Wordtrade.com
Politics

The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory edited by John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, Anne Philips (Oxford Handbooks of Political Science: Oxford University Press) The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science is a ten-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. This volume, The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, provides comprehensive and critical coverage of the lively and contested field of political theory, and will help set the agenda for the field for years to come. Long recognized as one of the main branches of political science, political theory has in recent years burgeoned in many different directions. Forty-five chapters by distinguished political theorists look at the state of the field, where it has been in the recent past, and where it is likely to go in future. They examine political theory's edges as well as its core, the globalizing context of the field, and the challenges presented by social, economic, and technological changes. More

Guide to U.S. Elections 5th Edition 2 volumes (CQ Press) In Volume One, part one examines the evolution of the U.S. electoral system and includes material on the franchise and voting rights. It also explores the impact of major post–World War II political issues. Part two examines the evolution of campaign finance, traces the development of political parties, profiles major and minor parties, and discusses the historical significance of southern primaries. Part three features an overview and chronology of presidential elections along with information and data on presidential primaries, nominating conventions, popular and electoral voting, and the Electoral College. More

Guide To Political Campaigns In America by Paul S. Herrnson (CQ Press) is the first complete resource for scholarly and practical insight into every important aspect of political campaigns and campaign activities. Campaigns are a critical part of the political process in the United States, and this unique volume provides students, researchers, scholars, and others interested in campaigns and politics with a broad foundation of knowledge about the history of campaigns and the issues, people, processes, and types and levels of races involved. More

Murdering Myths: The Story Behind the Death Penalty by Judith W. Kay (Polemics: Rowman and Littlefield) (Paperback) goes beyond the hype and statistics to examine Americans' deep-seated beliefs about crime and punishment. She argues that Americans share a counter-productive idea of justice--that punishment corrects bad behavior, suffering pays for wrong deeds, and victims' desire for revenge is natural and inevitable. Drawing on interviews with both victims and inmates, Kay shows how this belief harms perpetrators, victims, and society and calls for a new narrative that recognizes the humanity in all of us. More

For God And Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire by James Yee, Aimee Molloy (PublicAffairs) is a memoir by James Yee, who served as a United States Army Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility during the post-9/11 time of war. The book is coauthored by Aimee Molloy. The first chapter of the book recounts Yee's arrest by a U.S. government agent. Yee then goes back in time and proceeds to tell the story of his entire eventful life, including his childhood in New Jersey as a third-generation Chinese-American, education at West Point, conversion to Islam as a 23-year old, service in the Army as an air defense artillery officer, deployment to Saudi Arabia, Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, marriage, Islamic studies in Syria, and Army service as a pioneering Muslim chaplain.  More

Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves by Brian Michael Jenkins (RAND Corporation) On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Brian Jenkins, one of the world's leading experts on terrorism and counterterrorism strategies, presents a concise and compelling overview of where we are today in the struggle against terrorism. He offers personal reflections on how some of our recent approaches to counterterrorism have been counterproductive. He presents an overview of the jihadists, particularly al Qaeda, and their operational code. He proposes strategies to counteract this adversary and to avoid reinforcing it further. Finally, he clarifies the American and Western values that we must strive to uphold, as well as ways that we might do so today and in the future. More

The Formation of the Treaty Law of Non-International Armed Conflicts by Laura Perna (Martinus Nijhoff: Brill) The purpose of this work is to trace the processes that led and continue to lead to the formation of the treaty norms applicable in non-international armed conflicts. If the purpose of humanitarian law is to achieve a balance between military necessity and humanitarian considerations and to prevent unnecessary suffering and destruction, humanitarian law rules should be equally applicable to both international and internal armed conflicts. Whilst, however, there are a huge number of treaty provisions applicable to international armed conflicts, very few provisions are specifically designed to regulate non-international armed conflicts despite the dramatic increase in the number of such conflicts. The study investigates the reasons behind the differences by analyzing, inter alia, questions such as: Where does the international law of internal armed conflicts come from? Why did it evolve differently from the law regulating international armed conflicts? Where is the international law of internal armed conflicts going? More

On the Three Types of Juristic Thought by Carl Schmitt, edited and translated by Joseph W. Bendersky (Contributions in Political Science: Praeger Publishers) Bendersky provides the only English-language translation, with extensive notes and introduction, to one of Carl Schmitt's most controversial works. At the time of its publication in 1934 and during the war and post-war years, the treatise was seen as a rationalization of the Nazi legal order. With the renaissance of Schmitt studies beginning in the 1980s, the man and his work, and this work in particular, was reinterpreted. While some maintained that it was a foundation of Nazi legal theory and practice, others see it as a failed attempt at a conservative counterweight to the most extreme tendencies in National Socialism. More

Pot Politics: Marijuana and the Costs of Prohibition edited by Mitch Earleywine (Oxford University Press) Marijuana use continues to attract interest and fuel controversy. Big, green pot leaves have adorned the covers of Time, National Review, and Forbes. Almost 100 million Americans have tried marijuana at least once. Groups such as The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana (NORML) and The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) have tens of thousands of members. Polls suggest that 70-80% of Americans support medicinal marijuana. At least 11 U.S. states have experimented with decriminalization and medical marijuana laws, with new initiatives appearing each year. Meanwhile, other groups such as Partnership for a Drug Free America and Mothers Against Drugs protest legalization. Clearly, debate about marijuana policy shows no sign of abating. More

Children's Human Rights: Progress And Challenges for Children Worldwide edited by Mark Ensalaco, Linda C. Majka (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) (Paperback) Each day, countless children around the world are exposed to dangers that hamper their growth and development. They suffer immensely as casualties of war. . . . Each day, millions of children suffer from the scourges of poverty and economic crisis—from hunger and homelessness, from epi­demics and illiteracy, from the degradation of the environment. . . . Each day 40,000 die from malnutrition and disease, including immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), from lack of clean water and inadequate sanitation. —World Declaration on the Survival, Protection, and Development of Children and Plan of Action for Implementing the World Declaration (adopted by the World Summit for Children in New York, 30 September 1990)

Children are the future. Investing in children's education, health, and well­being and protecting them from harm and exploitation strengthens local com­munities and contributes to sustainable national development. Nothing could be simpler. But the reality for children in much of the world is stark, and pow­erlessness obscures their condition. In 1990 world leaders taking part in the World Summit for Children noted that "each day, countless children around the world are exposed to dangers that hamper their growth and development." Twelve years later, when the UN General Assembly met in a special session to renew the appeal to the international community to give every child a bet­ter future, the condition of many of the world's children had not appreciably changed. More

United Nations As Peacekeeper And Nation-Builder edited by Li Lin Chang, Nassrine Azimi  (UNITAR-IPS Peacekeeping Conference: Martinus Nijhoff) In the wake of the Iraq War, what lies ahead for the United Nations as peacekeeper and nation-builder? What lessons were learnt in Afghanistan and Iraq, what reforms could they entail, how do UN efforts fare as compared with those of the United States, and what will be, in the next decade, the most pressing challenges confronting the Organization? Will the United Nations, in its current form and within the new global power structure, be able to remain relevant, retain its ideals and still respond meaningfully to mounting international tensions? More

Making Sense of Political Ideology: The Power of Language in Democracy by Bernard L. Brock (Communication, Media, and Politics: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) explores the erosion of ties among ideology, language, and political action. Analyzing political language strategies, it shows how to dissect language so we can better understand a speaker's ideology. The authors define four political positions radical, liberal, conservative, reactionary and apply their techniques to contemporary issues such as the war on terrorism. They emphasize the dangers of staying trapped in political gridlock with no consensus for governmental direction and propose that the ability to identify and bridge positions can help political communicators toward constructing coalitions and building support for political action. More

The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen (Chelsea Green Publishing Company)  

Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions. – Primo Levi

As readers of the acclaimed A Language Older than Words can attest, Derrick Jensen is a public intellectual of rare abilities. In The Culture of Make Believe, Jensen sets the bar as high as possible, examining the atrocities that characterize so much of our culture – from modern slavery and corporate misdeeds to manufacturing disasters and the destruction of the natural world.

Jensen takes no prisoners. Interweaving political, historical, philosophical and deeply personal perspectives, Jensen argues that only by understanding past horrors can we hope to prevent future ones. Exploring the lines of thought and experience that connect the atrocities of our culture throughout history, Jensen leads us on an extraordinary journey from early twentieth-century lynchings in the United States to today’s death squads in South America .

The Culture of Make Believe deftly weaves together history, philosophy, environmentalism, economics, literature and psychology. Jensen focuses in on the dangers of abstraction and the economics that result from our viewing people and things as sources of profit and elements in systems. Therefore he chooses to look at the particular, telling many stories in great detail. He has the ability to forge these events into an emotionally compelling and devastating critique of the intellectual, psychological, emotional and social structures of Western culture.

What he comes up with is

• The valuing of production over life.
• Racism, hatred of women, and contempt for nature.
• A world in which hatred and destruction come easily.

He finds that the sources of the values that permeate our society are in imperialism, slavery, the rise of global capitalism, and the ideologies of possessiveness and consumerism.

Jensen's solution is a return to the simple life, perhaps much like that of the hunter-gatherers, yet he knows that such a turn must be "the end of civilization." At the end of the preface, Jensen writes: “This book is a weapon. It is a gun to be put into the hands of all of us who wish to oppose these atrocities, and a manual on how to use it. It is a knife to cut the ropes that bind us to our ways of perceiving and being in the world. It is a match to light the fuse.”

The Culture of Make Believe is as impeccably researched as it is intense, with conclusions as far-reaching as they are shocking. What begins as an attempt to reconsider the nature of hatred soon explodes into a reckoning with the very heart of Western civilization.

The Culture of Make Believe is a masterpiece. - Frances Moore Lappe

Read this book. Get it for everyone you care about. - Inga Muscio

European Union

A Chronological History of the European Union 1946-2001 by W. F. V. Vanthoor (Edward Elgar) This fully revised and updated edition of a seminal reference work provides a detailed chronological account of the development of European integration. The history of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which began immediately after World War II, is recounted in the form of a descriptive summary of the most significant events, measures, arrangements and conferences. The chronology concludes at the end of 2001 with what is arguably one of the most important events in European history; the introduction of euro notes and coins in twelve nation states. More

Legal Memories and Amnesias in America's Rhetorical Culture by Marouf Hasian Jr. (Polemics Series: Westview) critically examines the rhetoric of law--specifically, the shifting lines between the notions of liberty and license. Hasian, Jr. explores how such issues as immigration, labor, national identity, race, and genetics have caused society to change how it thinks about, and uses, laws. More

Political Theologies in Shakespeare’s England: The Sacred and the State in Measure for Measure by Debora Kuller Shuger (Palgrave) offers a defining reinterpretation of English political thought in the aftermath of the Reformation. Debora Kuller Shuger focuses not on the tension between Crown and Parliament but on the relation of the sacred to the state. The book examines Measure for Measure, for the issues at the heart of this play also shape the deep structure of English politics in the aftermath of the Reformation. More

Radical Christian Writings: A Reader by Andrew Bradstock, Christopher Rowland (Blackwell) There has long been a tradition in the Christian church which has discerned in the scriptures an imperative towards radical political action. Beginning with the Fathers and their writings on the community of goods, it can be traced through the mystics of the middle ages and radical reformers and Puritans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to Christian socialists, liberation theologians and social activists of more recent times. More

Peace Skills: Manual for Community Mediators by Ronald S. Kraybill, Alice Frazer Evans (Jossey-Bass) & Peace Skills: Leader’s Guide by Ronald S. Kraybill, Alice Frazer Evans (Jossey-Bass) What constitutes a leader in our world today? Is it someone who positively represents us in our community or perhaps the person we elect to characterize us as a country? A leader can be anyone from the head of our church to the president of the school our child attends. Given the conflicts we are sometimes faced with in our own communities or on a global level, we can always use more leaders to help us find solutions. Developed out of the Mennonite commitment to peaceful resolution to conflicts, Kraybill and Evans infuse years of practical community building experience into these workbooks. More

Deviance

The Politics of Deviance by Anne Hendershott (Encounter Books) Until the 1960s, sociologists had asserted that a willingness to identify deviance, or what constitutes appropriate behavior, was indispensable to the process of generating and sustaining cultural values, clarifying moral boundaries, and promoting social solidarity. Yet today, after three decades of lacerating debate, shifts in values and social relations, and questioning social authority, the subject has virtually disappeared from sociology's radar screen. Deviance, in the famous phrase of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been "dumbed down."
In The Politics of Deviance, Anne Hendershott, a leading sociologist herself, tries to understand how this major change in the way we see our world occurred. How did we adopt such different views of human nature and personal responsibility? How did we "medicalize" what was once proscribed behavior? While in the past there was a moral consensus that conditioned our attitudes toward teenage sex, suicide, substance abuse, and other questionable behaviors, Hendershott points out that today it is pressure groups that define and redefine deviance. ("As I write these words," she says at one point in the narrative, "the advocacy of the North American Man-Boy Love Association is invisibly changing the way we see pedophilia.") As they succeed in redefining our attitudes toward their "clients," these groups significantly altered our view of each other and of our world.

Arguing against the grain of her own discipline, Anne Hendershott asserts the value and strength of the most important of all determinants of behavior—social norms and the commitment to accept them. The Politics of Deviance maintains that definitions of deviance that rely upon reason, and not emotion or political advocacy, are indispensable to the process of generating and sustaining cultural values and reaffirming the moral ties that bind us together.
Hendershott carefully develops the argument that deviant behavior has become acceptable at the expense of the well-being of society. Her arguments for the destructive acceptance of pedophilia, euthanasia, and homosexuality are equally supported by the statistics she sites for each subject. However there are equally good arguments to be made to counter her examples. To lump pedophilia with euthanasia and homosexuality shows such bias that I would consider fact checking this author’s statements.

The book closes with an argument for the distinction between right and wrong behavior. "In the aftermath of September 11, President George W. Bush repeatedly called the terrorist acts 'evil' and those who perpetrated them 'evildoers,'" writes Hendershott. If Bush had said this before that fateful day, she says, his statements would have been called dogmatic and unnecessarily accusatory. Now that so many innocent civilians have been murdered, few can deny that there is a battle between good and evil, and evil is the deviant of the two. It must be recognized for what it is in order to be defeated; otherwise, there would be no merit for retaliation.

Marx

 Marx’s Capital by Ben Fine, Alfredo Saad Filho, 4th edition (Pluto Press) This brilliantly concise book is a classic introduction to Marx's key work, Capital. In print now for over a quarter of a century, and previously translated into many languages, the new edition has been fully revised and updated, making it an ideal modern introduction to one of the most important texts in political economy.

The new edition ... should be the definitive introduction for the next twenty years.' Professor John Weeks, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Marx’s Capital was originally written in the early 1970s and was very much a product of its time. Then, in Britain and elsewhere, an interest in Marx's political economy was awakened after several years of intense repression under the guise of the 'cold war'. This interest grew, and was fed by the left-wing movements sweeping across the world, the evident decline of the world capitalist economy, and the rejection of traditional theory's explanations of the collapse of the post-war 'boom'. Much has changed since then, and successive editions of this book have, in their own way, reflected the shifting fortunes of political economy.

It is years since the previous edition was published, but the reason for launching this fourth edition runs deeper than the exhaustion of old stock. It anticipates, and hopefully in its own way contributes to, a revival of political economy in general and of Marxist political economy in particular. Such optimism is based on a number of factors.

First, while mainstream economics has tightened its intolerant grip on the discipline, dismissing heterodoxy as failing the tests of mathematical and statistical rigour, there are increasing signs of dissatisfaction with the orthodoxy. There is a growing search for alternatives among those studying economics and the other social sciences.

Second, following the predominance of post-modernism and neoliberalism in setting intellectual agendas across the social sciences over the past two decades, there is now a reaction against the extremes of their worst excesses in theory and practice. Critical thought has turned towards understanding the nature of contemporary capitalism, as most notably reflected in the rise of concepts such as glob­alisation and social capital over the past decade. Inevitably, the result is to raise the question of the economy outside of the discipline of economics itself, and to seek guidance from political economy.

Third, the long period of relative stagnation following the breakdown of the post-war boom, and the rise of post-modernism and neoliberalism, have had the paradoxical effect of allowing the capitalist economy to be perceived as engaging in business as usual even if on a sluggish basis. The eruption of financial crises over the past decade has shattered this perspective and brought to the fore the par­ticularly prominent role being played by finance. The systemic relations between finance and industry, or the rest of the economy more generally, should occupy a prominent place in the subject matter of political economy.

Fourth, material developments have also promoted the case for political economy. These include: the growing realisation that environmental degradation, most notably through global warming, is intimately related to capitalism; the collapse of the Soviet Union but the recognition that capitalism has not furnished a progressive alternative even on its own narrow terms; and the eruption of what appear to be most conveniently described as imperial wars even if fought under the name of anti-terrorism or provision of human rights.

Last, if by no means least, the TINA (there is no alter-native) of neoliberalism has now become countered by the TINOA (there is no other alternative) of the so-called Third Way. While still a magnet for those who seek a reformist politics within the confines of capitalism, Third Wayism is already tarnished in ideology and in deed. The case for socialism needs to be made as never before, and it rests upon political economy both for its critique of capitalism and for the light it sheds on the potential for alternatives.

Each of these issues is newly addressed to a greater or lesser extent in this new edition. But the main purpose of this book remains to provide as simple and concise an exposition of Marx's political economy as the complexity of his ideas allows. Because it is constrained to be short the arguments are condensed but remain simple; neverthe­less, some of the material will require careful reading, par­ticularly the later chapters. Not surprisingly, the text has increased in size, doubling from its original length of 25,000 words, as new topics have been added, drawn both from Marx's own political economy and its contemporary relevance. Other additions include chapter-by-chapter high-lighting of controversies, issues for debate and correspon­ding further readings, which will offer guidance to those interested in more scholarly texts. It is with regret that this has led to the current edition losing much of the simplicity of the previous ones but, for ease of reading, footnotes and references have again been omitted. This (hopefully minor) difficulty is perhaps compounded by the occasional references to how Marx's political economy differs from orthodox economics, placing some strain on the non-economist. But, hopefully, such difficulties can be overlooked where necessary and, otherwise, offer compensating insights.

For the fourth edition, I have been joined by Alfredo Saad-Filho as co-author. This has been in order to refresh the text that remains from earlier editions and to add refreshing new text drawing on Alfredo's significant con­tribution to value theory. We have maintained a close intellectual relationship for many years, developing a mutual and common understanding of Marx's political economy as is reflected in this new edition of the book.

Biography

Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver by Scott Stossel, (Smithsonian Institution Press) 40 b/w photographs. An illuminating biography of the man who has arguably touched more lives than any American since FDR.

Working for four presidents over six decades, R. Sargent "Sarge" Shriver founded the Peace Corps, launched the War on Poverty, created Head Start and Legal Services for the Poor, started the Special Olympics, and served as ambassador to France. Yet from the moment he married Joseph P. Kennedy's daughter Eunice in 1953, Shriver had to navigate a difficult course between independence and family loyalty that tended to obscure his incredible achievements. Scott Stossel, through complete access to Shriver and his family, renders the story of his life in cinematic detail. Shriver's myriad historical legacies are testaments to the power of his vision and his ability to inspire others. But it is the colorful personality and indomitable spirit of the man himself—traits that allowed him to survive the Depression, WWII, and the Kennedy family—that will inspire readers today to expand the "horizons of the possible."

R. Sargent Shriver has arguably touched more lives than any living American. He led the famed "Talent Hunt" that recruited President Kennedy's cabinet. He created and launched the Peace Corps. He spearheaded the War on Poverty. He founded Head Start, Job Corps, VISTA, Legal Services for the Poor, and—together with his wife—the Special Olympics. In addition, as ambassador to France under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, he single-handedly eased America's strained relations with Charles de Gaulle during a crucial period of the cold war. As former President Bill Clinton has said, "In my lifetime, America has never had a warrior for peace and against poverty like Sargent Shriver." Yet for all his many accomplishments, Shriver's name is sur­prisingly little known. Why? Because from the moment he married JFK's sister Eunice in 1953, Shriver had to steer a dif­ficult course between independence and loyalty to the Kennedy family that tended to obscure his achievements. In Sarge, the first full-scale biography of this remarkable man, Sargent Shriver takes his deserved place at center stage during an extraordinary time in American politics.

With a finely tuned sense of the era, Atlantic Monthly sen­ior editor Scott Stossel documents Shriver's early interest in international affairs as America grappled with a burgeoning sense of global responsibility after World War II. He tracks Shriver's evolution from a young World War II navy veteran to an employee of the towering Joseph P Kennedy, at once his boss and future father-in-law, who pressed his daughter Eunice to marry after years of courtship by Shriver. When Sarge and Eunice did marry, the professional and personal spheres of his life merged in a unique way that few could have handled. From then on, Shriver labored to navigate family politics while charting his own ambitious course.

And what a course it was. To look at the lasting legacy of the Kennedy and Johnson eras is to see Shriver's mark everywhere. Between 1961 and 1968, Shriver launched agency after agency, program after program with an energy and a cumulative impact not seen since FDR's New Deal. This book recounts the dramatic founding of the Peace Corps, which became the crown jewel of the New Frontier, and provides the first comprehensive account on record of the successes and political tribulations of Johnson's War on Poverty. Here, too, are new revelations of the aggressive behind-the-scenes jockeying for power, as Bobby Kennedy and LBJ each vied to claim JFK's mantle—a mantle that, as Stossel shows, Sargent Shriver may in some sense have been best suited to assume. This is also a story of what might have been and of what nearly was: In his riveting account of the 1968 Democratic national convention, Stossel reveals that if Kennedy family politics had not gotten in the way, Shriver (and not Edmund Muskie) might have been Hubert Humphrey's running mate—and changed the course of history by beating Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.

Drawing on exclusive access to Shriver family papers and on hundreds of hours of interviews over seven years with Shriver, this is the first and likely the only authorized biog­raphy we will have of a Kennedy family member of JFK's generation. Like Robert Dallek's An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, Sarge raises important questions about government in our time and about whether "electability" and "effective leadership" can coexist in the same person. In this brilliant debut, Scott Stossel delivers the full measure of the man, making this life-and-times biography required reading for anyone interested in 20th-century American history. 

Nasser: The Last Arab by Said K. Aburish (Thomas Dunne Books) Since the death of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970 there has been no ideology to capture the imagination of the Arab world except Islamic fundamentalism. Any sense of completely secular Arab states ended with him and what we see today happening in the Middle East is a direct result of Western opposition to Nasser's strategies and ideals.

Nasser is a fascinating figure fraught with dilemmas. With the CIA continually trying to undermine him, Nasser threw his lot in with the Soviet Union, even though he was fervently anti-Communist. Nasser wanted to build up a military on par with Israel's, but didn't want either the '56 or '67 wars. This was a man who was a dictator, but also a popular leader with an ideology which appealed to most of the Arab people and bound them together. While he was alive, there was a brief chance of actual Arab unity producing common, honest, and incorruptible governments throughout the region.

More than ever, the Arab world is anti-Western and teetering on disaster, and this examination of Nasser's life is tantamount to understanding whether the interests of the West and the Arab world are reconcilable.

Nasser is a definitive and engaging portrait of a man who stood at the center of this continuing clash in the Middle East.

Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran by Mark J. Gasiorowski, Malcolm Byrne (Syracuse University Press) Mohammad Mosaddeq is widely regarded as the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran's modern history. Mosaddeq became prime minister of Iran in May 1951 and promptly nationalized its British-controlled oil industry, initiating a bitter confrontation between Iran and Britain that increasingly undermined Mosaddeq's position. He was finally overthrown in August 1953 in a coup d'état organized and led by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, along with British intelligence. This coup initiated a twenty-five-year period of growing dictatorship in Iran, leaving many Iranians resentful of the U.S.—legacies that still haunt relations between the two countries today.

Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran examines the turbulent political climate that prevailed in Iran during Mosaddeq's tenure, the confrontation between Iran and Britain for control over Iran's oil, the strategic considerations that led U.S. officials to intervene, and the details of the coup itself. Based on exhaustive research by leading academic experts in the field, this is the most authoritative account of the tragic events that led to the overthrow of Mosaddeq. With the recent declassification' of CIA and other documents regarding the events of 1953 in Iran, there is an opportunity for new in-depth analysis into not only the coup d'état itself but also the events that led up to it.

In a major address on U.S.-Iran relations in March 2000, timed to coincide with the traditional Persian New Year (1378/1379), U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright made the following statement: "In 1953, the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq. . . . The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons, but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.."

Albright's remarks were the first public acknowledgment by a senior American official of Washington's part in the coup. Yet, Iran's reaction was mostly negative. The secretary of the influential Expediency Council called the speech "a new chapter" in U.S.-Iran relations. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, ripped the admission on 1953 as "deceitful" and complained that it "did not even include an apology." 2 Both sides' comments reflected the perpetuation of deep sensitivities toward the event almost half a century later.

In fact, the "28 Mordad 1332" coup, as it is known by its Persian date, was a watershed for all of the countries concerned. The joint U.S.-British operation marked the denouement of what began as a popular drive to assert Iran's sovereign control over its own resources by nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIDC), Britain's largest overseas concern, which had dominated Iran's petroleum industry for years. Mohammad Mosaddeq, a charismatic politician from a wealthy landowning family, had long championed national in-dependence and constitutional rule. For his opposition to the self-styled Pahlavi dynasty, whose regime, established in 1925, he considered corrupt and

unconstitutional, he spent several years in political exile, including brief periods in jail. After the 1941 ouster of Reza Shah Pahlavi, ironically at the hands of the Soviet Union and Great Britain, he was freed from prison and staged a speedy political comeback. In late April 1951, Iran's new monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Reza Shah's son), acquiesced to public pressure and appointed Mosaddeq prime minister at the head of a coalition of reform-oriented forces called the National Front. Three days later, the shah signed into law Iran's nationalization of the AIDC.

But this was just the beginning of the struggle. The AIOC immediately staged an economic boycott, with backing from the other major international oil companies, while the British government started an aggressive, semicovert campaign to destabilize the Mosaddeq regime. With the expansion of the cold war, the United States also stepped into the dispute. Although ostensibly neutral, the Truman administration quietly abided by the boycott. As U.S. worries over Iran's political and economic deterioration increased, patience with Mosaddeq wore thin. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in

January 1953, the United States launched a more aggressive assault against world communism, and within two months the new administration had approved the concept of a joint U.S.-British operation to remove Mosaddeq from office. The coup, code-named TPAJAX, finally got underway in mid-August 1953. After a disastrous beginning, followed by several days of mass confusion, the coup plotters managed to turn their fortunes around. By noon on August 19 pro-shah crowds had control of the streets, and retired army major general Fazlollah Zahedi, handpicked to replace Mosaddeq by the coup plotters, had declared himself the new prime minister.

The effects of the coup resonated on many levels. Domestically, it brought to an end a vibrant chapter in the history of Iran's nationalist and democratic movements. For all of the troubles that arose during his premiership, Mosaddeq came to symbolize for many the principle of opposition to Great Power intrusions on Iranian independence. Despite his uncompromising drive to expand his powers during his final months in office, he was also admired by certain sectors for continuing the tradition of the Constitutional Revolution and for advocating the political rights of Iranian citizens against the authority of the shah. His removal signaled the beginning of the end of the country's brief experience with democracy. In the years following the coup, the shah reasserted his position with respect to the Majlis and the government and cracked down on dissidents, and over the course of the next decade he steadily expanded his authority to the point of establishing a virtual dictatorship. One of the consequences of the shah's accretion of power was the elimination of any opportunity for the development of even a moderate political opposition inside Iran. With no outlet for dissent, animosities grew, and radicalism built to the point of explosion during the 1978 revolution.

Aside from influencing the direction of Iran's internal politics, the coup and its aftermath affected U.S. policies and standing in Iran as well. The United States replaced Britain as the predominant outside power shaping events inside Iran. But this was a two-edged sword. Because of its role in the coup, many Iranians came to identify Washington as the shah's all-powerful patron, and it was assumed that Washington implicitly supported his repressive actions, regardless of U.S. attempts in subsequent years to curb the regime's excesses. This virtu-ally guaranteed that burgeoning hostility toward the shah would also be directed against the United States when the revolutionary Islamic regime came to power in 1979.

Similarly, Washington's role in the coup tarnished America's reputation with other moderate forces in the Middle East. For example, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who once had been willing to discuss common security goals with John Foster Dulles, undoubtedly drew the clear lesson from Iran's experience that he could not act passively over the Suez issue in the face of Anglo-U.S. imperialism. The hopes of the Truman administration and even President Eisenhower that the United States would be seen as the defender of regional aspirations for independence began to seem especially hollow after August 1953. Such hopes were genuinely held, but ultimately they paled next to perceived threats to U.S. security. American officials at first rejoiced over the coup's success—albeit behind closed doors—seeing it as a vindication of the concept of covert intervention. With a remarkably modest investment, the United States had kept a vital cold war asset from falling into the communist camp. Surely the same tactic would work elsewhere. Without full regard for Iran's unique circumstances in 1953, U.S. planners treated TPAJAX as a model for future clandestine operations, including operations in Guatemala in 1954, in Syria in 1958, and at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The coup's legacy thus reached far beyond the borders of Iran and lasted as long as—even longer than—the cold war itself.

Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran presents a series of essays on the Mosaddeq regime and the coup by leading experts who prepared them originally for an extraordinary conference that took place in Tehran in June 2000. Hosted by the Institute of Political and International Studies, a research arm of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the conference brought together scholars from Iran, the United States, and the former Soviet Union (participation by the visiting foreign scholars was supported by the George Washington University-based National Security Archive) to discuss the controversial oil nationalization period of 1951—53, including the coup d'état. Because of the historical sensitivity of the Mosaddeq era in Iran, the conference took on special significance as the first-ever multi-national airing of the subject in an Iranian public setting. As one indication of its favorable reception, government-run television broadcast major portions of the conference repeatedly to nationwide audiences throughout the remainder of the year.

The contributors later had the opportunity to refine and present their most recent findings at another conference in June 2002 hosted by the Middle East Centre at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and cosponsored by the National Security Archive. That event, "Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran," also featured a roundtable discussion with former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official John Waller, who coordinated U.S. participation in the coup from Washington; Sir Sam Falle of the British Foreign Office, who played a part in elaborating British plans to overthrow Mosaddeq; and Sir Denis Wright, also of the Foreign Office, who served as counsellor in Iran shortly after the coup.

Although all of the authors have written previously about their topics, this volume contains a wealth of new information that adds meaningfully to our understanding of the coup and its complex sociopolitical setting. The most important new source is a recently published CIA history of TPAJAX, written in March 1954 by Donald N. Wilber, one of the operation's chief architects. The New York Times published the still-classified 200-page document, Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq of Iran: November 1952—August 1953, in two installments on its Web site in 2000. That publication helped break a logjam on secrets that the CIA, along with British intelligence, have maintained for many years. In 1989, the agency refused to allow key documents describing U.S. participation in the overthrow to appear in the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers series, billed as "the official record of the foreign policy of the United States." 6 A decade later, nothing had changed. The CIA rebuffed a 1999 National Security Archive lawsuit seeking the Wilber document and another internal agency history, declassifying only a single sentence, on the grounds that further "disclosure could reasonably be expected to damage the national security" or "lead to unauthorized disclosure of intelligence sources and methods."' The U.S. and British intelligence communities, by steadfastly refusing to declassify important, but-no longer sensitive; historical information on the coup have consequently made it much more difficult to come to closure historically—and arguably politically—on the overthrow. Fortunately for history, and with no discernible harm to America's security, perhaps the most significant missing piece of the puzzle has now become available, and each chapter in this volume makes rich use of its many new details.

But it should also be noted that the authors go significantly beyond the CIA history to include other newly uncovered American and British records, Iranian sources, and even Soviet-era archival materials from Russian and Azerbaijani archives. In addition, the contributors conducted interviews with former U.S. and British intelligence officials and Iranians who participated in the events studied here. Drawing on these fresh sources, the book features chapters that discuss the historical context of the Mosaddeq regime, focus on the political and social background to the coup, and evaluate the numerous underlying factors as well as domestic and foreign actors that contributed to Mosaddeq's downfall.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes (Dover) unabridged republication of the edition published by Macmillan and Co., London, 1920.

A sever economic critique of the 1920 Treaty of Versailles written by the famous economist, who was a member of the British peace delegation until he quit with disgust. "The most important economic document relating to World War I and its aftermath." —John Kenneth Galbraith

In 1919, John Maynard Keynes participated in the negotiations of World War I's armistice at the Versailles Peace Conference. A senior Treasury official with the British delegation, Keynes strongly disagreed with terms of reparation imposed on Germany, arguing that German impoverishment would threaten all of Europe. Indeed, the imposition of an economic burden that Germany could not pay led to the dismantling of the European market, famine, social unrest, and, ultimately, to World War II.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace became an instant best-seller upon its initial publication, its controversial issues transform­ing Keynes into an overnight celebrity. Its real impact occurred sev­eral years later, when the wisdom of Keynes' reasoning was recog­nized at the close of World War II. The United States and Great Britain followed his advice and undertook an ambitious rebuilding program that paved the way for a solid democratic base in Germany, Italy, and Japan.

In addition to its excellent economic analysis of reparations, this vol­ume presents an insightful analysis of the Versailles conference's Council of Four (Georges Clemenceau of France, Prime Minister Lloyd George of Britain, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy). A prophetic view of the European marketplace in the early twentieth century by a brilliant economist, this volume represents a much-studied landmark of economic theory.

Race

Racial and Ethnic Relations in America 7th Edition  by S. Dale McLemore (Allyn & Bacon) This book focuses on the five largest ethnic groups in the U.S. - Mexican Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Japanese Americans, and Puerto Ricans. McLemore et al present historical information and contemporary examples of the largest ethnic and minority groups in the United States. Using the assimilation model, they analyze the strengths and weaknesses of this model in explaining how various racial and ethnic groups have been incorporated (or not) into U.S. society. Focusing on interracial and interethnic relations in the U.S., the authors give a sociological analysis of intergroup processes and the history of the interactions of these groups. Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the book illuminates the main racial and ethnic dilemmas faced in America as shown through the examples of these five groups. For anyone interested in Racial and Ethnic Relations, Minority Relations, Multicultural Education, or Ethnic Studies.

This text uses a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on sociology, history, psychology, and other social sciences to focus on the factors that contribute to the merger or separation of different racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.

The authors present historical information and contemporary examples of the largest ethnic and minority groups in the United States. They analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the assimilation model in explaining how various racial and ethnic groups have been incorporated (or not) into U.S. society. Focusing on interracial and interethnic relations in the U.S., McLemore and Romo give a sociological analysis of intergroup processes and the history of the interactions of racial and ethnic groups. Organized thematically rather than chronologically, the text illuminates the main racial and ethnic dilemmas faced in America.

Features

• More than twenty different groups are discussed, including in-depth discussions of Mexican Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Japanese Americans, and Puerto Ricans.
• Includes coverage of other ethnic groups including the English, Irish, Germans, Italians, Russian and German Jews, Chinese, Vietnamese, Asian Indians, Koreans, Filipinos, Arabs, Swedes, South Africans, Canadians, Brazilians, and Kosovars throughout as they relate to the topic at hand.
• Retains the popular “Flashpoint” feature that highlights such divisive current issues as the debate over group differences in the inheritance of intelligence, the bilingual education debate, the debate over contemporary immigration, and the affirmative action debate.
• Includes a comprehensive review of immigration to America and immigration legislation.
• Helps students to understand the causes of prejudice and discrimination and to evaluate various proposals and programs for reducing them.

New to this Edition

• As a response to the growing Asian population in the United States over the past four decades, the 7/e expands its extensive coverage to include a new chapter on Asian Americans (Ch. 12) that discusses Chinese, Asian, Indian, Korean, and Filipino Americans
• Increased focus on global conflict and refugees to include both Vietnamese and Arab Americans.
• Relocates the chapters covering African Americans, the largest minority group in the U.S., to Chapters 6 and 7.
• The former chapter on prejudice and discrimination has been reduced and placed in an appendix, which will make it easier for teachers to assign the text material in a typical semester.
• Combines former Chapters 11 and 12 on Native Americans into a single, more concise chapter.
• New “Discussion Questions” at the end of each chapter are intended to stimulate open discussion and debate and engage students with the issues at hand regarding racial and ethnic relations.
• Further emphasizes divisions between whites and non-whites, whites as an ethnic group, Puerto Ricans as an example of a colonized group, and racial and ethnic relations in other countries.
• Updates the material on assimilation theory with current studies, such as the social construction of ethnic identity and the emergence of whiteness as an ethnic group. In addition, perspectives from other theories, such as contact theory, dual labor markets, segmented assimilation, and pan-ethnic identity are discussed.
• Incorporates the latest information on immigration, including the costs and benefits of immigration.

Ethnic tensions are prevalent throughout the world and, in many cases, are accompanied by open conflicts, including wars. Tensions and conflicts between Arabs and Jews, Rus­sians and Chechens, and various ethnic groups in the Balkans and Africa remind us that many countries throughout the world are characterized by racial and ethnic diversity. We are reminded, too, that, although the specific history of ethnic groups in the United States is unique, some aspects of the fascinating and important problems we will study are common to humankind.

Excerpt: This volume continues the basic strategy of discussion and analysis that was used in the previous editions. It focuses on interracial and interethnic relations in the United States and rests on ideas derived from (1) the sociological analysis of intergroup processes and (2) the history of the interactions of American racial and ethnic groups. We take this approach because the study of social processes—such as competition, conflict, segregation, stratification, accommodation, fusion, and separation—is inherently temporal. We believe that an understanding of the interactions of different racial and ethnic groups is most effectively grasped through an examination of the history of their rela­tions with one another.

Our processual-historical approach moves, broadly speaking, from the beginnings of contact among different groups in North America to the pressing racial and ethnic problems of the contemporary United States; but as we discuss various groups and issues, we must focus on more limited spans of American history. Along the way we consider a wide range of sociological issues such as racial and ethnic differences, various processes through which one group may be included within another, the reactions of natives to foreigners, various aspects of racism, racial and ethnic prejudice and discrimination, class and ethnic stratification, vertical mobility, stereotyping, social distance, authoritarianism, the effect of social pressures on behavior, segregation, desegregation, variations in economic adaptations to discrimination, and the processes through which ethnic groups form, organize, and disappear. Each of these topics, as well as a number of others, is introduced to advance the central ideas of the book.

We have maintained assimilation theory as the basis for our discussion of the ex­periences of different groups, but our analysis of new variations of assimilation theory has been given greater emphasis than previously, allowing us to illustrate more fully the complexity of the incorporation process. Following brief discussions in Chapters 1 and 2 of some fundamental ideas and theories, we present examples in Chapters 3 through 5 of the experiences of several groups of White immigrants who were mainly voluntary

entrants into the country and arrived before the twentieth century. These discussions also contain some preliminary analysis concerning two groups who entered the country involuntarily—Africans and Native Americans. The consequences for the members of an ethnic group of being brought into the country involuntarily are then explored in Chap­ters 6 through 10. These chapters are devoted to African, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Na­tive Americans.

Chapters 11 through 13 explore the experiences of seven racially distinctive groups that entered the United States more or less voluntarily or were refugees. These chapters focus on the experiences of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Asian Indian, Viet­namese, and Arab Americans. The final chapter closes the presentation with some con­jectures about the future of racial and ethnic relations in the United States that are suggested by our analysis and, also, looks briefly at the experiences of several other nations in dealing with racial and ethnic issues.

The main differences between the seventh edition and the sixth edition are as follows:

• Chapters 6 and 7 concerning African Americans have been substantially re-written and moved forward in the presentation.
• Chapters 8 and 9 on Mexican and Puerto Rican Americans and Chapter 10 on Native Americans also have been substantially rewritten.
• Sections on Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and Asian Indian Americans in Chapter 12 and on Arab Americans in Chapter 13 are entirely new.
• Chapter 11 on Japanese Americans now follows the chapters concerning the main groups of involuntary entrants and contains a new section on the "model minority" concept.
• The material concerning the reduction of prejudice and discrimination has been abridged and now appears as Appendix 2.
• All of the book's chapters have been reviewed and updated.

The choice of groups to be discussed is not intended to slight the members of the many other groups that might have been studied and have contributed in many different ways to the development of the United States. We have not intended to present a com­plete profile of any given group. The choices were dictated chiefly by our desire to high-light the main racial and ethnic dilemmas faced by the United States as seen through the lenses of a given set of Key Ideas. For this reason, you may find it is helpful to read the Key Ideas and Key Terms pertaining to a given chapter both before and after reading the chapter itself. This procedure may help you to distinguish between the central points of the discussions and the many details that are useful in understanding those points.

Contents: All chapters conclude with “Discussion Questions,” “Key Ideas,” “Key Terms,” and “Notes.”
1. Natives and Newcomers. An Overview of Assimilation in America. Development of Assimilation Theory. Race and Ethnicity
2. Together or Apart? Some Competing Views. Subprocesses of Assimilation. Gordon's Theory of Assimilation Subprocesses. Three Ideologies of Assimilation. An Antiassimilationist View: Blauner’s Theory of Internal Colonialism Two Antiassimilationist Ideologies: Separatism and Secessionism. Using the Models of Assimilation as Descriptions.
3. The Rise of Anglo American Society. The English Legacy. Indian-English Relations. Servants and Slaves. The Colonial Irish. The Colonial Germans. The Revolutionary Period.
4. The Golden Door. The First Great Immigrant Stream. Changing Patterns of Immigration. The Second Great Immigrant Stream. The Third Great Immigrant Stream.
5. Nativism and Racism. Nativism. Scientific Racism. Immigration Restriction. Contemporary Racism.
6. African Americans: From Slavery to Segregation. The Period of Slavery.
Immigrant or Colonized Minority? Emancipation and Reconstruction. The Restoration of White Supremacy. Migration and Urbanization. The Civil Rights Movement.
7. African Americans: Protest and Social Change. The Rise of Direct Action. Renewed Visibility of Black-White Conflict. African American Assimilation. African American “Success.”
8. Mexican Americans: From Colonized Minority to Political Activists.
The Colonial Experience. The Immigrant Model. Mexican Immigration and Native Reaction.
9. Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans: Identity and Incorporation.
Identification and Diversity. The Colonization of Puerto Rico. Cultural Assimilation: English and Spanish. Mexican American and Puerto Rican Success.
10. Native Americans: The First Americans. The English Penetration of the Continent.
Indian Removal. Plains Wars and Reservations. From Separatism to Anglo Conformity.
Cycling between Anglo Conformity and Cultural Pluralism. Pan-Indian Responses and Initiatives. Immigrant or Colonized Minority? Native American Assimilation American Indian “Success”
11. The Japanese Experience Japanese Immigration and Native Reactions. The Japanese Family and Community in America. War, Evacuation, and Relocation.
Japanese American Assimilation. Japanese American “Success.” The Model Minority Stereotype
12. Chinese, Asian Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Middle Eastern Arab Americans Chinese Americans Korean Americans Filipino Americans Asian Indian Americans
13. Vietnamese Americans, Arab Americans, and Resurgent Racism Refugees: An International Issue Vietnamese Americans.. Arab Americans
Resurgent Racism 14. The Future of Ethnicity. Further Reflections on Assimilation and Ethnicity. Consequences of Colonization and Immigration: An Alternative View. Some Implications of the Alternative View. Some Tentative Conclusions about Racial and Ethnic Relations in the United States. The Future of Ethnicity in the United States.
Across National Boundaries.
Appendices.
Selected Federal Immigration Laws; Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination  References. Name Index. Subject Index.

The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America by Joseph Graves (Dutton Books) A leading scientist proves once and for all that race does not exist and provides solutions to end racism.
While the public debate over the existence of race, racism, and affirmative action continues to rage, preeminent evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves will forever change how we think about race. According to his provocative argument, science cannot account for the racial categories used to classify people. He goes a step further to describe racism as an unintended consequence of evolution and offers creative, innovative ways to bring true equality to America.
The Race Myth debunks the ancient fallacies still held as fact and perpetuated in everything from damaging medical profiling to misconceptions about sports. Through accessible and compelling language, Graves reveals the impossibility that any group of humans now in existence has a separate genetic line of descent. The Race Myth also explains why defining a race according to skin tones or eye shape is woefully inaccurate and why applying these false categories to assumptions about IQ, behavior, or predisposition to disease has devastating effects.
Demonstrating that racial distinctions are social inventions, not biological truths, The Race Myth brings much-needed, sound science to one of America’s most emotionally charged debates.

 Copyright law

Der Schutz literarischer Urheberschaft im Rom der klassischen Antike by Katharina Schickert (Mohr Siebeck) Ancient Rome had no copyright law to protect literary works. Katharina Schickert does however show that these works were not completely unprotected. The ancient Romans created a system of social conventions which were so effective in protecting works from plagiarism and corruption that no law was required to supplement them. Since they believed that an author received his inspiration from the gods, they also thought that it was the author's right to decide upon how his work was to be presented to the public. After the presentation, the work was in the public domain and from this point on the readers and writers of that time did not oppose independent reproductions of literary works. Since making money was considered to be an unworthy goal for an author, these reproductions served the author's true purpose, which was to achieve immortality in the memory of his nation and of future nations. 

School Boards

School Board Battles: The Christian Right in Local Politics by Melissa M. Deckman (Georgetown University Press) In the "culture wars" taking place in the United States, one of the most interesting, if under-the-radar, battlegrounds is in local school board elections. Rarely does the pitch of this battle reach national attention as it did in Kansas when the state school board—led by several outspo­ken conservative Christians—voted to delete evolution from the state's science curriculum and its standardized tests in August 1999.

School Board Battles studies the motivation, strategies, and electoral success of Christian Right school board candidates, and gives a surpris­ingly complex picture of these candidates. She examines important questions: Why do conservative Christians run for school boards? How much influence has the Christian Right actually had on school boards? How do conservative Christians govern? School Board Battles is an in-depth and in-the-trenches look at an important skirmish in the culture wars—one that may well have a lasting impact on our nation's youth.

Supreme Court

Landmark Supreme Court Cases: The Most Influential Decisions of the Supreme Court edited by Roy Mersky, Gary R. Hartman, Cindy Tate Slavinski (Facts on File) Through its interpretations of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court issues decisions that shape American law, define the functioning of government and society, and address the most important issues of the day. Justices are nominated by the president, are confirmed by Congress, and receive lifetime appointments to their seats. No court in the country can overturn Supreme Court rulings. Famous cases such as Roe v. Wade, Plessy v. Ferguson, Dred Scott v. John F. A. Sandford, and Miranda v. Arizona are among the most important heard by the Court, but many others have also profoundly impacted American life. 

For students of American history and political science, Landmark Supreme Court Cases provides current, concise, and thorough summaries of more than 350 of the most important and influential U.S. Supreme Court cases. Ideal as a quick reference or starting point for further research, the book covers cases on such issues as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, civil rights, labor unions, abortion, antitrust and competition, due process, search and seizure, executive privilege, and more. Organized alphabetically by court case, each entry includes the case title and legal citation, year of decision, key issue, historical background, legal arguments, decision (majority and dissenting opinions), aftermath and significance, related cases, and recommended reading. Other features include a chronology of cases, an index of cases by parties and by popular titles, a subject index, a glossary of legal terms, and guidance on how to read a legal citation.