Collection: Politics

Soon to be a streaming series ● In this dazzling work of history, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author follows Benjamin Franklin to France for the crowning achievement of his career

"In December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France." So begins an enthralling narrative account of how Benjamin Franklin--seventy years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French--convinced France, an absolute monarchy, to underwrite America's experiment in democracy.

When Franklin stepped onto French soil, he well understood he was embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. By virtue of fame, charisma, and ingenuity, Franklin outmaneuvered British spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered the Franco-American alliance of 1778; and helped to negotiate the peace of 1783. The eight-year French mission stands not only as Franklin's most vital service to his country but as the most revealing of the man.

In A Great Improvisation, Stacy Schiff draws from new and little-known sources to illuminate the least-explored part of Franklin's life. Here is an unfamiliar, unforgettable chapter of the Revolution, a rousing tale of American infighting, and the treacherous backroom dealings at Versailles that would propel George Washington from near decimation at Valley Forge to victory at Yorktown. From these pages emerges a particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country's bid for independence.

Talent management is the most evergreen of HR topics because finding and keeping the best talent is a constant business imperative. But talent management moves quickly, and you have to stay ahead of the trends to be successful at hiring, engaging, coaching, and retaining top talent. The SHRM Essential Guide to Talent Management is your professional desk reference and go-to guide, full of practical solutions, expert insights, and best practices to help you get unstuck when you're faced with any talent management challenge.

Sharlyn Lauby addresses hundreds of topics organized by the eight core Talent Management components identified by SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management:

- Strategic and Workforce Planning
- Talent Acquisition
- Onboarding and Employee Engagement
- Performance Management

Taking a fresh thematic approach to politics and society in Latin America, this introductory textbook analyzes the region's past and present in an accessible and engaging style well-suited to undergraduate students. The book provides historical insights into modern states and critical issues they are facing, with insightful analyses that are supported by empirical data, maps and timelines. Drawing upon cutting-edge research, the text considers critical topics relevant to all countries within the region such as the expansion of democracy and citizenship rights and responses to human rights abuses, corruption, and violence. Each richly illustrated chapter contains a compelling and cohesive narrative, followed by thought-provoking questions and further reading suggestions, making this text a vital resource for anyone encountering the complexities of Latin American politics for the first time in their studies.

The Covid-19 pandemic was, and remains, a global disaster - claiming countless lives and wreaking economic havoc that still reverberates today. But it could have been worse. Much worse. Author Stephen Davies contends the planet 'dodged a bullet' this time around. But he warns this was no black swan event: The conflicts in the Ukraine and the Middle East already threaten global stability. And the next existential threat to mankind could happen much sooner than we think - with the chances of it happening increasing exponentially. Here he analyses the potential catastrophes - from nuclear war and climate change to further pandemics, the misuse of Artificial Intelligence and more - that could jeopardise our planet and its people. In this fascinating and at times frightening work, he examines how we assess these risks - and what we can do about them. But Davies is no Jeremiah. He firmly believes the ingenuity, imagination and innovation of millions of people around the world will ultimately secure mankind's continued existence.

The concept of law lies at the heart of our social and political life, shaping the character of our community and underlying issues from racism and abortion to human rights and international war. Legal philosophy, or jurisprudence, explores the notion of law and its role in society, illuminating its meaning and its relation to the universal questions of justice, rights, and morality.

In this Very Short Introduction Raymond Wacks analyzes the nature and purpose of the legal system, and the practice by courts, lawyers, and judges. Wacks reveals the intriguing and challenging nature of legal philosophy with clarity and enthusiasm, providing an enlightening guide to the central questions of legal theory.

In this revised edition Wacks makes a number of updates including new material on legal realism, changes to the approach to the analysis of law and legal theory, and makes updates to historical and anthropological jurisprudence.

About the Series:
Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

Hard truths and surprising insights about our COVID-19 response from America's former top doctor.

When COVID-19 began spreading rapidly, the world was taken by surprise. As the ensuing pandemic raged, we faced one constant--a lack of consistent, scientifically sound, and trusted information about dangers, risks, and mitigation strategies that the average person could understand and put into practice to keep themselves and their families safe.

Politicians, opportunists, and agenda-driven media personalities spread misinformation for an array of purposes, leaving most of the public scratching their heads, wondering what was true and what wasn't. Now, the former Surgeon General of the United States--freed from the many constraints he worked under in public office--reveals critical lessons learned from both mistakes and successes overlooked during the pandemic. He explains what we need to know to create a safer environment for individuals, families, and communities, how we can respond better to the next threat, why we keep making the same mistakes, and why we must promote health equity for all.

As Dr. Adams explains, the best public health policies are the ones that begin at home and come about as people in local communities work together to find solutions that fit their specific priorities and needs. Only through this bottom-up, community-driven approach will we be able to turn down the volume on the distracting noise, finally make our way out of and recover from a once-in-a-century pandemic, and prepare ourselves for inevitable future health crises.

Written by the undisputed dean of U.S. denial and deception experts, Practise to Deceive is the most in-depth look at deception as a military strategy. Barton Whaley knew the history of denial and deception across time, disciplines, and culture. He was the foremost authority on the intricacies of denial and deception strategy and tactics. For Whaley, deception was a mind-game, requiring imagination, deep critical thought, a profound understanding of the enemy as well as one's self (a variation of Sun Tzu), and patience and fortitude. This book presents 88 vividly descriptive case studies to serve as a handbook for intelligence and military professionals. In Whaley's analysis, variations in guilefulness between opposing individuals or groups can be crucial in deciding who achieves victory in combat.

"The recipes in Zaatari are glorious. Passed down the generations from mother to daughter, cooking keeps the people of Zaatari camp connected to the towns and villages of the Syria they fled." -- Claudia Roden

On the Jordanian-Syrian border lies Zaatari Camp, the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world. Opened in 2012 to provide new arrivals with emergency relief, the camp quickly became a locus of Syrian culture and tradition. In this thriving community of over 80,000 people, the residents of Zaatari combine ingenuity and imagination to ensure that the glorious culinary traditions at the heart of Syrian culture continue to be observed and celebrated.

In this immersive culinary tour, Karen E. Fisher guides us through life at Zaatari, sharing its stories, its art, and its food. Authentically styled and stunningly photographed dishes accompany a vast array of recipes prepared by the camp's residents for family dinners and community celebrations -- and now for others to enjoy at home.

Both an introduction to Zaatari Camp and a robust cookbook, Zaatari: Culinary Traditions of the World's Largest Syrian Refugee Camp offers an intimate encounter with Syrian food practices and traditions as they have been handed down through generations.

The nationally acclaimed "engrossing, disturbing, at times heartbreaking" (Van Jones) book that shines a harsh light on the abusive world of juvenile prisons, by the award-winning journalist

"Nell Bernstein's book could be for juvenile justice what Rachel Carson's book was for the environmental movement." --Andrew Cohen, correspondent, ABC News

When teenagers scuffle during a basketball game, they are typically benched. But when Brian got into it on the court, he and his rival were sprayed in the face at close range with a chemical similar to Mace, denied a shower for twenty-four hours, and then locked in solitary confinement for a month.

One in three American children will be arrested by the time they are twenty-three, and many will spend time locked inside horrific detention centers that defy everything we know about what motivates young people to change. In what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an epic work of investigative journalism that lays bare our nation's brutal and counterproductive juvenile prisons and is a clarion call to bring our children home," Nell Bernstein eloquently argues that there is no right way to lock up a child. The very act of isolation denies children the thing that is most essential to their growth and rehabilitation: positive relationships with caring adults.

Bernstein introduces us to youth across the nation who have suffered violence and psychological torture at the hands of the state. She presents these youths all as fully realized people, not victims. As they describe in their own voices their fight to maintain their humanity and protect their individuality in environments that would deny both, these young people offer a hopeful alternative to the doomed effort to reform a system that should only be dismantled. Interwoven with these heartrending stories is reporting on innovative programs that provide effective alternatives to putting children behind bars.

A landmark book, Burning Down the House sparked a national conversation about our inhumane and ineffectual juvenile prisons, and ultimately makes the radical argument that the only path to justice is for state-run detention centers to be abolished completely.

BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times - The Washington Post - Fortune - Bloomberg

From two of America's most revered political journalists comes the definitive biography of legendary White House chief of staff and secretary of state James A. Baker III: the man who ran Washington when Washington ran the world.

For a quarter century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency or ran the White House without the advice of James Addison Baker III. A scion of Texas aristocracy who became George H. W. Bush's tennis partner, Baker had never worked in Washington until a devastating family tragedy struck when he was thirty-nine. Within a few years, he was leading Gerald Ford's campaign and would go on to manage a total of five presidential races and win a sixth for George W. Bush in a Florida recount. He ran Ronald Reagan's White House and became the most consequential secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. Ruthlessly partisan during campaign season, Baker became an indispensable dealmaker after the election. He negotiated with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad, rewrote the tax code, assembled the coalition that won the Gulf War, brokered the reunification of Germany, and helped bring a decades-long nuclear superpower standoff to an end.

Brilliantly crafted by Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, The Man Who Ran Washington is a page-turning study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late twentieth-century America and the story of Washington when Washington ran the world. Their masterly biography is necessary reading and destined to become a classic.

A California teacher outlines lessons from American heroes that instill renewed admiration of their achievements, provides guidelines for self-improvement, and sets us on a constructive path to recovering our past.

In his quarter century of teaching, Jeremy S. Adams has watched his students become increasingly disinterested in history and cynical about the American Experiment itself. Students today reject America's past, viewing it as a laundry list of corrupt people, oppressive institutions, and irrelevant out-of-date fables.

As an educator and a father, Adams feels a deep responsibility to restore young people's belief in the importance of American history, how it binds us as a nation and offers crucial insights to help us in the struggle to "become a more perfect Union." In Lessons in Liberty, he carves out a fresh and surprising approach to the past, highlighting the unique human details of iconic figures and the lessons they teach, such as:

Daniel Inouye, a Japanese American who carried out dangerous missions in World War II and later became a US Senator representing Hawaii, who exemplifies how true patriotism is never blind to injustice.

George Washington, whose lifelong struggle to conquer his temper makes him a model for self-help and self-improvement.

Eleven-year-old Clara Barton, whose experience helping her injured brother regain his health helped her develop the courage and ferocity she would need to pioneer nursing techniques during the Civil War.

With this beautifully written, non-partisan, deeply researched book, Adams reclaims history for a new generation, showing the surprising ways heroes as diverse as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Arthur Ashe, and Thomas Jefferson can speak to our lives today.

This compact history unspools the tumultuous global story that began with democracy's radical core idea: We can collaborate, as equals, to determine our own futures. Acclaimed political thinker John Keane traces how this concept emerged and evolved, from the earliest "assembly democracies" in Syria-Mesopotamia to European-style "electoral democracy" and to our uncertain present.

Today, thanks to our always-on communication channels, governments answer not only to voters on Election Day but to intense scrutiny every day. This is "monitory democracy"--in Keane's view, the most complex and vibrant model yet--but it's not invulnerable. Monitory democracy comes with its own pathologies, and the new despotism wields powerful warning systems, from social media to election monitoring, against democracy itself.

At this urgent moment, when despots in countries such as China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia reject the promises of democratic power-sharing, Keane mounts a bold defense of a precious global ideal.

A common sense field guide to understanding, surviving, and thriving in our time of complex chaos and crises.

Is this finally it? The end times?Because from COVID-19 to climate catastrophe to the looming AI revolution--not to mention the ever-growing background hum of rage, fear, and anxiety--it's starting to feel like the party we call civilization is just about over. The good news? It's always felt that way.

Drawing on evolutionary psychology, history, brain science, game theory, and more, cooperation theorist (and, coincidentally, zombie expert) Athena Aktipis reassuringly explains how we, as a species, are hardwired to survive big existential crises. And how we can do so again by leveraging our innate abilities to communicate and cooperate.

Pack a ukulele in your prep kit. Practice your risk-management skills. Enlist your crew into a survival team. And embrace the apocalypse. You might just enjoy it. Plus, it will help us build a better and more resilient future for all humankind.

A four-step process for effective equity practices in schools, with an array of professional development activities, leadership tips, and downloadable tools.

Recent years have brought new calls to dismantle discriminatory policies and practices in U.S. schools. But adopting an equity focus doesn't guarantee the desired results. There's a risk that doing equity will be toothless--surface level and designed more to avoid tension and blame than to build a better educational system.
In Leading Your School Toward Equity, veteran educator Dwayne Chism shows district, school, and teacher leaders a four-step process for taking equity work beyond talk and into effective action. You'll learn concrete ways to

* Define and clarify equity. Guide even reluctant staff to a consensus understanding of what equity is, why it's necessary, and what it will look like.
* Create productive discomfort. Use intentional dialogue to lead staff to a place where they can talk frankly about privilege, bias, racial inequality, and how these affect students' experience of schooling.
* Build efficacy. Help staff develop higher levels of individual and shared professional efficacy--the number one factor influencing equitable educational outcomes--and create an empowered group of educational equity allies united for results.
* Normalize action. Support the day-to-day use of an equity lens, a mindset that empowers all teachers to counteract stereotypes and rectify conditions that negatively affect students of color.

To make this complicated work a little easier, Chism provides an array of assessments, coaching guides, and activities to use with staff. If you're committed to creating a true equity-driven culture, if you're ready for courageous leadership, this book is for you.

Bitter Fruit is a comprehensive and insightful account of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. First published in 1982, this book has become a classic, a textbook case of the relationship between the United States and the Third World. The authors make extensive use of U.S. government documents and interviews with former CIA and other officials. It is a warning of what happens when the United States abuses its power.