I'm a retired trial lawyer and a legal history professor and fellow at Marquette Law School in Wisconsin. As a young lawyer, I was struck by how much Americans focus on federal lawmakers and judges at the expense of their state counterparts, even though state law has a much greater effect on people's daily lives than federal law. The scholar Leonard Levy once said that without more study of state legal history, “there can be no … adequate history of [American] civilization.” I want to help fill that need through my books and articles, and I enjoy sharing this fascinating world with my readers.
In 1882, only a few years after it enacted a series of landmark civil rights laws, Congress passed an Exclusion Act slamming the door on Chinese immigration. Why the dramatic turnaround? A powerful anti-Chinese movement, driven by racism and fear of economic competition, had taken hold among whites in the West and had produced a wave of anti-Asian state laws. Americans east of the Rockies didn't share Western sentiments, but eventually Eastern politicians yielded in order to attract Western votes. Gyory gives us an absorbing picture of the exclusion movement, of Western anti-Chinese leaders, and of the Easterners who went along with them. His book is a stark reminder that good people's indifference can contribute to the triumph of evil.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred nearly all Chinese from US shores for ten years. Gyory traces the origins of the Act, contending that rather than confronting divisive problems such as class conflict, politicians sought a safe, non-ideological solution to the nation's industrial crisis.
I have been a biographer going on five decades now -- from William Carlos Williams to Man Ray to Thomas Edison to Henry Ford to Martha Graham. I am above all else a student of the human condition as well as a devotee of narrative at its most burnished - the kind of narrative that imposes its voice upon me at the end of a long day of quotidian interaction when all I want to do is get into bed and “pick up where I left off”. Biography is, indeed, storytelling - but it is restrained, or perhaps I should say tamed, by factual fidelity, a point of pride with me as a conscientious practitioner of the craft.
A powerful parent dies and each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways -- and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. This is an “everything” book. It took over my life. It overwhelmed my brain and mind. The utterly believable characters so generously intermingled and interwoven, familial and dynamic in their pushing and pulling, loving and hating - ignited by a precipitating event so abrupt yet simple, with consequences that spin out of control. Reading this tale, you feel as if you are drowning in a fever dream - Joyce Carol Oates once again as she has since Them (1969), offering innumerable reasons for wonderment.
The bonds of family are tested in the wake of a profound tragedy, providing a look at the darker side of our society by one of our most enduringly popular and important writers
Night Sleep Death The Stars is a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all.
Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel is a vivid exploration of race, psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual…
I've always been fascinated by what makes life tick. I was a gifted child, not my own label, but I had all of the special classes. It took me years to get over the notion that I was supposed to have all the answers, and when I did, I found myself searching for all the answers I was supposed to have had. I went headlong into current events and psychology, again wanting to know how the world ticked. And I'm qualified to give you my list insofar as you are qualified to go look these titles up. I share the most profound repositories of knowledge with you.
I did well in history growing up, but an accident at a mountain in the 7th grade had me laid up and reading a book about Native Americans in their own words. At that point, I knew they weren’t teaching us everything.
Finding Howard Zinn later was the motherlode of what history teachers hadn’t taught us, and I absorbed it.
"A wonderful, splendid book—a book that should be read by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future." –Howard Fast
Historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools—with its emphasis on great men in high places—to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace.
Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, itis the only volume to tell America's story from the…
Neoliberalism and I have grown up in opposition to one another over the past four decades. As a professor of economics, union, and political activist I have observed, wrote about, and resisted its effects on the life chances of the great majority of its citizens with particular focus on the United States as its primary protagonist and gatekeeper. The opposition to this transformative epoch included writing about the significant contributions of my profession to Neoliberal economics in two previous books; The Profit Doctrine: The Economists of the Neoliberal Era and Economics in the 21st Century: A Critical Perspective.
In addition to its excellent coverage of the economics of this transformation, its historical account of the shift in class partnerships makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the period. In the Golden Age of the previous period Big Business maintained a fraught alliance with its unions willing to pay growing wages closely aligned with labor productivity growth with the grudging acceptance of higher taxes and regulations of the Keynesian era leaving small business to fend for itself. Once Japan and Germany reindustrialized creating a more competitive economic landscape Kotz describes the full-blown class warfare identified by Buffet as Big Business realigned with small business to fight for cuts to its wages, taxes, regulatory costs and unions, and progressive politics.
The financial and economic collapse that began in the United States in 2008 and spread to the rest of the world continues to burden the global economy. David Kotz, who was one of the few academic economists to predict it, argues that the ongoing economic crisis is not simply the aftermath of financial panic and an unusually severe recession but instead is a structural crisis of neoliberal, or free-market, capitalism. Consequently, continuing stagnation cannot be resolved by policy measures alone. It requires major institutional restructuring.
"Kotz's book will reward careful study by everyone interested in the question of stages in…
Growing up during the Cold War, I wondered how the United States and the Soviet Union became locked into an existential struggle that threatened to vaporize the planet. So, I studied Russian, Chinese, and Japanese (along with French, Spanish, and German) to learn more. At issue was the global order and the outcome of this struggle depended on the balance of power—not only military power that consumed Soviet attention but also economic power and standards of living that Western voters emphasized. Yet it was Japan that had the workable development model as proven by the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) during the 1960s to 1990s.
This book is a deep dive into what makes Japan special. William G. Beasley (1919-2006), a long-time professor at the University of London, was one of his generation’s finest Japanologists. This book highlights the enormous achievements of the Meiji generation, who alone among non-Western leaders, positioned their country to win the game of economic catch-up.
For Japan, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 has something of the significance that the French Revolution has for France: it is the point from which modern history begins. In this now classic work of Japanese history, the late W. G. Beasley offers a comprehensive account of the origins, development, and immediate aftermath of the events that restored Imperial rule to Japan. He makes the case that the origins of the Meiji Restoration are not found in economic distress or class struggle, but in a growing sense of national danger and national pride spurred by Japan's contacts with the West. Nationalism…
Reading was a childhood passion of mine. My mother was a librarian and got me interested in reading early in life. When John F. Kennedy was running for president and after his assassination, I became intensely interested in politics. In addition to reading history and political biographies, I consumed newspapers and television news. It is this background that I have drawn upon over the decades that has added value to my research.
I found this book so helpful in explaining why it wasn’t “the economy stupid” but values that moved voters. His work was helpful in illuminating my own extensive work on how values move voters.
Frank is especially good at describing the role of the evangelical movement in putting cultural issues, including abortion, front and center in our politics. I found that he was onto something important and that has helped my understanding of today’s politics. A very readable, down-to-earth book.
Reveals how conservatism became the preferred national political ideology, exploring the origins of this philosophy in the upper classes and tracing its recent popularity within the middle class.
I’ve always loved science fiction because it offers a hope, a dream, or a future that we just haven't seen yet. When I write my stories, I feel there is no better use of my imagination, than to contemplate a new world, a new civilization, or future technology. At the same time, I hope to entertain readers and spark young imaginations. Inside Modified, I reached into a distant future with off-world colonies that float in the clouds of Venus, while robots toil on the planet’s surface. Of course, in such a future, when advanced modifications and recursive designs are used, leads one to wonder if my robot can love too.
The inspiration for the movie Metropolis, a city is torn between an elite upper class, and a working-class, who toil in agony underground. It begins with Freder, the son of the powerful Metropolis leader who encounters a working-class prophet named Maria. Freder feels drawn to the woman and searches for her. Meanwhile, Freder’s father visits a bitter adversary named Rotwang. A mad scientist type, Rotwang tells him that he’s built a robot replica of a woman they once both loved, whose name was Hel. Like an enigma wrapped in a mystery, the robot creates a dense and secretive narrative. Divulging old motivations and riddles behind the characters, adds to the story, but the robot becomes both ethereal and powerful, a form of immortality and the path to destruction.
The dystopian tale of class struggle, passion, faith, and ruination in the living city of Metropolis. Written Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang's wife at the time, this is the original book upon which Fritz Lang's now infamous movie was based. This edition features a working, linked Table of Contents and full joystick/NCX navigation.
I’ve devoted my academic career and personal life to the limits and possibilities of white liberal approaches to civil rights reform. Trained in U.S. history and published in American Jewish history, I look closely at how ethnic groups and religious minorities interact with their racial and gender status to create a sometimes-surprising perspective on both history and our current day. At times powerful and at other times powerless, Jews (and other white ethnics) navigate a complex course in civil rights advocacy.
While many celebrated the ethnic revival of the 1960s and the social justice causes that grew from them, Steinberg offers a powerful and challenging thesis that argues the limits of ethnicity. A sense of ethnic re-birth, he argues, can only occur once ethnicity is gone. Rather than empowering a new generation of social justice youth, ethnicity proves a myth.
You hold in your hand a dangerous book. Because it rejects as it clarifies most of the current wisdom on race, ethnicity, and immigration in the United States, The Ethnic Myth has the force of a scholarly bomb. --from the Introduction by Eric William Lott
In this classic work, sociologist Stephen Steinberg rejects the prevailing view that cultural values and ethnic traits are the primary determinants of the economic destiny of racial and ethnic groups in America. He argues that locality, class conflict, selective migration, and other historical and economic factors play a far larger role not only in producing…
Just like everything Alix E. Harrow writes, this book is filled with magic, torment, struggle, redemption, and a keen love of books and the written word. Although Starling House is not as immersively wonderful as her other books, it’s still an absorbing read that brings you into a rough, real, and very strange place. Basically it’s a haunted house story, but the ghosts have history and impact and the main characters, while fated to be where they are, fight and learn and stuggle and come out better in the end.
'Alix E. Harrow is an exceptional, undeniable talent' - Olivie Blake, author of The Atlas Six
Step into Starling House - if you dare . . . Alix E. Harrow reimagines Beauty and the Beast in this gorgeously modern Gothic fantasy, perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab and Naomi Novik.
Nobody in Eden remembers when Starling House was built. But the town agrees it's best to let this ill-omened mansion - and its last lonely heir - go to hell. Stories of the house's bad luck, like good china, have been passed down the…
Neoliberalism and I have grown up in opposition to one another over the past four decades. As a professor of economics, union, and political activist I have observed, wrote about, and resisted its effects on the life chances of the great majority of its citizens with particular focus on the United States as its primary protagonist and gatekeeper. The opposition to this transformative epoch included writing about the significant contributions of my profession to Neoliberal economics in two previous books; The Profit Doctrine: The Economists of the Neoliberal Era and Economics in the 21st Century: A Critical Perspective.
For Martin Gilens, the normal business of governing in the U.S. is largely untroubled by the preferences and desires of anybody but the wealthy.Gilens looks at thousands of proposed policy changes, and the degree of support for each among poor, middle-class, and affluent Americans. His findings: when preferences of low- or middle-income Americans diverge from those of the affluent, there is virtually no relationship between policy outcomes and the desires of less advantaged groups. In contrast, affluent Americans’ preferences exhibit a substantial relationship with policy outcomes whether their preferences are shared by lower-income groups or not.
Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy--but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the United States has evolved over the last several decades and how this growing disparity has been shaped by interest groups, parties, and elections. With sharp analysis and an impressive range of data, Martin Gilens looks at thousands of proposed policy changes, and the degree…
