Listing every right that a constitution should protect is hard. American constitution drafters often list a few famous rights such as freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and free exercise of religion, plus a handful of others. However, we do not need to enumerate every liberty because there is another way to protect them: an "etcetera clause." It states that there are other rights beyond those specifically listed: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Yet scholars are divided on whether the Ninth Amendment itself actually does protect unenumerated rights, and the Supreme Court has almost entirely ignored it. Regardless of what the Ninth Amendment means, two-thirds of state constitutions have equivalent provisions, or "Baby Ninth Amendments," worded similarly to the Ninth Amendment.

This book is the story of how the "Baby Ninths" came to be and what they mean. Unlike the controversy surrounding the Ninth Amendment, the meaning of the Baby Ninths is straightforward: they protect individual rights that are not otherwise enumerated. They are an "etcetera, etcetera" at the end of a bill of rights. This book argues that state judges should do their duty and live up to their own constitutions to protect the rights "retained by the people" that these "etcetera clauses" are designed to guarantee. The fact that Americans have adopted these provisions so many times in so many states demonstrates that unenumerated rights are not only protected by state constitutions, but that they are popular. Unenumerated rights are not a weird exception to American constitutional law. They are at the center of it. We should start treating constitutions accordingly.

Listing every right that a constitution should protect is hard. American constitution drafters often list a few famous rights such as freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and free exercise of religion, plus a handful of others. However, we do not need to enumerate every liberty because there is another way to protect them: an "etcetera clause." It states that there are other rights beyond those specifically listed: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Yet scholars are divided on whether the Ninth Amendment itself actually does protect unenumerated rights, and the Supreme Court has almost entirely ignored it. Regardless of what the Ninth Amendment means, two-thirds of state constitutions have equivalent provisions, or "Baby Ninth Amendments," worded similarly to the Ninth Amendment.

This book is the story of how the "Baby Ninths" came to be and what they mean. Unlike the controversy surrounding the Ninth Amendment, the meaning of the Baby Ninths is straightforward: they protect individual rights that are not otherwise enumerated. They are an "etcetera, etcetera" at the end of a bill of rights. This book argues that state judges should do their duty and live up to their own constitutions to protect the rights "retained by the people" that these "etcetera clauses" are designed to guarantee. The fact that Americans have adopted these provisions so many times in so many states demonstrates that unenumerated rights are not only protected by state constitutions, but that they are popular. Unenumerated rights are not a weird exception to American constitutional law. They are at the center of it. We should start treating constitutions accordingly.

"Robert A. Slayton's Back of the Yards is one of the finest accounts I have ever read on an urban, working-class neighborhood in twentieth-century America. Its focus on family, politics, and worklife is penetrating and its conclusions reinforce an emerging scholarly picture of ordinary people exercising unique forms of power."—John Bodnar, author of The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America

Across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, urban farmers and gardeners are reclaiming cultural traditions linked to food, farming, and health; challenging systemic racism and injustice in the food system; demanding greater community control of resources in marginalized neighborhoods; and moving towards their visions of more equitable urban futures. As part of this urgent work, urban farmers and gardeners encounter and reckon with both the cultural meanings and material legacies of the past. Drawing on their narratives, Back to the Roots demonstrates that urban agriculture is a critical domain for explorations of, and challenges to, the long standing inequalities that shape both the materiality of cities and the bodies of their inhabitants.
 

Even today, in an era of cheap travel and constant connection, the image of young people backpacking across Europe remains seductively romantic. In Backpack Ambassadors, Richard Ivan Jobs tells the story of backpacking in Europe in its heyday, the decades after World War II, revealing that these footloose young people were doing more than just exploring for themselves. Rather, with each step, each border crossing, each friendship, they were quietly helping knit the continent together.
            From the Berlin Wall to the beaches of Spain, the Spanish Steps in Rome to the Pudding Shop in Istanbul, Jobs tells the stories of backpackers whose personal desire for freedom of movement brought the people and places of Europe into ever-closer contact. As greater and greater numbers of young people trekked around the continent, and a truly international youth culture began to emerge, the result was a Europe that, even in the midst of Cold War tensions, found its people more and more connected, their lives more and more integrated. Drawing on archival work in eight countries and five languages, and featuring trenchant commentary on the relevance of this period for contemporary concerns about borders and migration, Backpack Ambassadors brilliantly recreates a movement that was far more influential and important than its footsore travelers could ever have realized.

Jointly written by five leading voices on the topic, this book looks at the contentious issue of antisemitism in the Labour Party today, and sets out ways of addressing the problem while maintaining the integrity of the organisation. The first part of the book includes original material on public beliefs about antisemitism in the Labour Party, and the kinds of problems this poses regarding voting intentions and demoralization of the membership. The writers then investigate the institutional problems and policy decisions that prevented a coherent and well-planned response from the party, and how Labour can rectify this today. The book progresses to explore in depth the coverage of the issue in mainstream media outlets, and the partial accounts presented to the public. The writers focus on the debates around the IHRA definition, and the accusations made against David Miller which were eventually dismissed and set an important precedent. At the end of the book, Mike Berry provides a helpful chronological account of the arguments surrounding this issue from the beginning of Corbyn's leadership to the present.

Badiou and Politics offers a much-anticipated interpretation of the work of the influential French philosopher Alain Badiou. Countering ideas of the philosopher as a dogmatic, absolutist, or even mystical thinker enthralled by the force of the event as a radical break, Bruno Bosteels reveals Badiou’s deep and ongoing investment in the dialectic. Bosteels draws on all of Badiou’s writings, from the philosopher’s student days in the 1960s to the present, as well as on Badiou’s exchanges with other thinkers, from his avowed “masters” Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, to interlocutors including Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek, Daniel Bensaïd, Jacques Derrida, Ernesto Laclau, and Judith Butler. Bosteels tracks the philosopher’s political activities from the events of May 1968 through his embrace of Maoism and the work he has done since the 1980s, helping to mobilize France’s illegal immigrants or sans-papiers. Ultimately, Bosteels argues for understanding Badiou’s thought as a revival of dialectical materialism, and he illuminates the philosopher’s understanding of the task of theory: to define a conceptual space for thinking emancipatory politics in the present.

Drawing on perspectives from anthropology and social theory, this book explores the quotidian routines of debt collection in nineteenth-century capitalism. It focuses on Switzerland, an exemplary case of liberal rule. Debt collection and bankruptcy relied on received practices until they were standardized in a Swiss federal law in 1889. The vast array of these practices was summarized by the idiomatic Swiss legal term “Rechtstrieb” (literally, “law drive”). Analyzing these forms of summary justice opens a window to the makeshift economies and the contested political imaginaries of nineteenth-century everyday life. Ultimately, the book advances an empirically grounded and theoretically informed history of quotidian legal practices in the everyday economy; it is an argument for studying capitalism from the bottom up.

We’ve never done anything big in this country without little banks. Yet the number of community banks in the US has been steadily declining for decades, giving way to big banks that have little connection to the communities they claim to serve. The massive, unprecedented shift toward such a highly concentrated banking sector has weakened our ability to take action at a community level and leaves many people, especially those who have been historically marginalized, without access to capital.
 
In The Banks We Deserve, journalist Oscar Perry Abello argues that community banking has a crucial role to play in addressing urgent social challenges, from creating a more racially just economy to preparing for a changing climate. At their best, community banks unleash the agency and aspirations of the communities that establish them.
Abello challenges people working on racial justice, community development, or addressing climate change to start more community banks or credit unions as part of their work, while also calling for policies and regulatory reforms that will help tilt the landscape back in favor of community banking.

The Banks We Deserve tells the stories of new community banks — like Adelphi Bank, in Columbus, Ohio, the first new Black bank in 20 years; or Walden Mutual Bank in Concord, New Hampshire, the first new mutual bank since 1973 and the first chartered specifically to finance a more sustainable food system; or Climate First Bank, in St. Petersburg, Florida, which has grown exponentially since opening for business in 2021. He hopes these stories inspire others to take some of these same daunting-but-not-impossible steps.

For a community or industry that is being ignored by big banks, the idea of starting up a new bank or credit union rarely figures as an option. In The Banks We Deserve, Abello shows advocates, organizers, and innovators that it can be done, that it is being done, and describes a path to support more community banks and credit unions.
 

An active blogger on The Zeleza Post, from which these essays are drawn, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza provides a genuinely critical engagement with Africa’s multiple worlds. With a blend of erudition and lively style, Zeleza writes about the role ofAfrica and Africans in the world and the interaction of the world with Africa.

In the title essay, Zeleza analyzes the significance of the election of a member of the African diaspora to the presidency of the United States. He also addresses Africa’s urgent political concerns: China’s role in Africa, South Africa's difficulties in making the transition to a postapartheid society, the agony of Zimbabwe, and a discussion of Pan-Africanism, its history and contemporary challenges. Other posts introduce the reader to the rhythms of daily life, including football and other leisure activities, in capturing the different aspects of Africa.

An original and respected voice, Zeleza engages the reader in a series of passionate public conversations on issues and events of utmost importance to the globalized world. He deserves a wide readership.

"White's Barack Obama's America eloquently captures both the important nuances of the current political scene and its long-term consequences."
---Richard Wirthlin, former pollster for Ronald Reagan

"This delightfully written and accessible book is the best available account of the changes in culture, society, and politics that have given us Barack Obama's America."
---Stan Greenberg, pollster for Bill Clinton and Chairman and CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research

"From one of the nation's foremost experts on how values shape our politics, a clear and compelling account of the dramatic shifts in social attitudes that are transforming American political culture. White's masterful blend of narrative and data illuminates the arc of electoral history from Reagan to Obama, making a powerful case for why we are entering a new progressive political era."
---Matthew R. Kerbel, Professor of Political Science, Villanova University, and author of Netroots

"John Kenneth White is bold. He asks the big questions . . . Who are we? What do we claim to believe? How do we actually live? What are our politics? John Kenneth White writes compellingly about religion and the role it played in making Barack Obama president. White's keen insight into America's many faiths clarifies why Barack Obama succeeded against all odds. It is a fascinating description of religion and politics in twenty-first-century America---a must-read."
---Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland and author of Failing America's Faithful

"In Barack Obama's America, John Kenneth White has written the political equivalent of Baedeker or Michelin, the definitive guide to and through the new, uncharted political landscape of our world. White captures and explains what America means---and what it means to be an American---in the twenty-first century."
---Mark Shields, nationally syndicated columnist and political commentator for PBS NewsHour

"John White has always caught important trends in American politics that others missed. With his shrewd analysis of why Barack Obama won, he's done it again."
---E. J. Dionne, Jr., Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, and University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency marks a conclusive end to the Reagan era, writes John Kenneth White in Barack Obama's America. Reagan symbolized a 1950s and 1960s America, largely white and suburban, with married couples and kids at home, who attended church more often than not.

Obama's election marks a new era, the author writes. Whites will be a minority by 2042. Marriage is at an all-time low. Cohabitation has increased from a half-million couples in 1960 to more than 5 million in 2000 to even more this year. Gay marriages and civil unions are redefining what it means to be a family. And organized religions are suffering, even as Americans continue to think of themselves as a religious people. Obama's inauguration was a defining moment in the political destiny of this country, based largely on demographic shifts, as described in Barack Obama's America.

John Kenneth White is Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Cover image: "Out of many, we are one: Dare to Hope: Faces from 2008 Obama Rallies" by Anne C. Savage, view and buy full image at http://revolutionaryviews.com/obama_poster.html.

The definitive history of an iconic American food, with new chapters, sidebars, and updated historical accounts

The full story of barbecue in the United States had been virtually untold before Robert F. Moss revealed its long, rich history in his 2010 book Barbecue: The History of an American Institution. Moss researched hundreds of sources—newspapers, letters, journals, diaries, and travel narratives—to document the evolution of barbecue from its origins among Native Americans to its present status as an icon of American culture. He mapped out the development of the rich array of regional barbecue styles, chronicled the rise of barbecue restaurants, and profiled the famed pitmasters who made the tradition what it is today.

Barbecue is the story not just of a dish but also of a social institution that helped shape many regional cultures of the United States. The history begins with British colonists’ adoption of barbecuing techniques from Native Americans in the 17th and 18th centuries, moves to barbecue’s establishment as the preeminent form of public celebration in the 19th century, and is carried through to barbecue’s ubiquitous standing today.

From the very beginning, barbecues were powerful social magnets, drawing together people from a wide range of classes and geographic backgrounds. Barbecue played a key role in three centuries of American history, both reflecting and influencing the direction of an evolving society. By tracing the story of barbecue from its origins to today, Barbecue: The History of an American Institution traces the very thread of American social history.

Moss has made significant updates in this new edition, offering a wealth of new historical research, sources, illustrations, and anecdotes.
 

“In this eye-opening debut study, Frerick, an agricultural policy fellow at Yale University, reveals the ill-gained stranglehold that a handful of companies have on America’s food economy…It’s a disquieting critique of private monopolization of public necessities.” --Publishers Weekly, starred

Barons is the story of seven corporate titans, their rise to power, and the consequences for everyone else. Take Mike McCloskey, Chairman of Fair Oaks Farms. In a few short decades, he went from managing a modest dairy herd to running the Disneyland of agriculture, where school children ride trams through mechanized warehouses filled with tens of thousands of cows that never see the light of day. What was the key to his success? Hard work and exceptional business savvy? Maybe. But more than anything else, Mike benefitted from deregulation of the American food industry, a phenomenon that has consolidated wealth in the hands of select tycoons, and along the way, hollowed out the nation’s rural towns and local businesses.

Along with Mike McCloskey, readers will meet a secretive German family that took over the global coffee industry in less than a decade, relying on wealth traced back to the Nazis to gobble up countless independent roasters. They will discover how a small grain business transformed itself into an empire bigger than Koch Industries, with ample help from taxpayer dollars. And they will learn that in the food business, crime really does pay—especially when you can bribe and then double-cross the president of Brazil.

These, and the other stories in this book, are simply examples of the monopolies and ubiquitous corruption that today define American food. The tycoons profiled in these pages are hardly unique: many other companies have manipulated our lax laws and failed policies for their own benefit, to the detriment of our neighborhoods, livelihoods, and our democracy itself. Barons paints a stark portrait of the consequences of corporate consolidation, but it also shows we can choose a different path. A fair, healthy, and prosperous food industry is possible—if we take back power from the barons who have robbed us of it.

According to political theory, the primary function of the modern state is to protect its citizens—both from each other and from external enemies. Yet it is the states that essentially commit major forms of violence, such as genocides, ethnic cleansings, and large-scale massacres, against their own citizens. In this book Paul Dumouchel argues that this paradoxical reversal of the state’s primary function into violence against its own members is not a mere accident but an ever-present possibility that is inscribed in the structure of the modern state. Modern states need enemies to exist and to persist, not because they are essentially evil but because modern politics constitutes a violent means of protecting us against our own violence. If they cannot—if we cannot—find enemies outside the state, they will find them inside. However, this institution is today coming to an end, not in the sense that states are disappearing, but in the sense that they are increasingly failing to protect us from our own violence. That is why the violent sacrifices that they ask from us, in wars and even in times of peace, have now become barren.

Sociologist José A. Moreno was doing fieldwork in Santo Domingo when the revolution broke out in April 1965. For four months he lived in the rebel zone of the city, where he helped with the organization of medical clinics and food distribution centers. His activities brought him into daily contact with top leaders of the rebel forces, members of political organizations, commando groups of young men from the barrios of Santo Domingo, and ordinary citizens in the neighborhood. His eye-witness account is augmented by his professional analysis of the rebels-their backgrounds, personalities, ideologies, and expectations. He also focuses on the social processes that brought cohesiveness to the divergent rebel groups as their faced a common enemy.

Basque Immigrants and Nevada’s Sheep Industry is a rich and complex exploration of the history of Basque immigration to the rangelands of Nevada and the interior West. It looks critically at the Basque sheepherders in the American West and more broadly at the modern history of American foreign relations with Spain after the Second World War.

Between the 1880s and the 1950s, the western open-range sheep industry was the original economic attraction for Basque immigrants. This engaging study tracks the development of the Basque presence in the American West, providing deep detail about the sheepherders’ history, native and local culture, the challenges they faced, and the changing conditions under which the Basques lived and worked. Saitua also shows how Basque immigrant sheepherders went from being a marginalized labor group to a desirable, high-priced workforce in response to the constant demand for their labor power.

As the twentieth century progressed, the geopolitical tide in America began to change. In 1924, the Restrictive Immigration Act resulted in a truncated labor supply from the Basque Country in Spain. During the Great Depression and the Second World War, the labor shortage became acute. In response, Senator Patrick McCarran from Nevada lobbied on behalf of his wool-growing constituency to open immigration doors for Basques, the most desirable laborers for tending sheep in remote places. Subsequently, Cold War international tensions offered opportunities for a reconciliation between the United States and Francisco Franco, despite Spain’s previous sympathy with the Axis powers.

This fresh portrayal shows how Basque immigrants became the backbone of the sheep industry in Nevada. It also contributes to a wider understanding of the significance of Basque immigration by exploring the role of Basque agricultural labor in the United States, the economic interests of Western ranchers, and McCarran’s diplomacy as catalysts that eventually helped bring Spain into the orbit of western democracies.

 

Blamed, at first, by the Spanish government for the recent Madrid train bombings, ETA (Euzkadi ta Askatasuna), the Basque nationalist organization, has been perhaps the most violent insurgent group on the European continent. Yet little is known about it outside of Spain. This book, now back in print, offers a full analytical study of ETA.

An examination of Basque nationalism from a historical perspective. Basque nationalism has been extensively examined from the perspectives of Basque culture and internal conditions in the Basque Country, but André Lecours is among the first to demonstrate how Basque nationalism was shaped by the many forms and historical phases of the Spanish state. His discussion employs one of the most debated approaches in the social sciences—historical institutionalism—and it includes an up-to-date examination of the circumstances for, and consequences of, recent events such as ETA's announcement in 2006 of a permanent cease-fire. Lecours also analyzes other aspects of Basque nationalism, including the international relations of the Basque Autonomous Government, as well as the responses of the contemporary Spanish state and how it deploys its own brand of nationalism. Finally, the book offers a comparative discussion of Basque, Catalan, Scottish, Flemish, and Quebecois nationalist movements, suggesting that nationalism in the Basque Country, despite the historical presence of violence, is in many ways similar to nationalism in other industrialized democracies. Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State is an original and provocative discussion that is essential reading for anyone interested in the Basques or in the development of modern nationalist movements.

How celebrity strategic partnerships are disrupting humanitarian space

Can a celebrity be a “disrupter,” promoting strategic partnerships to bring new ideas and funding to revitalize the development field—or are celebrities just charismatic ambassadors for big business? Examining the role of the rich and famous in development and humanitarianism, Batman Saves the Congo argues that celebrities do both, and that understanding why and how yields insight into the realities of neoliberal development. 

In 2010, entertainer Ben Affleck, known for his superhero performance as Batman, launched the Eastern Congo Initiative to bring a new approach to the region’s development. This case study is central to Batman Saves the Congo. Affleck’s organization operates with special access, diversified funding, and significant support of elites within political, philanthropic, development, and humanitarian circuits. This sets it apart from other development organizations. With his convening power, Affleck has built partnerships with those inside and outside development, staking bipartisan political ground that is neither charity nor aid but “good business.” Such visible and recognizable celebrity humanitarians are occupying the public domain yet not engaging meaningfully with any public, argues Batman Saves the Congo. They are an unruly bunch of new players in development who amplify business solutions. 

As elite political participants, celebrities shape development practices through strategic partnerships that are both an innovative way to raise awareness and funding for neglected causes and a troubling trend of unaccountable elite leadership in North–South relations. Batman Saves the Congo helps illuminate the power of celebritized business solutions and the development contexts they create. 

Domestic terrorist groups, like all violent nonstate actors, compete with governments for their monopoly on violence and their legitimacy in representing the citizenry. Battle for Allegiance shows violence is neither the only nor the most effective way in which nonstate actors and governments work to achieve their goals. As much as nonviolent strategies are a rarely considered piece of the puzzle, the role of the audience is another crucial piece often downplayed in the literature. Many studies emphasize the interactions between the government and the terrorist group at the expense of the constituency, but the constituency is the common cluster for both actors to gain legitimacy and to demand its allegiance. In fact, the competition between the two actors goes far beyond who is superior in terms of military force and tactics. The hardest battles are fought over the allegiance of the citizens.

Using a multimethod approach based on exclusive interviews and focus groups from Turkey and large N original data from around the world, Seden Akcinaroglu and Efe Tokdemir present the first systematic empirical analysis of the ways in which terrorist groups, the government, and the citizens relate to each other in a triadic web of action. They study the nonviolent actions of terrorist groups toward their constituencies, the nonviolent actions of governments toward terrorists, and the nonviolent actions of governments toward the terrorist group’s constituencies. By investigating the causes, targets, and consequences of accommodative actions, this book sheds light on an important, but generally ignored, aspect of terrorism: interactive nonviolent strategies.

Most people typically think of armed conflict in physical terms, involving guns and bombs, ships and planes, tanks and missiles. But today, because of mass communication, war and the effort to prevent it are increasingly dependent on non-physical factors--the capacity to persuade combatants and citizens to engage in violence or avoid it, and the packaging of the information on which decision making is based. This book explores the many ways that mass communication has revolutionized international relations, whether the aim is to make war effectively or to prevent it.

Gary Messinger shows that over the last 150 years a succession of breakthroughs in the realm of media has reshaped the making of war and peace. Along with mass newspapers, magazines, books, motion pictures, radio, television, computer software, and telecommunication satellites comes an array of strategies for exploiting these media to control popular beliefs and emotions. Images of war now arrive in many forms and reach billions of people simultaneously. Political and military leaders must react to crowd impulses that sweep around the globe. Nation-states and nongovernmental groups, including terrorists, use mass communication to spread their portrayals of reality.

Drawing on a wide range of media products, from books and articles to films and television programs, as well as his own research in the field of propaganda studies, Messinger offers a fresh and comprehensive overview. He skillfully charts the path that has led us to our current situation and suggests where we might go next.

Battling for Hearts and Minds is the story of the dramatic struggle to define collective memory in Chile during the violent, repressive dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, from the 1973 military coup in which he seized power through his defeat in a 1988 plebiscite. Steve J. Stern provides a riveting narration of Chile’s political history during this period. At the same time, he analyzes Chileans’ conflicting interpretations of events as they unfolded. Drawing on testimonios, archives, Truth Commission documents, radio addresses, memoirs, and written and oral histories, Stern identifies four distinct perspectives on life and events under the dictatorship. He describes how some Chileans viewed the regime as salvation from ruin by Leftists (the narrative favored by Pinochet’s junta), some as a wound repeatedly reopened by the state, others as an experience of persecution and awakening, and still others as a closed book, a past to be buried and forgotten.

In the 1970s, Chilean dissidents were lonely “voices in the wilderness” insisting that state terror and its victims be recognized and remembered. By the 1980s, the dissent had spread, catalyzing a mass movement of individuals who revived public dialogue by taking to the streets, creating alternative media, and demanding democracy and human rights. Despite long odds and discouraging defeats, people of conscience—victims of the dictatorship, priests, youth, women, workers, and others—overcame fear and succeeded in creating truthful public memories of state atrocities. Recounting both their efforts and those of the regime’s supporters to win the battle for Chileans’ hearts and minds, Stern shows how profoundly the struggle to create memories, to tell history, matters.

Battling for Hearts and Minds is the second volume in the trilogy The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile. The third book will examine Chileans’ efforts to achieve democracy while reckoning with Pinochet’s legacy.

On January 1, 1928, Bazhanov escaped from the Soviet Union and became for many years the most important member of a new breed—the Soviet defector. At the age of 28, he had become an invaluable aid to Stalin and the Politburo, and had he stayed in Stalin’s service, Bazhanov might well have enjoyed the same meteoric careers as the man who replaced him when he left, Georgy Malenkov. However, Bazhanov came to despise the unethical and brutal regime he served. One he decided to become anti–communist, he sought to bring down the regime. Planning his departure carefully, he brought with him documentation which revealed some of the innermost secrets of the Kremlin. Despite being pursued by the OGPU (an earlier incarnation of the KGB), he arrived eventually in Paris, and Bazhanov set to work writing his message to the West. While Bazhanov did successfully escape to the West, Stalin had Bazhanov watched and several attempts were made to assassinate him. Bazhanov may have been fearful for his life much of the time, but he was a man of courage and conviction, and he damned Stalin as often and as publicly as he could. In this riveting and illuminating book, Bazhanov provides an eyewitness account of the inner workings and personalities of the Soviet Central Committee and the Politburo in the 1920s. Bazhanov clearly details how Stalin invaded the communications of his opponents, rigged votes, built up his own constituency, and maneuvered to achieve his coup d’etat despite formidable odds. he also provides a better understanding of the curiously vapid way in which he other revolutionary leaders, most notably Trotsky, failed to appreciate the threat and let Stalin override them. He reveals how those Soviets with a sense of fairness, justice, and ethics were extinguished by Stalin and his minions, and how the self–centered, protective bureaucratic machine was first built. Bazhanov’s view, at the right hand of Stalin, is unique and chilling. Bazhanov’s post–defection prediction of Stalin’s continuing and fatal danger to Trotsky shows how well Bazhanov understood the dictator. His formation, in 1940, of an armed force recruited from Soviet Army prisoners to help Mannerheim defend Finland from Stalin’s forces and his 1941 decision to decline the position of Hitler’s Gauleiter of German–occupied Russia are fascinating. But perhaps the most interesting facet to Bazhanov’s tale is the fact that almost no Soviets—even today—know the real story of the Communist party’s criminal acquiescence in Stalin’s rise to, and abuse of, power.

Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey’s exposé of big business’s influence on Colorado and Denver politics, a best seller when it was originally published in 1911, is now back in print. The Beast reveals the plight of working-class Denver citizens—in particular those Denver youths who ended up in Lindsey’s court day after day. These encounters led him to create the juvenile court, one of the first courts in the country set up to deal specifically with young delinquents. In addition, Lindsey exposes the darker side of many well-known figures in Colorado history, including Mayor Robert W. Speer, Governor Henry Augustus Buchtel, Will Evans, and many others. When first published, The Beast was considered every bit the equal Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and sold over 500,000 copies. More than just a fascinating slice of Denver history, this book—and Lindsey’s court— offered widespread social change in the United States.

The 1992 presidential election campaign showed just how deep were the divisions within the Republican party.  In Beautiful Losers, Samuel Francis argues that the victory of the Democratic party marks not only the end of the Reagan-Bush era, but the failure of the American conservatism.

An inspired, original argument about the nature of democracy in American society, Becoming Citizens in the Age of Television explores a political process out of touch with everyday needs and concerns of citizens. Instead of focusing on polls and election results, historian David Thelen listens to Americans through their calls and letters to congressmen in which citizens define for themselves the issues they want to raise and the ways they want to be seen and heard.

Thelen argues that the self-referential world of politics and journalism during elections excludes the concerns and voices of Americans, resulting in lower voter turnouts and increased voter apathy. Televised hearings and trials, however—from O. J. Simpson to Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas to Oliver North and Iran-Contra—have ignited storms of controversy and public debate. Focusing upon the spontaneous, unmediated reactions of American citizens to these events, Thelen discovers a new kind of political participation in which Americans shape their interventions.

Through an analysis of a remarkable documentary collection—the correspondence sent by citizens to the House Select Committee on Iran-Contra in the wake of the Oliver North testimony—Thelen explains how Americans are reclaiming the political process. Examining more than 5,000 letters and telegrams, Thelen uncovers the anger and resolve of a vocal public insulted by the media and opinion-managers who have misrepresented them as mindless supporters of "Olliemania."

Concluding with suggestions on how citizens can reclaim their voice from the opinion managing industries, this work promises to provoke the kind of public discourse on which democracy depends.

Across Europe, millions of immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers have often had difficulties fitting into their new societies. Most analysts have laid the blame on a clash of cultures. Becoming Europe provides evidence that institutions matter more than culture in determining the shape of ethnic relations.

Patrick Ireland argues that it is incorrect blithely to anticipate unavoidable conflict between Muslim immigrants and European host societies. Noting similarities in the structure of the welfare states in Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium—as well as in their respective North African and Turkish immigrant communities—he compares national- and city-level developments to show how approaches toward immigrant settlement have diverged widely and evolved over time.

Becoming Europe demonstrates how policymakers have worked hard to balance immigrants’ claims to distinct traditions with demands for equal treatment. Ultimately, it reveals a picture of people learning by doing in the day-to-day activities that shape how communities come together and break apart.

In this pathbreaking work, Christopher Skeaff argues that a profoundly democratic conception of judgment is at the heart of Spinoza’s thought. Bridging Continental and Anglo-American scholarship, critical theory, and Spinoza studies, Becoming Political offers a historically sensitive, meticulous, and creative interpretation of Spinoza’s texts that reveals judgment as the communal element by which people generate power to resist domination and reconfigure the terms of their political association. If, for Spinoza, judging is the activity which makes a people powerful, it is because it enables them to contest the project of ruling and demonstrate the political possibility of being equally free to articulate the terms of their association. This proposition differs from a predominant contemporary line of argument that treats the people’s judgment as a vehicle of sovereignty—a means of defining and refining the common will. By recuperating in Spinoza’s thought a “vital republicanism,” Skeaff illuminates a line of political thinking that decouples democracy from the majoritarian aspiration to rule and aligns it instead with the project of becoming free and equal judges of common affairs. As such, this decoupling raises questions that ordinarily go unasked: what calls for political judgment, and who is to judge? In Spinoza’s vital republicanism, the political potential of life and law finds an affirmative relationship that signals the way toward a new constitutionalism and jurisprudence of the common.

Understanding an infamous political movement's grounding in festivity and defiance

Beer and Revolution examines the rollicking life and times of German immigrant anarchists in New York City from 1880 to 1914. Offering a new approach to an often misunderstood political movement, Tom Goyens puts a human face on anarchism and reveals a dedication less to bombs than to beer halls and saloons where political meetings, public lectures, discussion circles, fundraising events, and theater groups were held.

Goyens brings to life the fascinating relationship between social space and politics by examining how the intersection of political ideals, entertainment, and social activism embodied anarchism not as an abstract idea, but as a chosen lifestyle for thousands of women and men. He shows how anarchist social gatherings were themselves events of defiance and resistance that aimed at establishing anarchism as an alternative lifestyle through the combination of German working-class conviviality and a dedication to the principle that coercive authority was not only unnecessary, but actually damaging to full and free human development as well. Goyens also explores the broader circumstances in both the United States and Germany that served as catalysts for the emergence of anarchism in urban America and how anarchist activism was hampered by police surveillance, ethnic insularity, and a widening gulf between the anarchists' message and the majority of American workers.

Sierra Leone is often sensationalized as a place of extreme violence and suffering—of blood diamonds, child soldiers, war amputations, and Ebola and now the highly addictive drug Kush. Before Before captures daily life in a different country, one Betsy Small first encountered as a Peace Corps worker between 1984–87, and then rediscovered when she returned decades later with her daughter. Living in Tokpombu, a remote community of forty rice-farming families, the author faced struggles that changed her forever and witnessed the growing tensions in this rainforest village—between the young and old, between the traditions of oral history and honoring the ancestors valued by the elders and the siren call of the illicit diamond mines faced by the youth. 
 
Before Before offers a rare portrait of everyday people, with particular focus on the lives of women and girls, before the brutal war of 1991 tore the country apart. Through Small’s account of immersion in another world as she witnessed injustice and was welcomed as a friend, readers are invited to explore the shared ground of our humanity.

Few issues in contemporary U.S> politics have remained on the public agenda so long and so divisively as abortion policy. The landmark Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Waade, which held that laws prohibiting first trimester abortions were illegal because they violated a woman's right to privacy, still generates heated controversy today, a quarter of a century after it was made. The seeds of that controversy were sown in the seven years immediately preceding Roe, when state legislatures tried to reconcile religious opposition to abortion and individuals' civil liberties.

In this groundbreaking book, Rosemary Nossiff examines the force that shaped abortion policy during those years, and the ways in which states responded to them. To provide in-depth analysis while still looking broadly at the picture, she studies New York, which passed the  most permissive abortion bill in the country, and Pennsylvania, which passed one of the most restrictive. That these two states, which share similar demographic, political, and  economic characteristics, should reach two such different outcomes provides a perfect case study for observing political dynamics at the state level.

Nossiff examines the medical, religious, and legal discourses employed on both sides of the debate, as well as the role played by feminist discourse. She looks at the role of the political parties in the campaigns, as well as such interest groups as the National Council of Catholic Bishops, the Clergy Consultation Service, the National Organization for Women, and the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. In addition, she analyzes the strategies used by both sides, as well as partisan and institutionalized developments that facilitated success or failure. Finally, in the Epilogue, she assesses the Roe decision and its aftermath, including an analysis of the pro-life movement in Pennsylvania.

As the author remarks, "Without question people's positions on abortion are shaped by a myriad of social, moral, and economic factors. But ultimately abortion policy is shaped in the political arena. This book examines how one of the most intimate decisions a woman makes, whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, has become one of the most politicized issues in contemporary American politics.

Campaigns to win the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations are longer, more complex, and more confusing to the observer than the general election itself. The maze of delegate-selection procedures includes state primaries and caucuses as well as the traditional "smoke-filled room." Complicated federal election laws govern campaign financing. Sometimes many candidates enter and drop out of the race, while sometimes a stable two-way contest occurs: the 1976 nomination campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford exemplified each extreme. Is it possible to propose general principles to explain the apparent chaos of our presidential nomination system? Can those principles account for two such starkly different campaigns as occurred in 1976? In Before the Convention, political scientist John H. Aldrich presents a systematic analysis of presidential nomination politics, based on application of rational-choice models to candidate behavior. Aldrich views the candidates as decision makers with limited resources in a highly competitive environment. From this perspective, he seeks to determine why and how candidates choose to run, why some succeed and others fail, and what consequences the nomination process has for the general election and, later, for the President in office.

Aldrich begins with a brief history of the presidential selection process, focusing on the continuing shift of power from political elites to the mass electorate. He then turns to a detailed analysis of the 1976 nomination campaigns. Using data from a variety of sources, Aldrich demonstrates that the very different patterns in these races both conform to the rational-choice model. The analysis includes consideration of numerous questions of strategy. Is there a "momentum" to campaigns? How does a candidate identify and exploit this intangible quality? How do candidates decide where to contend and where not to contend? What is the nature of policy competition among candidates? When does a candidate prefer a "fuzzy" position to a clearly stated one? Other topics include reforms in campaign financing and the expanded and changed role of news coverage.

Before the Convention fills a significant gap in the literature on presidential politics, and therefore should be of particular importance to specialists in this area. It will be ofinterest also to everyone who is concerned with understanding the "rules of the game" for a complicated but vitally important exercise of American democracy.

Exploring the emergence and evolution of theories of nationhood that continue to be evoked in present-day Japan, Susan L. Burns provides a close examination of the late-eighteenth-century intellectual movement kokugaku, which means "the study of our country.” Departing from earlier studies of kokugaku that focused on intellectuals whose work has been valorized by modern scholars, Burns seeks to recover the multiple ways "Japan" as social and cultural identity began to be imagined before modernity.

Central to Burns's analysis is Motoori Norinaga’s Kojikiden, arguably the most important intellectual work of Japan's early modern period. Burns situates the Kojikiden as one in a series of attempts to analyze and interpret the mythohistories dating from the early eighth century, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki. Norinaga saw these texts as keys to an original, authentic, and idyllic Japan that existed before being tainted by "flawed" foreign influences, notably Confucianism and Buddhism. Hailed in the nineteenth century as the begetter of a new national consciousness, Norinaga's Kojikiden was later condemned by some as a source of Japan's twentieth-century descent into militarism, war, and defeat. Burns looks in depth at three kokugaku writers—Ueda Akinari, Fujitani Mitsue, and Tachibana Moribe—who contested Norinaga's interpretations and produced competing readings of the mythohistories that offered new theories of community as the basis for Japanese social and cultural identity. Though relegated to the footnotes by a later generation of scholars, these writers were quite influential in their day, and by recovering their arguments, Burns reveals kokugaku as a complex debate—involving history, language, and subjectivity—with repercussions extending well into the modern era.

Behavioral economics questions the basic underpinnings of economic theory, showing that people often do not act consistently in their own self-interest when making economic decisions. While these findings have important theoretical implications, they also provide a new lens for examining public policies, such as taxation, public spending, and the provision of adequate pensions. How can people be encouraged to save adequately for retirement when evidence shows that they tend to spend their money as soon as they can? Would closer monitoring of income tax returns lead to more honest taxpayers or a more distrustful, uncooperative citizenry? Behavioral Public Finance, edited by Edward McCaffery and Joel Slemrod, applies the principles of behavioral economics to government's role in constructing economic and social policies of these kinds and suggests that programs crafted with rational participants in mind may require redesign. Behavioral Public Finance looks at several facets of economic life and asks how behavioral research can increase public welfare. Deborah A. Small, George Loewenstein, and Jeff Strnad note that public support for a tax often depends not only on who bears its burdens, but also on how the tax is framed. For example, people tend to prefer corporate taxes over sales taxes, even though the cost of both is eventually extracted from the consumer. James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, and Andrew Metrick assess the impact of several different features of 401(k) plans on employee savings behavior. They find that when employees are automatically enrolled in a retirement savings plan, they overwhelmingly accept the status quo and continue participating, while employees without automatic enrollment typically take over a year to join the saving plan. Behavioral Public Finance also looks at taxpayer compliance. While the classic economic model suggests that the low rate of IRS audits means far fewer people should voluntarily pay their taxes than actually do, John Cullis, Philip Jones, and Alan Lewis present new research showing that many people do not underreport their incomes even when the probability of getting caught is a mere one percent. Human beings are not always rational, utility-maximizing economic agents. Behavioral economics has shown how human behavior departs from the assumptions made by generations of economists. Now, Behavioral Public Finance brings the insights of behavioral economics to analysis of policies that affect us all.

Presents papers which were discussed at the Arden House Conference—a conference held to establish a working relationship between sociologists at the Russell Sage Foundation and journalists of the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University. Both behavioral science and journalism have for a long time been concerned with some of the same major national social problems—juvenile delinquency, urban problems, race and minority group relations, international tensions, and labor relations. These papers touch on some of the barriers to communication and point to possible ways of breaking through those barriers.

What was it like to be colonized by foreigners? Highlighting a region in central Congo, in the center of sub-Saharan Africa, Being Colonized places Africans at the heart of the story. In a richly textured history that will appeal to general readers and students as well as to scholars, the distinguished historian Jan Vansina offers not just accounts of colonial administrators, missionaries, and traders, but the varied voices of a colonized people. Vansina uncovers the history revealed in local news, customs, gossip, and even dreams, as related by African villagers through archival documents, material culture, and oral interviews.
    Vansina’s case study of the colonial experience is the realm of Kuba, a kingdom in Congo about the size of New Jersey—and two-thirds the size of its colonial master, Belgium. The experience of its inhabitants is the story of colonialism, from its earliest manifestations to its tumultuous end. What happened in Kuba happened to varying degrees throughout Africa and other colonized regions: racism, economic exploitation, indirect rule, Christian conversion, modernization, disease and healing, and transformations in gender relations. The Kuba, like others, took their own active part in history, responding to the changes and calamities that colonization set in motion. Vansina follows the region’s inhabitants from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, when a new elite emerged on the eve of Congo’s dramatic passage to independence.

This book examines the changing role of the governor in our federal system, giving particular attention to recent developments. The expansion of gubernatorial responsibilities into managerial, executive, and intergovernmental positions has taken place at the same time that the governor's role as leader of his political party has declined. In discussing the contemporary role of governors, the editors provide a view of how the office functions on a day-to-day basis.

The editors base their data on personal experience; interviews with governors, former governors, and staff; on -site visits; and responses to a series of nineteen surveys of governors and their staff conducted between 1976 and 1981. The research was undertaken by the Center for Policy Research of the National Governors' Association.

Detractors have called it "The Mistake on the Lake." It was once America’s "Comeback City." According to author J. Mark Souther, Cleveland has long sought to defeat its perceived civic malaise. Believing in Cleveland chronicles how city leaders used imagery and rhetoric to combat and, at times, accommodate urban and economic decline.

Souther explores Cleveland's downtown revitalization efforts, its neighborhood renewal and restoration projects, and its fight against deindustrialization. He shows how the city reshaped its image when it was bolstered by sports team victories. But Cleveland was not always on the upswing. Souther places the city's history in the postwar context when the city and metropolitan area were divided by uneven growth. In the 1970s, the city-suburb division was wider than ever.

Believing in Cleveland recounts the long, difficult history of a city that entered the postwar period as America's sixth largest, then lost ground during a period of robust national growth. But rather than tell a tale of decline, Souther provides a fascinating story of resilience for what some folks called "The Best Location in the Nation."

Since 1896, Ohio voters have failed to favor the next president only twice (in 1944 and 1960). Time after time, Ohio has found itself in the thick of the presidential race, and 2016 is shaping up to be no different. What about the Buckeye State makes it so special? In The Bellwether, Kyle Kondik, managing editor for the nonpartisan political forecasting newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball, blends data-driven research and historical documentation to explain Ohio’s remarkable record as a predictor of presidential results and why the state is essential to the 2016 election and beyond.

Part history, part journalism, this entertaining and astute guide proposes that Ohio has been the key state in the Electoral College for more than a century and examines what the idea of the swing state has come to mean. In discussing the evidence, Kondik uses the state’s oft-mentioned status as a microcosm of the nation as a case study to trace the evolution of the American electorate, and identifies which places in Ohio have the most influence on the statewide result. Finally, he delves into the answer to the question voting Ohioans consider every four years: Will their state remain a bellwether, or is their ability to pick the president on its way out?

Kids in cages, family separations, thousands dying in the desert. Police violence and corruption. Environmental devastation. These are just some of the dramatic stories recounted by veteran journalist Miriam Davidson in The Beloved Border. This groundbreaking work of original reporting also gives hope for the future, showing how border people are responding to the challenges with compassion and creativity.

The book draws on a variety of sources to explain how border issues intersect and how the current situation, while made worse under the Trump administration, is in fact the result of decades of prohibition, crackdowns, and wall building on the border. Davidson addresses subjects such as violence in Mexico, particularly against the press; cross-border gun smuggling and legal gun sales; the rise in migrant detentions, deportations, and deaths since the crackdown began; controversy over humanitarian aid in the desert; border patrol crimes and abuses; and the legal, ethical, and moral issues raised by increased police presence and militarization on the border. The book also looks at the environmental impact of wall building and construction of a planned copper mine near Tucson, especially on the jaguar and other endangered species.

Davidson shares the history of sanctuary and argues that this social movement and others that have originated on the border are vanguards of larger global movements against the mistreatment of migrant workers and refugees, police brutality, and other abuses of human and natural rights. She gives concrete examples of positive ways in which border people are promoting local culture and cross-border solidarity through health care, commerce, food, art, and music. While death and suffering continue to occur, The Beloved Border shows us how the U.S.-Mexico border could be, and in many ways already is, a model for peaceful coexistence worldwide.

Winner of the American Bar Association's 1992 Silver Gavel Award "in recognition of an outstanding contribution to public understanding of the American system of law and justice."

"Mr. Sobol has produced a readable yet fully researched and detailed study of the operation of the bankruptcy and its effects upon all concerned—the women who were injured, the swarms of lawyers who represented parties in the bankruptcy, and the court which oversaw the bankruptcy in Richmond. . . . This book adds greatly to the current debate about how strong a managerial federal judge our system should have."—Paul D. Rheingold, New York Law Journal

"Bending the Law is polemical and relentless. It is also minutely researched, fluidly written, and persuasive."—Paul Reidinger, ABA Journal

"Bending the Law is a must read for bankruptcy practitioners, and for anyone else concerned about the use of bankruptcy law to deal with mass torts. Although its author is a civil rights lawyer, he details the subtle art of practicing bankruptcy law with a discerning eye, and is a gifted storyteller as well."—Joryn Jenkins, Federal Bar News and Journal

"This is an accessible history of the case by a veteran civil-rights lawyer."—Washington Post Book World

Who determines the fuel standards for our cars? What about whether Plan B, the morning-after pill, is sold at the local pharmacy? Many people assume such important and controversial policy decisions originate in the halls of Congress. But the choreographed actions of Congress and the president account for only a small portion of the laws created in the United States. By some estimates, more than ninety percent of law is created by administrative rules issued by federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services, where unelected bureaucrats with particular policy goals and preferences respond to the incentives created by a complex, procedure-bound rulemaking process.
           
With Bending the Rules, Rachel Augustine Potter shows that rulemaking is not the rote administrative activity it is commonly imagined to be but rather an intensely political activity in its own right. Because rulemaking occurs in a separation of powers system, bureaucrats are not free to implement their preferred policies unimpeded: the president, Congress, and the courts can all get involved in the process, often at the bidding of affected interest groups. However, rather than capitulating to demands, bureaucrats routinely employ “procedural politicking,” using their deep knowledge of the process to strategically insulate their proposals from political scrutiny and interference. Tracing the rulemaking process from when an agency first begins working on a rule to when it completes that regulatory action, Potter shows how bureaucrats use procedures to resist interference from Congress, the President, and the courts at each stage of the process. This exercise reveals that unelected bureaucrats wield considerable influence over the direction of public policy in the United States.

A vivid and fast-paced history, Gary May's Bending toward Justice offers a dramatic account of the birth and precarious life of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It is an extraordinary story of the intimidation and murder of courageous activists who struggled to ensure that all Americans would be able to exercise their right to vote. May outlines the divisions within the Civil Rights Movement, describes the relationship between President Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr., and captures the congressional politics of the 1960s. Bending toward Justice is especially timely, given that the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 invalidated a key section of the Voting Rights Act. As May shows, the fight for voting rights is by no means over.

From iPhones and clothing to jewelry and food, the products those of us in the developed world consume and enjoy exist only through the labor and suffering of countless others. In his new book Bruce Robbins examines the implications of this dynamic for humanitarianism and social justice. He locates the figure of the "beneficiary" in the history of humanitarian thought, which asks the prosperous to help the poor without requiring them to recognize their causal role in the creation of the abhorrent conditions they seek to remedy. Tracing how the beneficiary has manifested itself in the work of George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Jamaica Kincaid, Naomi Klein, and others, Robbins uncovers a hidden tradition of economic cosmopolitanism. There are no easy answers to the question of how to confront systematic inequality on a global scale. But the first step, Robbins suggests, is to acknowledge that we are, in fact, beneficiaries.

Henri Bergson is primarily known for his work on time, memory, and creativity. His equally innovative interventions into politics and religion have, however, been neglected or dismissed until now. In the first book in English dedicated to Bergson as a political thinker, leading Bergson scholars illuminate his positions on core concerns within political philosophy: the significance of emotion in moral judgment, the relationship between biology and society, and the entanglement of politics and religion. Ranging across Bergson's writings but drawing mainly on his last book, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, the contributors consider Bergson's relevance to contemporary discussions of human rights, democratic pluralism, and environmental ethics.

Contributors. Keith Ansell-Pearson, G. William Barnard, Claire Colebrook, Hisashi Fujita, Suzanne Guerlac, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Frédéric Keck, Leonard Lawlor, Alexandre Lefebvre, Paola Marrati, John Mullarkey, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Carl Power, Philippe Soulez, Jim Urpeth, Melanie White, Frédéric Worms

The Cold War is back in the news. So is history, in the sense of past geopolitical confrontations that for a span of a few decades were thought to be largely decoupled from present-day political developments. Of course, such reflexive reactions lack nuance and, until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, tended to refer more to tensions between the United States and China. We should neither see Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine immediately as part of a new cold war—though it could certainly become one of its foundation pieces—nor define history simply in terms of warfare and conflict. Yet such history has great appeal in efforts to understand the dizzying and depressing events of recent years. For example, correspondents and commentators have likened the delivery of weapons systems, protective gear, and humanitarian aid to a beleaguered Ukraine to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49. But relying on history as a guide may mislead as much as enlighten. No city symbolizes the Cold War quite as Berlin does. When we think of the Cold War and of Berlin, we tend to emphasize the crises—the 1948–49 blockade and airlift, perhaps the 1953 East German workers’ uprising, surely the 1958­–61 crisis, during which the Berlin Wall was built—and the climactic ending of the Cold War in Europe when the wall came down. Berlin may conjure up iconic moments and tropes, from a statement attributed to Nikita Khrushchev in 1963 that Berlin was “the testicles of the West,” to John F. Kennedy’s insistence that all free men had to be invested in the defense of Berlin, to Ronald Reagan’s exhortation to Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” For American presidents (or presidential hopefuls), Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate have remained powerful images, even in the twenty-first century. A presence in Berlin signals strong leadership in the West, even though the proximate reasons why the West, as a political construct, emerged in the first place may be gone. In that sense, Berlin also stands for overcoming the past: first, West Berlin as the counterpoint not only to eastern communism but also to defeated fascism, and second, the new Berlin as the capital of a unified Germany and as a symbol that the West has won.

Berlusconi's Italy provides a fresh, thoroughly-informed account of how Italy's richest man came to be its political leader. Without dismissing the importance of personalities and political parties, it emphasizes the significance of changes in voting behaviors that led to the rise-and eventual fall-of Silvio Berlusconi, the millionaire media baron who became Prime Minister. Armed with new data and new analytic tools, Michael Shin and John Agnew use recently developed methods of spatial analysis, to offer a compelling new argument about contextual re-creation and mutation. They reveal that regional politics and shifting geographical voting patterns were far more important to Berlusconi's successes than the widely-credited role of the mass media, and conclude that Berlusconi's success (and later defeat) can be best understood in geographic terms.

Today, Bernie Sanders is a household name, a wildly popular presidential candidate and an icon for progressive Democrats in the United States. But back in the 1980s, this “democratic socialist”—though some folks would prefer the term “social democrat”—was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, where his administration attempted radical reforms. Some efforts were successful, but when a waterfront deal failed, it was not due to Sanders' efforts; he would rather compromise and have a net gain than be an ideological purist.
 
In his preface to this reissue of the 1990 book, Challenging the Boundaries of Reform, W. J. Conroy reflects on the recent legacy of Sanders, his Agenda for America, and his appeal to young voters. His book then looks back to identify Sanders’ experience in Burlington by examining several case studies that unfolded amidst a conservative trend nationally, an unsympathetic state government, and a hostile city council.
 
Ultimately, Conroy asks what lessons can be drawn from the case of Burlington that would aid the American left in its struggle to capture both government and civil society?