I’m fascinated by the obsession that we as a society have with making policy, but not whether policy works, and how policy is treated as a magic bullet to the social problems that we all care about. But my experience is that it’s not ideas that solve problems; it’s action that solves problems. This fascination has led me to become a professor of public policy and administration, where I have read extensively about this issue for over a decade and written two books and over four dozen articles. My work focuses on how ideas are translated into actions and how those actions impact our communities.
I wrote
Democratic Policy Implementation in an Ambiguous World
I really love this book because it’s a pure case study of why things often go wrong at the street level.
While it’s set in the mid-60s, a lot of the social and political themes are still relevant, so it begs the question of how much government has changed in the last half-century.
I really like that the authors explore this case without being too heavy-handed in why things went wrong; they just try to tell the story and work through it along with the reader. And you got to love that title!
Three substantial new chapters and a new preface in this third edition explore and elaborate the relationship between the evaluation of programs and the study of their implementation. The authors suggest that tendencies to assimilate the two should be resisted. Evaluation should retain its enlightenment function while the study of implementation should strengthen its focus on learning.
The thing I love about this book is that it illustrates how difficult the jobs of street-level bureaucrats (i.e., public servants working directly with the public at the street level) are.
Being a cop, teacher, social worker, etc. is a lot more complex than what it looks like from the outside because it’s not just about helping citizens; it’s also about navigating all the rules and policies that govern how public services are delivered.
It’s impossible to read this book and not walk away with a respect for how hard those jobs are.
What I like about this book is that it digs into the cognitive processes that help explain our behaviors and how we come to understand the world.
The big takeaway from this book for me is that people don’t always think through their choices, and that is hardwired into our brains. It’s really important to understand that when you start thinking about how to get people to change their behaviors.
The phenomenal international bestseller - 2 million copies sold - that will change the way you make decisions
'A lifetime's worth of wisdom' Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics 'There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Thinking, Fast and Slow' Financial Times
Why is there more chance we'll believe something if it's in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? The answer lies in the two ways we make choices: fast,…
I like that this book makes Winston Churchill’s powerful oratory style and poetic words easily accessible. Churchill was a master at speaking in a way that ignited the passion of others and focused them on common goals.
To be able to see and study those words really provides insights into how to shape the way others think about the world. It also opens the door to many historical issues that often get buried in some of the grander narratives about Churchill’s time.
Winston Churchill knew the power of words. In speeches, books, and articles, he expressed his feelings and laid out his vision for the future. His wartime writings and speeches have fascinated generation after generation with their powerful narrative style and thoughtful reflection.Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer, has chosen passages that express the essence of Churchill's thoughts and describe,in his own inimitable words,the main adventures of his life and the main crises of his career. From first to last, they give insight into his life, how it evolved, and how he made his mark on the British and world stage.
I like that this book takes a detailed look at 2020 from the view of the Trump presidency, based on interviews between Woodward and Trump.
One of the key themes here is that many decisions during that time were rooted in lessons learned earlier during Trump’s presidency, which helps us understand how we get stuck in doing things the way they’ve always been done. It also provides fascinating insights into how the generational crisis of COVID-19 was managed and mismanaged by the White House.
BOB WOODWARD'S NEW BOOK, RAGE, IS AN UNPRECEDENTED AND INTIMATE TOUR DE FORCE OF NEW REPORTING ON THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY FACING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC, ECONOMIC DISASTER AND RACIAL UNREST.
Woodward, the No 1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump's head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu…
The hard part of government is not passing new laws but implementing those laws. Implementation is where high-minded ideas are pushed and prodded into the chaos that is the real world. Often, this leads to unintended consequences as ideas are transformed into actions.
This book examines these issues and tries to explain why and how policies affect the way things are done. In doing so, this book takes the reader through a journey of how policymakers, organizations, and entrepreneurs shape the way implementers understand policies and translate them into action under ambiguous circumstances. The result is a complex picture of why some policies work in practice, and others do not.
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
