"This is a collection of Norman Podhoretz's essays of the past fifty years. Organized by decade, these essays also add up to a running history of American literature and intellectual life in the second half of the twentieth century. From Vladimir Nabokov to Saul Bellow, from Ralph Ellison to Norman Mailer, from Hannah Arendt to Henry Kissinger, Podhoretz has dealt with the most important novelists and thinkers of the period. He has also turned his attention to such major European figures as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell, and Isaiah Berlin, and his trenchant appraisals of both Americans and Europeans are as fresh and lively today as when they first appeared. Many of them have been unavailable for years, and will prove revelatory for first-time readers and longtime admirers alike." "Intertwined with the literary essays, The Norman Podhoretz Reader offers some of the best and most influential political essays written by anyone in our time. Through such classics as "My Negro Problem - and Ours," his famous reassessments in Why We Were in Vietnam, and his retrospective look at neoconservatism (of which he was one of the founding fathers), Podhoretz has led and changed opinion throughout his career."--Jacket.

Written by one of American theater's most avid and knowledgeable proponents, "No Legs, No Jokes, No Chance" traces the American musical from its rich and varied beginnings in European opera, American minstrel shows, and vaudeville through its many permutations to its current state--from, as Sheldon Patinkin puts it, La Boheme to Rent . Minstrelsy, burlesque, revue, dance, and choreographers, the "texts" of musical theater so often overlooked by its historians, finally receive due consideration in this thorough and thoroughly entertaining book about how American musical theater came to be and developed into what it is today. Patinkin writes about the infancy of the musical--the revues, operettas, and early musical comedies, as well as the groundbreaking shows like Oklahoma !, and Show Boat that brought the form to its "golden age" during World War II. With insightful references to how history, literature, theater, fashion, popular music, and movies influenced musical theater generally and certain shows in particular, he traces a direct lineage from older forms to contemporary musicals. The result is a broad, clear, and detailed picture of American musicals within both an aesthetic and a historical context. Patinkin conveys the pleasure of the ever-changing forms of musical theater even as he gives readers the analytical tools and terms to understand and better appreciate this uniquely American art. The book features a selection of black and white photographs from historical musical productions, and each chapter includes suggestions for materials to watch and listen to at home or in the classroom.

In the wake of 9/11, America and its people have experienced a sense of vulnerability unprecedented in the nation's recent history. Buffeted by challenges from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the financial crisis, from Washington dysfunction to the rise of China and the dawn of the era of cyber warfare, two very different presidents and their advisors have struggled to cope with a relentless array of new threats. You may think you know the story. But in National Insecurity, David Rothkopf offers an entirely new perspective into the hidden struggles, the surprising triumphs, and the shocking failures of those charged with leading the United States through one of the most difficult periods in its history. Thanks to his extraordinary access, Rothkopf provides fresh insights drawing on more than one hundred exclusive interviews with the key players who shaped this era. At its core, National Insecurity is the gripping story of a superpower in crisis, seeking to adapt to a rapidly changing world, sometimes showing inspiring resilience -- but often undone by the human flaws of those at the top, the mismanagement of its own system, the temptation to concentrate too much power within the hands of too few in the White House itself, and an unwillingness to draw the right lessons from the recent past. Nonetheless, within that story are unmistakable clues to a way forward that can help restore American leadership.

Dive into a compelling work of literary criticism with "Drug themes in science fiction" by the esteemed Robert Silverberg. This authoritative volume offers a meticulous exploration and comprehensive bibliography of drug-related themes across speculative fiction. Silverberg, a master of the genre, insightfully examines the diverse ways drugs-real and imagined-have been portrayed within American and English science fiction. From their roles in societal commentary to their impact on individual characters and narrative progression, this book uncovers the profound and often complex presence of psychoactive substances in literary imagination. It serves as both a critical analysis of recurring motifs and an invaluable reference for anyone researching the genre. For readers captivated by literary themes, the history of science fiction, or the enduring dialogue between human experience and altered states of consciousness, "Drug themes in science fiction" provides an essential, detailed, and timeless perspective on a fascinating corner of literature. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

From a brilliant and witty comic book aficionado, this “scholarly but lively narrative” ( Kirkus Reviews ) reveals the links between Jews and the iconic superheroes of Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby. Many of us know that the superheroes at the heart of the American comic book industry were created by Jews. But you’d be surprised to learn how much these beloved characters were shaped by the cultural and religious traditions of their makers. Superman Is Jewish? follows the “people of the book” as they become the people of the comic book. With great wit and compelling arguments, Harry Brod situates superheroes within the course of Jewish-American history: they are aliens in a foreign land, like Superman; figures plagued by guilt for abandoning their families, like Spider-Man; and outsiders persecuted for being different, like the X-Men. Brod blends humor and sharp observation as he considers the overt and discreet Jewish characteristics of these well-known figures and explores how their creators integrated their Jewish identities and their creativity. Captivating, poignant, and packed with historical insights, this guided tour travels from the Passover Haggadah’s exciting action scenes of Moses’s superpowers through the Yiddish humor of Mad magazine to two Pulitzer Prizes awarded in one decade to Jewish comic book guys Art Spiegelman and Michael Chabon. “A witty, insightful exposé” ( Publisher’s Weekly ), Superman Is Jewish? is an endlessly fascinating American saga about an immigrant group that used comic books to see itself in new, empowering—and laughable—ways. You don’t even have to be Jewish to get a kick out of it.

This enthralling book begins in the vast forests of Cyprus, whose wood fuelled the ancient Mediterranean, and extends through the Elizabethan era, in which the Hostmen guild of Newcastle exerted political influence by monopolizing the British coal supply. The central thread of this well-researched book, which draws upon a vast array of archival sources and an extensive list of secondary texts, picks up centuries later with the competition in the American automotive market between electric power and oil-fuelled internal combustion. The definitive blow in favour of oil comes with WWI, which prompted increased demand for gas-powered vehicles at the very moment Thomas Edison and Henry Ford aborted plans to develop an affordable electric car. The decades-long "General Motors conspiracy" solidifies the demise of electrically powered mass transit in American cities. Through it all, the author manages to keep this complex history compelling. By the time the author makes his final, impassioned plea for a bold new solution to the world's energy crisis, he has already made his case with devastating clarity.

"Ho Chi Minh was not always an enemy of the United States. There was a time near the close of World War II when American agents of Wild Bill Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, lived with Ho Chi Minh, trained and armed his Vietminh cadres. One of them, a medic, saved his life. This novel, based on those OSS operations, unfolds as the United States is poised at a fatal crossroads-to pursue President Roosevelt's vision of a trusteeship for Indochina leading to independence or allow France to resume its colonial control. On a secret mission to realize Roosevelt's vision, Travis Duncan, a special agent of the OSS, undertakes a perilous journey across the China border, eluding bandits and Japanese patrols, to Ho Chi Minh's jungle camp. Duncan is witness in North and South Vietnam to the brutality of the no-holds struggle between Vietnamese nationalists and the French for control of the country. Two women out of Duncan's past become key actors in his mission, one, an aide to Ho Chi Minh, and the other, a Gaullist agent. The reader will recognize the historical characters in this novel; the other characters are based on real individuals or are fictional personages. They speak to a lost opportunity in dealing with Ho Chi Minh and the French at a turning point in history that might have spared America the agony of the Vietnam War."--Publisher's website.

As Turtledove's brilliant series The Great War came to its end, the United States of America, in alliance with Germany, had defeated Great Britain, France and the Confederate States of America in a bloody conflict known as the first World War. As the 1920s begin, though, the seeds of a new conflict have alredy been sown. The United States, led by Theodore Roosevelt, swings wildly towards socialism. In Canada - now a US colony - nationalist s strike against the new American oppressors. But it is in the Confederacy, trapped in a ruinous economic depression, where fascism begins to spread, and the fires are fanned by a charismatic leader who may again plunge the world into war. 'The wizard of If.' Chicago Sun-Times 'The standard-bearer for alternate history.' USA Today

Frances Fox Piven, one of the country's most celebrated social scientists, raises questions others have not. She examines the ways the war on terror served to shore up the Bush administration's political base and analyzes the manner in which flag-waving politicians used the emotional fog of war to further their regressive social and economic agendas. Always in the past governments that made war sooner or later tried to reward their peoples for the blood and wealth they were forced to sacrifice. During World War II, tax rates on the wealthy rose to 90 percent; toward the end of the Vietnam War, eighteen-year-olds were given the right to vote. In this war, taxes on the rich have been slashed, and democratic rights are being rolled back. Even veteran's benefits have been sharply reduced. The War at Home makes sense of these developments by putting the current domestic fallout of war in the context of history - and by turning an unsentimental eye on the domestic motivations of American militarism.

Leaders in War present unique first-person perspectives across the spectrum of American combat operations during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. From division commanders to platoon leaders, the authors deliver an insider's view of tough leadership challenges, tragic failures, and triumphant victories. Leaders in War captures the essence of the post-Cold War US Army: how an all-volunteer army, equipped with new weapons systems and adjusting to new battle doctrine, mounted one of history's most successful military campaigns. Described here are the details of the tremendous logistical challenges, innovations in intelligence, ground combat operations from platoon to division, and a wide range of combat support operations. Leaders in War focuses not just on the successes, but on the failures as well, in operations ranging from violent tank battles against the vaunted Iraqi Republican Guard to train-and-fill operations thousands of miles away. Leaders in War illustrates how US Army leaders adapted to the psychological strains of combat, the fog of war, unforeseeable challenges, and the fury of tank warfare during the Persian Gulf War.

A significant and extensive book on a major new body of work by the American artist Taryn Simon. Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, I-XVIII was produced over a four-year period (2008-2011), during which Simon travelled the world researching and recording bloodlines and their related stories. In each of the eighteen "chapters" that make up the work, the external forces of territory, power, circumstance, or religion collide with the internal forces of psychological and physical inheritance. Her subjects feuding families in Brazil, victims of genocide in Bosnia, the first woman to hijack an aircraft, and the living dead in India. Her collection is at once cohesive and arbitrary, mapping the relationships among chance, blood, and other components of fate. This volume accompanies the exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (May 2011), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (September 2011), and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (May-September 2012).

This is a fascinating portrait of Miami's Cuban population, the most successful group of immigrants to settle in the United States since the Jews of the nineteenth century. David Rieff has provided an engrossing look at a group exiled from its homeland, showing how America has affected these immigrants, and what it means to become an American in the late twentieth century.

"It is the waning days of the Russian monarchy. A reckless man rules the land and his dragons rule the sky. Though the Tsar aims his dragons at his enemies--Jews and Bolsheviks--his entire country is catching fire. Conspiracies suffuse the royal court: bureaucrats jostle one another for power, the mad monk Rasputin schemes for the Tsar's ear, and the desperate queen takes drastic measures to protect her family."-- Back cover.

Fiorello LaGuardia is known best as the tempestuous mayor of New York City in the days when Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat in the White House. There had been, however, an earlier time, which matched his mayoralty years in sheer drama and perhaps surpassed them in lasting achievement-LaGuardia's years in Congress. He served in the House of Representative almost continuously from 1917 to 1933, representing two ethnically diverse congressional districts: the Fourteenth (Greenwich Village), from 1917 to 1919, and the Twentieth (East Harlem), from 1923 to 1933. Although barred from important committee posts because of his political independence and thus denied from playing a direct role in lawmaking, he was a tireless and vocal champion of Progressive causes, from allowing more immigration and removing U.S. troops from Nicaragua to speaking up for the rights and livelihoods of striking miners, impoverished farmers, oppressed minorities, and struggling families. A goad to the era's plutocrats and their enablers in government, LaGuardia fought for progressive income taxes, greater government oversight of Wall Street, and national employment insurance for workers idled by the Great Depression. In this book, first published by Cornell University Press in 1959, Howard Zinn establishes LaGuardia's tenure in Congress as a vital link between the Progressive and New Deal eras, offering a lively and informative account of his many legislative battles, his political philosophy, and the distinctly urban (specifically, New York City) sensibilities he brought to the Progressive movement.

The all-encompassing embrace of world capitalism at the beginning of the twenty-first century was generally attributed to the superiority of competitive markets. Globalization had appeared to be the natural outcome of this unstoppable process. But today, with global markets roiling and increasingly reliant on state intervention to stay afloat, it has become clear that markets and states aren’t straightforwardly opposing forces. In this groundbreaking work, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin demonstrate the intimate relationship between modern capitalism and the American state, including its role as an “informal empire” promoting free trade and capital movements. Through a powerful historical survey, they show how the US has superintended the restructuring of other states in favor of competitive markets and coordinated the management of increasingly frequent financial crises. The Making of Global Capitalism , through its highly original analysis of the first great economic crisis of the twenty-first century, identifies the centrality of the social conflicts that occur within states rather than between them. These emerging fault lines hold out the possibility of new political movements transforming nation states and transcending global markets.

The author provides remarkable insight into the early development of organised Jewish life in the United States. this is a comprehensive, authoritative work about a Long-Neglected but Central figure of 19th century American Jewish

While women's experience encompasses all that is human, while women have participated in history and the making of history through all time, until very recently they have been largely excluded from the writing of that history. Most of what we know of the past experience of women comes to us largely through the distorting lens of men's reflections and observations. In the now classic The Female Experience, Gerda Lerner describes history as seen by women, as colored by their values. What she creates is fascinating narrative of the lives and history of ordinary women, a book that provides a new framework for the study of their past experience. If women's history is now a healthy and ever-growing discipline, we have in a large part this award-winning author to thank. Avoiding the traditional chronological periods by which U.S. history is most often studied, Lerner groups her sources--many taken from manuscripts previously unknown, and others only available in research libraries--according to the lifecycle of women, their roles in a male-defined society, in the workplace, in politics, and finally in the contemporary world where feminism is creating an altogether new consciousness. From "runaway wives" in eighteenth-century America, through an anonymous account of a mother's death during childbirth, to appeals in our century for freedom of sexual preference, The Female Experience recounts history from the woman's point of view, and goes a long way toward reconstructing a female past and analyzing it with appropriate concepts. In the general introduction and chapter essays Lerner offers commentary that not only knits these disparate primary sources together, but also interprets them in an innovative way. Now brought up to date with a new preface, The Female Experience is a book that pulses with life, a stunning testament not only to the long-ignored role of women in society, but a pioneering effort to reinvent the way we look at history.

Is American vision implicitly possessive, as a generation of critics contends? By viewing the American poetic tradition through the prism of pragmatism, Elisa New contests this claim. A new reading of how poetry "sees," her work is a passionate defense of the power of the poem, the ethics of perception, and the broader possibilities of American sight. American poems see more fully, and less invasively, than accounts of American literature as an inscription of imperial national ideology would allow. Moreover, New argues, their ways of seeing draw on, and develop, a vigorous mode of national representation alternative to the appropriative sort found in the quintessential American genre of encounter, the romance. Grounding her readings of Dickinson, Frost, Moore, and Williams in foundational texts by Edwards, Jefferson, Audubon, and Thoreau, New shows how varieties of attentiveness and solicitude cultivated in the early literature are realized in later poetry. She then discloses how these ideas infuse the philosophical notions about pragmatic experience codified by Emerson, James, and Dewey. As these philosophers insisted, and as New's readings prove, art is where the experience of experience can be had: to read, as to write, a poem is to let the line guide one's way.

A real-life thriller about a CIA contractor who vanished in Iran and the international manhunt to find him In late 2013, Americans were shocked to learn that a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran in 2007 was there on a mission for the CIA. The missing man, Robert Levinson, appeared in pictures dressed like a Guantánamo prisoner and pleaded in a video for help from the United States. Barry Meier, an award-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times , draws on years of interviews and never-before-disclosed CIA files to weave together a riveting narrative of the ex-agent’s journey to Iran and the hunt to rescue him. The result is an extraordinary tale about the shadowlands between crime, business, espionage, and the law, where secrets are currency and betrayal is commonplace. Its colorful cast includes CIA operatives, Russian oligarchs, arms dealers, White House officials, gangsters, private eyes, FBI agents, journalists, and a fugitive American terrorist and assassin. Missing Man is a fast-paced story that moves through exotic locales and is set against the backdrop of the twilight war between the United States and Iran, one in which hostages are used as political pawns. Filled with stunning revelations, it chronicles a family’s ongoing search for answers and one man’s desperate struggle to keep his hand in the game.

The author analyzes the ongoing debate between exclusivists such as Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey, and Peter Eisenman and inclusivists whom he sees as representatives of the first generation of post-moderist architects in America.