer household an unlikely transformation was brewing, one that would turn this darkly intellectual and game-happy group into a family of professional gamblers. Poker Face is Katy Lederer’s perceptive account of her family’s lively history. From the long kitchen table where her mother played what seemed an endless game of solitaire, to the seedy New York bars where her brother first learned to play poker, to the glamorous Bellagio casino in Las Vegas, where her sister and brother wager hundreds of thousands of dollars a night at the tables, Lederer takes us on a tragicomic journey through a world where intelligence and deceit are used equally as currency. Not since Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood has a writer cast such a witty and astringently analytic eye on the demands of growing up. An unflinching exploration of trust and betrayal, competition, suspicion, and unconventional familial love, Poker Face is a testament to the human spirit’s inventiveness when faced with unusually difficult odds.

A narrative thriller about the battle royale surrounding Barack Obama's quest for a second term amid widespread joblessness and one of the most poisonous political climates in American history.

This intensely interesting—and troubling—book is the product of a lifetime of reflection and study of democracy. In it, John Lukacs addresses the questions of how our democracy has changed and why we have become vulnerable to the shallowest possible demagoguery. Lukacs contrasts the political systems, movements, and ideologies that have bedeviled the twentieth century: democracy, Liberalism, nationalism, fascism, Bolshevism, National Socialism, populism. Reflecting on American democracy, Lukacs describes its evolution from the eighteenth century to its current form—a dangerous and possibly irreversible populism. This involves, among other things, the predominance of popular sentiment over what used to be public opinion. This devolution has happened through the gigantic machinery of publicity, substituting propaganda—and entertainment—for knowledge, and ideology for a sense of history. It is a kind of populism that relies on nationalism and militarism to hold society together. Lukacs's observations are original, biting, timely, sure to inspire lively debate about the precarious state of American democracy today.

Jeremi Suri--Nobel Fellow and leading light in the next generation of policy makers--looks to America's history to see both what it has to offer failed states around the world and what it should avoid. Far from being cold imperialists, Americans have earnestly attempted to export their invention of representative government. We have had successes (Reconstruction after the American Civil War, the Philippines, Western Europe) and failures (Vietnam), and we can learn a good deal from both. The framers of the Constitution initiated a policy of cautious nation-building, hoping not to conquer other countries, but to build a world of stable, self-governed societies that would support America's way of life--yet no other country has created more problems for itself and for others by intervening in distant lands and pursuing impractical changes. Suri has mined more than two hundred years of American policy in order to explain the five Ps of nation-building: Partners, Process, Problem-solving, Purpose, and People.--From publisher description.

"From the longtime New York Times reporter, best-selling author, and Pulitzer Prize winner-- an expansive, timely assessment of the state of free speech in America. David Shipler's recent best seller, The Working Poor, cemented his place among our most trenchant social commentators. Now, he turns his keen, illuminating focus to another endangered American ideal: freedom of speech. Through selected accounts of First Amendment invocation and infringement, Shipler maps a rapidly shifting topography of political and cultural norms: parents in Michigan rallying to teachers vilified for their reading lists; conservative ministers risking their churches' tax-exempt status to preach politics from the pulpit; national security reporters using techniques more common in dictatorships to avoid leak prosecution; history teachers in Texas quietly navigating around a conservative curriculum to give students access to unapproved perspectives. Anchored in personal stories--sometimes shocking, sometimes absurd, sometimes dishearteningly familiar--but encompassing a theme as sweeping and essential as democracy itself, Freedom of Speech brilliantly reveals the triumphs and challenges of defining and protecting the boundaries of free expression in modern America"--

Book by Krauthammer, Charles

What does the Right offer to women? How does the Right mobilize women? Why is the Right succeeding in opposing women's rights? With the stark precision and forceful passion that characterize all of her work, Andrea Dworkin answers these timely questions. And by providing the first clear analysis of the impact on women of the Right's position on abortion, homosexuality, anti-Semitism, female poverty, and antifeminism, she demonstrates how the Right attempts both to exploit and to quiet women's deepest fears. --

Business, Political Science, American Studies, Philosophy

Before he was the Academy Award- nominated director of The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich (b. 1939) interviewed some of cinema's great masters: Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, and others. Since becoming an acclaimed filmmaker himself, he has given countless interviews to the press about his own career. This volume collects thirteen of his best, most comprehensive, and most insightful interviews, many long out-of print and several never before published in their entirety. They cover more than forty years of directing, with Bogdanovich talking candidly about his great triumphs, such as The Last Picture Show and What's Up, Doc?, and his overlooked gems, such as Daisy Miller and They All Laughed. Assembled by acclaimed critic Peter Tonguette, also author of a new critical biography of Bogdanovich, these interviews demonstrate that Bogdanovich is not only one of America's finest filmmakers, but also one of its most eloquent when discussing film and his own remarkable movies. Peter Tonguette, New Albany, Ohio, is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Weekly Standard, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, and many other publications. Also the author of Orson Welles Remembered and The Films of James Bridges, he is author of a forthcoming critical biography of Peter Bogdanovich.

A Revealing Profile of the Father of the Atomic Bomb Highly praised by New York Review of Books, The Spectator, Los Angeles Times, Booklist, & More J. Robert Oppenheimer was a puzzle to everyone. The nuclear physicist most responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb, he was a genius both scientifically and otherwise. His standards were impossibly high. He read widely in many languages, wrote poetry, and did superb science. Yet in Jeremy Bernstein's intensely interesting biographical memoir, Oppenheimer emerges as a man unsure of his identity and captive to an element of self-destructiveness in his makeup. Oppenheimer is the long-awaited book that many people feel Mr. Bernstein was almost born to write. As a former colleague of Oppenheimer's, he has composed a book that is both personal and historical, bringing the reader close to the life and workings of an extraordinary and controversial man. Oppenheimer once told the author that during the now-famous hearing in which he lost his security clearance—one of the most spectacular attacks of the McCarthy era—he felt it was happening to someone else. His lawyer at the hearing, after being with Oppenheimer day in and day out for several months, said he did not know him in any real sense at all. Yet everyone in the scientific community and in government agreed that without Oppenheimer's totally remarkable leadership at Los Alamos, the atomic bomb would not have happened, and the Second World War would have ended very differently. Filled with revealing insights and details that set the historical record straight, Oppenheimer is that rare quantity: a vastly entertaining study of one of the most important and enigmatic scientists of the atomic age. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs.

Accessible and impassioned, here is an eye-opening look at the right wing strategy to reverse the gains American women have made over the past 50 years. The War on Choice chronicles the actions being taken at the highest levels of government to turn back the clock on women's rights. With the White House acting in anti-choice lockstep with the majorities in both House and Senate, religious extremists are now in key decision-making posts, our federal judiciary is filled with recent appointees whose values are drastically out of step with the pro-choice sentiments of the majority of the American people, abstinence-only sex education is now the rule, ideology has trumped science in domestic and global health policy, and the Supreme Court balance in favor of reproductive freedoms is perilously close to toppling. But while many of the individual facts are known, no one until now has connected all the dots and drawn the Big Picture that shows exactly how radical and how successful this quiet revolution has been. Judge by judge, law by law, and appointee by appointee, The War on Choice speaks the truth about what is happening, and also tells the stories of some of the women whose lives have been affected by these court decisions and federal policies. A keen analysis of current events, combined with a hands-on plan of action for those who want to raise their voices in protest, this book will be riveting reading. And there is no one better equipped to write about the insidious, step-by step chipping away of rights, or about what we can do to fight back, than Gloria Feldt, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Her thirty years of work with the organization combined with her personal experience - as a woman who came out of the same West Texas political landscape as did George W. Bush but faced a very different economic and social reality as the mother of three children by the age of 20 make her the ideal spokeswoman for those who are alarmed by the current political climate.' This book will be a wake-up call, describing in jaw-dropping detail the story of what the anti-choice movement is doing to the rights to birth control, abortion and privacy.' From the Trade Paperback edition.

Edward Shils's The Torment of Secrecy is one of the few minor classics to emerge from the cold war years of anticommunism and McCarthyism in the United States. Mr. Shils's "torment" is not only that of the individual caught up in loyalty and security procedures; it is also the torment of the accuser and judge. This essay in sociological analysis and political philosophy considers the cold war preoccupation with espionage, sabotage, and subversion at home, assessing the magnitude of such threats and contrasting it to the agitation―by lawmakers, investigators, and administrators―so wildly directed against the "enemy." Mr. Shils's examination of a recurring American characteristic is as timely as ever. "Brief...lucid... brilliant."―American Political Science Review. "A fine, sophisticated analysis of American social metabolism."―New Republic. "An excitingly lucid and intelligent work on a subject of staggering importance...the social preconditions of political democracy."―Social Forces.

An exploration of how gay men and lesbians are abandoned by their families as soon as AIDS enters their lives, and the courageous and unusual ways they lead their lives, despite this loss.