"From the award-winning journalist and best-selling author of America's Bitter Pill: a tour de force examination of 1) how and why major American institutions no longer serve us as they should, causing a deep rift between the vulnerable majority and the protected few, and 2) how some individuals and organizations are laying the foundation for real, lasting change. In this revelatory narrative covering the years 1967 to 2017, Steven Brill gives us a stunningly cogent picture of the broken system at the heart of our society. He shows us how, over the last half-century, America's core values--meritocracy, innovation, due process, free speech, and even democracy itself--have somehow managed to power its decline into dysfunction. They have isolated our best and brightest, whose positions at the top have never been more secure or more remote. The result has been an erosion of responsibility and accountability, an epidemic of shortsightedness, an increasingly hollow economic and political center, and millions of Americans gripped by apathy and hopelessness. By examining the people and forces behind the rise of big-money lobbying, legal and financial engineering, the demise of private-sector unions, and a hamstrung bureaucracy, Brill answers the question on everyone's mind: How did we end up this way? Finally, he introduces us to those working quietly and effectively to repair the damages. At once a diagnosis of our national ills, a history of their development, and a prescription for a brighter future, Tailspin is a work of riveting journalism--and a welcome antidote to political despair"--

Did America's fortieth president lead a conservative counterrevolution that left liberalism gasping for air? The answer, for both his admirers and his detractors, is often "yes." In Morning in America , Gil Troy argues that the Great Communicator was also the Great Conciliator. His pioneering and lively reassessment of Ronald Reagan's legacy takes us through the 1980s in ten year-by-year chapters, integrating the story of the Reagan presidency with stories of the decade's cultural icons and watershed moments-from personalities to popular television shows. One such watershed moment was the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. With the trauma of Vietnam fading, the triumph of America's 1983 invasion of tiny Grenada still fresh, and a reviving economy, Americans geared up for a festival of international harmony that-spurred on by an entertainment-focused news media, corporate sponsors, and the President himself-became a celebration of the good old U.S.A. At the Games' opening, Reagan presided over a thousand-voice choir, a 750-member marching band, and a 90,000-strong teary-eyed audience singing "America the Beautiful!" while waving thousands of flags. Reagan emerges more as happy warrior than angry ideologue, as a big-picture man better at setting America's mood than implementing his program. With a vigorous Democratic opposition, Reagan's own affability, and other limiting factors, the eighties were less counterrevolutionary than many believe. Many sixties' innovations went mainstream, from civil rights to feminism. Reagan fostered a political culture centered on individualism and consumption-finding common ground between the right and the left. Written with verve, Morning in America is both a major new look at one of America's most influential modern-day presidents and the definitive story of a decade that continues to shape our times.

"America is poised to lead the 21st Century, as it led the 20th. That will happen because the country is at a tipping point in the battle for its own renewal, a renewal that will allow America to be exceptional again. Our economy is on the move, fueled by revolutions in energy, immigration, innovation, big data and advanced manufacturing. America's energy independence has set off shockwaves. Just as important are the social transformations that are making the country ever more racially and culturally diverse, younger, a home to immigrants, and the metropolitan centers that foster a rising economic and cultural dynamism. While most other countries struggle profoundly with immigration and religious and racial differences, America's on a path to multicultural identity. Those revolutions in the economy, society and culture and are also producing a new American majority that embraces new values and new politics. Republicans are waging a counter-revolution and that is why America looks gridlocked and why the country is turning to Democrats to take on the country's growing challenges. The economic and social transformations leave people struggling to earn enough and reach the middle class. Families are under stress. Government is corrupted by big money. The American public is demanding the country address the dark side of our progress - and reforms are starting to happen. That is why Democrats will get to lead an era of reform and renewal comparable to the progressive era that mitigated the excesses of the Industrial Revolution. In this incisive book, expert strategist Greenberg draws on years of research and polling to illuminate how America is far from being gridlocked and he articulates a powerful vision of how American politics and America can be renewed"--

"Since 1948, Israel has withstood three full-scale invasions on multiple fronts, bloody wars with Palestinian militias, deadly bombings of its diplomatic missions, and hundreds of terrorist attacks within its territory and against its citizens abroad. This violence has inflicted immense suffering and loss on the people of Israel, but the country has emerged from armed conflict with more territory rather than less, while its permanent preparedness for war has ensured that the full weight of Israeli innovation has been thrown behind the country's military, turning it into the most formidable fighting force in the region. In light of Israel's military prowess, its enemies have opened a new front in their war of annihilation: a full-scale political assault on Israel's legitimacy. The Anti-Israel Agenda reveals how the institutions of greatest moral and political influence including Western governments, the campus, the United Nations, and the Church are being turned against Israel in an effort to isolate and cripple the state until it can no longer defend its interests or its people."--

In 1872, the Qing Empire sent 120 boys to America in the hope that they would unlock the mysteries of Western innovation. They studied at New England's finest schools, befriended luminaries such as Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant, and exchanged ideas with their American peers that would change the course of both nations. But when anti-Chinese fervor forced them back home, the young men faced a new set of obstacles, having to overcome a suspicious imperial court and a culture deeply resistant to change. Filled with colorful characters and vivid historical detail, this book unearths the dramatic stories of these young men who led China at the pivotal moment when it teetered between modernity and tradition.--From publisher description.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has entered its fourth decade, and the values and legacy of the Revolution it was founded upon continue to have profound and contradictory consequences for Iranian life. Despite the repressive power of the current regime the immense creativity of popular cultural practices, that negotiate and resist a repressive system, is a potent and dynamic force. This book draws on the expertise and experience of Iranian and international academics and activists to address diverse areas of social and cultural innovation that are driving change and progress. While religious conservatism remains the creed of the establishment, this volume uncovers an underground world of new technology, media and entertainment that speaks to women seeking a greater public role and a restless younger generation that organises and engages with global trends online.

Takes a thematic and interdisciplinary approach to show that late Elizabethan literary, political, and polemical texts cannot be understood without reference to the succession, and how the issue affected court politics, religious disputes, constitutional innovation, and international relations