"A startling exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Reflecting on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the blockbuster travelling exhibition called "Auschwitz," the Jewish history of the Chinese city of Harbin, and the little known "righteous-gentile" Varian Fry, Dara Horn challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, as emblematic of the worst of evils the world has to offer, and so little respect for Jewish lives, as they continue to unfold in the present. Horn draws upon her own family life -- trying to explain Shakespeare's Shylock to a curious 10-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children's school in New Jersey, the profound and essential perspective offered by traditional religious practice, prayer, and study -- to assert the vitality, complexity and depth of this life against an anti-Semitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise"--Provided by publisher.

"In our current age of hyper-partisan politics, nearly everyone takes sides. This is especially true with regard to the Trump presidency. It has become difficult to have a reasonable discussion about the most controversial president in our recent history. For Trump zealots, their president has not only committed no crimes, he has done nothing wrong. For anti-Trump zealots, nothing Trump has done--even in foreign policy--is good. Everything he has done is wrong, and since it is wrong, it must necessarily be criminal. This deeply undemocratic fallacy--that political sins must be investigated and prosecuted as criminal--is an exceedingly dangerous trend. Hardening positions on both sides has been manifested by increasing demands to criminalize political differences. Both sides scream "lock 'em up" instead of making substantive criticisms of opposing views ... The vibrant center is weakening, with traditional liberalism and conservatism becoming further apart, not just in approach, but in their respect for Constitutional norms that have served us well for more than two centuries. While Donald Trump is not the only cause of this profound division, his election drew it to the surface and made it the dominant paradigm of political debate. Unless we as a nation begin to focus again on what unites us rather than on what divides us, America might not survive the next decade."--Publisher description.

"The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a vast' or gigantic' conspiracy as the "motive force" in historical events...The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms--he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization." --From the book.

A comprehensive look at the decline of the United States offers non-ideological remedies on how to overcome national self-doubt, reclaim optimism, and secure a prosperous future for American citizens.

"If you want to understand not only what happened in 2016, but what's going to happen tomorrow, this book is essential reading. Susan Bordo brings a scholar's rigor and a lioness' heart to this important work." --Paul Begala "Among the best books I've read on the 2016 election . . . the perfect companion to Clinton's What Happened ." --Peter Daou The Destruction of Hillary Clinton is an answer to the question many have been asking: How did an extraordinarily well-qualified, experienced, and admired candidate--whose victory would have been as historic as Barack Obama's--come to be seen as a tool of the establishment, a chronic liar, and a talentless politician? In this masterful narrative of the 2016 campaign year and the events that led up to it, Susan Bordo unpacks the Rights' assault on Clinton and her reputation, the way the left provoked suspicion and indifference among the youth vote, the inescapable presence of James Comey, questions about Russian influence, and the media's malpractice in covering the candidate. Urgent, insightful, and engrossing, The Destruction of Hillary Clinton is an essential guide to understanding the most controversial presidential election in American history.

During the 1930s-40s, the American public favored inaction rather than the rescue of persecuted European Jews. Examines whether this reaction was due to callousness, anti-Jewish prejudice, or lack of access to information. The press, which provided that information and played a major role in White House decision-making, failed to understand the centrality of antisemitism in Nazi ideology and actions, and treated reports of the Holocaust as wartime privation stories, exaggerated by Jewish sources. Elements of the press fostered antisemitism, isolationism, and fear of espionage, contributing to the official decision to deny entry to Jewish refugees.

"While the major conflicts in American history have become all too familiar, America's "small wars" have played an essential but little-appreciated role in the country's growth as a world power. First published in 2002, The Savage Wars of Peace quickly became a key volume in the case for a new policy of interventionism. Max Boot shows how America's smaller actions--such as the recent conflicts in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Afghanistan--have made up the vast majority of our military engagements, and yet our armed forces do little to prepare for these "low intensity conflicts." A compellingly readable history of the forgotten wars that helped promote America's rise in the last two centuries, The Savage Wars of Peace is now updated with new material on the repercussions of America's far-flung imperial actions and the impact of these ventures in American international affairs"--Amazon.com, viewed April 3, 2014.

"Revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking book which demystifies twenty-one of the most widespread myths and beliefs about immigrants and immigrations. In "They Take Our Jobs!" Aviva Chomsky challenges the underlying assumptions that fuel misinformed claims about immigrants, radically altering our notions of citizenship, discrimination, and U.S. history. Since it was first published, many of the same myths about immigration such as "immigrants take American jobs," " immigrants don't pay taxes," and "immigrants increase crime" continue to be perpetuated and used to promote aggressive anti-immigration policies. In a new introduction, Chomsky reflects on the events of the past ten years. She analyzes declining Mexican immigration patterns, illuminates Mexico's little-known Southern Border Program, and assesses Obama's complicated legacy as "deporter-in-chief" which, Chomsky argues, inadvertently laid the groundwork for Trump's anti-immigrant racism"--

'An ambitious and engrossing investigation of the moral legacies which stubbornly refuse to pass' Brendan Simms As the western world struggles with its legacies of racism and colonialism, what can we learn from the past in order to move forward? Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman, who grew up as a white girl in the American South during the civil rights movement, is a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. In clear and gripping prose, she uses this unique perspective to combine philosophical reflection, personal history and conversations with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Through focusing on the particularities of those histories, she provides examples for other nations, whether they are facing resurgent nationalism, ongoing debates over reparations or controversies surrounding historical monuments and the contested memories they evoke. It is necessary reading for all those confronting their own troubled pasts.

PRAISE FOR NOAM CHOMSKY'S OCCUPY AND ZUCCOTTI PARK PRESS: "Having spent so much time thinking about and engaging with social movements, Chomsky is both optimistic about the energy of Occupy and realistic about the challenges it faces. He appreciates the "just do it" ethos and embraces its radical approach to participatory democracy...What makes Chomsky's perspective so interesting, aside from the wealth of his political experience, is the range of his interests. He draws from examples around the world to demonstrate his points. ...It's a big agenda that Occupy has identified, nothing less than a complete renewal of U.S. society and the U.S. role in the world. Chomsky sees not only the radical agenda but also the radical practice of the Occupiers. "Part of what functioning, free communities like the Occupy communities can be working for and spreading to others is just a different way of living, which is not based on maximizing consumer goods, but on maximizing values that are important for life," he concludes in this valuable set of remarks and interviews." --John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus, Pick Review "For decades, Chomsky has been marginalized for his insightful, levelheaded, and accurate observations about how our society functions. In Occupy , Chomsky... sets the record straight. And he's got an answer for everything. "It's necessary," Chomsky warns, "to get out into the country and get people to understand what this is about, and what they can do about it, and what the consequences are of not doing anything about it." Occupy begins with a powerful editor's note from Greg Ruggiero, who comments on 'the heartlessness and inhumanity of the system, ' where 'people's stolen homes are sold off to the highest bidder.' And if it isn't obvious to those who are still asking what the demands of Occupy Wall Street are, Ruggiero puts it plainly: 'Occupy embodies a vision of democracy that is fundamentally antagonistic to the management of society as a corporate-controlled space that funds a political system to serve the wealthy, ignore the poor.' One can only cringe at the thought of what will happen if we continue to ignore the wisdom of Noam Chomsky. He gives a clue in Occupy ...." --The Coffin Factory, The Magazine for People who Love Books Occupy is another vital contribution from Chomsky to the literature of defiance and protest, and a red-hot rallying call to forge a better, more egalitarian future. --Alternet Chomsky advocates intelligent activism by those who see the divorce between public policy and public opinion. He is both optimistic and realistic towards this "first major public response to 30 years of class war." --IRISH TIMES, PICK REVIEW " Occupy , is at once a vivid portrait of the now-global movement and a practical guide to intelligent activism, infused with Chomsky's signature meditations on everything from how the wealthiest 1% came to steer society to what a healthy democracy would look like to how we can separate money from politics. Alongside Chomsky's words are some of the most moving and provocative photographs from the Occupy movement. ... [One of] 10 essential books on protest." --Maria Popova, Brain Pickings In Occupy , Chomsky discusses the cornerstone issues, questions and demands that have been driving ordinary Americans to critique the influence of the 1%. The book begins and ends with Chomsky celebrating the life and work of his longtime friend and colleague, Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States. As a call to action, Chomsky encourages people to continue organizing, to continue struggling, and to continue defending citizenship and community-driven democracy from predation from the relentless encroachments of wealth and corporate power.

Responding to what is perceived as the reemergence of worldwide antisemitism from 1998-99, and especially from 2000, surveys the new outbreak of this spiritual and psychological illness now thriving globally. After discussing the history of Christian antisemitism and modern racism, proceeds to illuminate aspects of antisemitism in America (on the political and religious Right, among Blacks, and in popular culture), as well as Islamic fundamentalism and antisemitism in the Arab press. Clarifies how racists, including antisemites, exploit the Internet. Foxman also relates his experiences as a hidden child during the Holocaust, and his activities as head of the Anti-Defamation League.

Today's antisemitism is difficult to recognize because it does not come dressed in a Nazi uniform and it does not openly proclaim its hatred or fear of Jews. This book looks at the kind of antisemitism which is tolerated or which goes unacknowledged in apparently democratic spaces: trade unions, churches, left-wing and liberal politics, social gatherings of the chattering classes and the seminars and journals of radical intellectuals. It analyses how criticism of Israel can mushroom into antisemitism and it looks at struggles over how antisemitism is defined. It focuses on ways in which those who raise the issue of antisemitism are often accused of doing so in bad faith in an attempt to silence or smear. Hostility to Israel has become a signifier of identity, connected to opposition to imperialism, neo-liberalism and global capitalism; the 'community of the good' takes on toxic ways of imagining most living Jewish people.

While the special relationship of all ethnic and religious minorities in the USA with their old countries and the existence of their pressure groups is regarded as normal, the support given by U.S. Jews to Israel and the pro-Israeli lobby causes some Americans to view the Jews as disloyal to the USA. Examines the "paper" by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, "The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" (first published in 2006 on the Internet and then in the "London Review of Books"; an expanded book appeared later, in 2007). The authors contend that U.S. support of Israel is harmful to American interests, and is due to pressure exerted by a mighty Israel Lobby which acts to the detriment of the state. They argue that the Israel Lobby had a crucial part in the decision to attack Iraq in 2003. Notes that despite the academic style of their paper, Mearsheimer and Walt have revived the myths of a Jewish conspiracy, of Jewish control of the mass media, and of a Jewish secret power. Dwells, also, on the Tony Judt affair. In 2006 Judt, who supported Mearsheimer and Walt, was to deliver a lecture on a binational alternative for Israel. His lecture was cancelled, which he ascribed to pressure by the Anti-Defamation League. Supporters of Mearsheimer and Walt used it as a demonstration of the Israel Lobby's intervention. Criticizes Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" (2006) for its clear anti-Israel bias.

"Immediately after World War II, there was little discussion of the Holocaust, but today the word has grown into a potent political and moral symbol, recognized by all. In Holocaust: An American Understanding, renowned historian Deborah E. Lipstadt explores this striking evolution in Holocaust consciousness, revealing how a broad array of Americans--from students in middle schools to presidents of the United States--tried to make sense of this inexplicable disaster, and how they came to use the Holocaust as a lens to interpret their own history. Lipstadt weaves a powerful narrative that touches on events as varied as the civil rights movement, Vietnam, Stonewall, and the women's movement, as well as controversies over Bitburg, the Rwandan genocide, and the bombing of Kosovo. Drawing upon extensive research on politics, popular culture, student protests, religious debates and various strains of Zionist ideologies, Lipstadt traces how the Holocaust became integral to the fabric of American life. Even popular culture, including such films as Dr. Strangelove and such books as John Hershey's The Wall, was influenced by and in turn influenced thinking about the Holocaust. Equally important, the book shows how Americans used the Holocaust to make sense of what was happening in the United States. Many Americans saw the civil rights movement in light of Nazi oppression, for example, while others feared that American soldiers in Vietnam were destroying a people identified by the government as the enemy. Lipstadt demonstrates that the Holocaust became not just a tragedy to be understood but also a tool for interpreting America and its place in the world. Ultimately Holocaust: An American Understanding tells us as much about America in the years since the end of World War II as it does about the Holocaust itself."--Publisher information

While today the Nazi genocide of Jews is seen as a massacre unique in its savagery and a central feature of World War II, in 1933-45 it was accepted in the USA, and in the Western world in general, as one of the many wartime brutalities, almost understandable and predictable. Political leaders, public opinion, and later the Allied military greeted the first news concerning the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews with disbelief; later, when the facts of the Nazi mass murder of Jews became apparent, they tended to conflate the Nazi victimization of Jews with that of other ethnic groups. There was a tendency to diminish the scope of the genocide and even to see it as, at least partly, deserved by the victims. These views found expression in a commonly shared reluctance to receive Jewish refugees from Nazism. Opinion polls of the late 1930s-early 1940s show that the American public was consistently against any relaxation of immigration restrictions. In Western Europe and the rest of the Americas, sentiments were similar: some countries were ready to admit Poles, Czechs, and other refugees, but not Jews. These sentiments can only partly be ascribed to the economic hardships of the 1930s; their main cause was antisemitism, ethnic opposition to the Jewish alien. In the postwar years, the tendency to silence and trivialize the Holocaust persevered; it was only in the 1960s that public opinion recognized the Holocaust as unique. Argues against Peter Novick's view, according to which Holocaust memory initially fell victim to the Cold War. Contends that, in the 1960s, most people thought that the "Jewish question" was finally solved - by emancipation, assimilation and, last but not least, by the Nazi mass murder.

"In this major intellectual history, Ira Katznelson examines the works of Hannah Arendt, Robert Dahl, Richard Hofstadter, Harold Lasswell, Charles Lindblom, Karl Polanyi, and David Truman, detailing their engagement with the larger project of reclaiming the West's moral bearing"--

"In this major intellectual history, Ira Katznelson examines the works of Hannah Arendt, Robert Dahl, Richard Hofstadter, Harold Lasswell, Charles Lindblom, Karl Polanyi, and David Truman, detailing their engagement with the larger project of reclaiming the West's moral bearing"--

Reflects on the interrelationship between war, genocide, and identity in the 20th century. Contends that World War I provided a pattern for the industrial killing that reached its apex in the Nazi Holocaust. Comparing France and Germany, both of which looked for an "elusive enemy" to help them cope with the trauma of World War I, notes that Germany found it in the Jews. This perception allowed the Germans to see themselves as victims and their actions against the Jews as self-defense. The search for "elusive enemies" (to blame for perpetrating the genocide) and "elusive victims" (e.g. the French or German people) continued after the war. Compares the French, German, and Jewish postwar discourses of the Holocaust. Presenting themselves as the main victims of Nazism, the French and Germans have tended to neglect Jews as the main victims. Criticizes writings by Hannah Arendt, Ka-Tzetnik, and some other postwar writers on the Holocaust and its roots.

Those who analyze public opinion have long contended that the average citizen is incapable of recounting consistently even the most rudimentary facts about current politics; that the little the average person does know is taken at face value from the media reports, and that the consequence is a polity that is ill-prepared for democratic governance. Yet social movements, comprised by and large of average citizens who have become exercised about particular issues, have been a prominent feature of the American political scene throughout American history and they are experiencing a resurgence in recent years. William Gamson asks the question, how is it that so many people become active in movements if people are so generally uninterested and badly informed about issues? The conclusion he reaches in this book is a striking refutation of the common wisdom about the public's ability to reason about politics. Rather than relying on survey data, as so many studies of public opinion do, Gamson reports on his analysis of discussions among small groups of working-class people on four controversial issues: affirmative action, nuclear power, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the troubles in American industry. Excerpts from many of these discussions are transcribed in the book.--Provided by publisher.

In 1992, most pundits accepted the famous line of the Clinton campaign that the election was about "the economy, stupid". But in 1994, with the economy flourishing, voters dumped the Democrats. What happened? Why? What is likely to happen next? Ben Wattenberg answers with Values Matter Most, a book that is, at once, a fascinating and lively inside political story, a nuanced portrait of America in the mid-nineties, and a stark political thesis. In the controversial 1970 bestseller The Real Majority, Wattenberg and Richard Scammon argued that "the social issue" - now often called "values" - including crime, welfare, race, discipline, drugs, promiscuity and prayer - had suddenly become coequal with economics as the key to voter behavior. They warned Democrats to pay attention, or they would lose. They didn't, and they did. Now, after 25 years of social deterioration in America, Wattenberg dramatically advances the argument. He says that the concern about values has become the number one issue, and properly so. Wattenberg vividly narrates the history of the values issue in American politics. He says that whichever party and candidates now best understand the social concerns of a restless electorate, and act upon these issues, will be rewarded in national, state, and local elections in 1996 and beyond. He caps his analysis with strategy lessons for Republicans, Democrats, and potential third (or even fourth or fifth) party candidates.