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The Caliphate of Man: Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought
by Andrew F. MarchIslamist thinkers used to debate the doctrine of the caliphate of man, which holds that God is sovereign but has appointed the multitude of believers as His vicegerent. Andrew March argues that the doctrine underpins a democratic vision of popular rule over governments and clerics. But is this an ideal regime destined to survive only in theory?
Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy
by James HankinsJames Hankins challenges the view that the Renaissance was the seedbed of modern republicanism, with Machiavelli as exemplary thinker. What most concerned Renaissance political theorists, Hankins contends, was not reforming laws but shaping citizens. To secure the social good, they fostered virtue through a new program of education: the humanities.
The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City
by Juan DuA rural borderland just forty years ago, today Shenzhen is a city of twenty million and a technology hub. This success is attributed to its status as a Special Economic Zone, but no other SEZs compare. Juan Du looks to the past to understand why. It turns out that Shenzhen is no prefab “instant city,” but a place influenced by deep local history.
Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis
by Jiwei CiFour decades of reform fostered a democratic mentality in China. Now citizens are waiting for the government to catch up. Jiwei Ci argues that the tensions between a largely democratic society and an undemocratic political system will trigger a crisis of legitimacy, compelling the Communist Party to become agents of democratic change—or collapse.
Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War
by Vincent BrownTacky’s revolt, in modern-day Jamaica, was the largest slave uprising in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic. A strikingly modern guerilla conflict, the revolt inspired both fear of and sympathy toward black lives. Vincent Brown offers a gripping account of the fighting and its reverberations across an interconnected world.
Justice in Transactions: A Theory of Contract Law
by Peter BensonLegal thinkers typically justify contract law on the basis of economics or promissory morality. But Peter Benson takes another approach. He argues that contract is best explained as a transfer of rights governed by a conception of justice. The result is a comprehensive theory of contract law congruent with Rawlsian liberalism.
Legitimacy: The Right to Rule in a Wanton World
by Arthur Isak ApplbaumWhat makes a government legitimate? Arthur Isak Applbaum rigorously argues that the greatest threat to democracies today is not loss of basic rights or despotism. It is the tyranny of unreason: domination of citizens by incoherent, inconstant, incontinent rulers. A government that cannot govern itself cannot legitimately govern others.
The Rise of the Latino Vote: A History
by Benjamin Francis-FallonFrancis-Fallon returns to the origins of the U.S. “Spanish-speaking vote” to understand the history and potential of this political bloc. He finds that individual voters affiliate more with their particular ethnic communities than with the pan-ethnic Latino identity created for them, complicating the notion of a broader Latino constituency.
Catherine & Diderot: The Empress, the Philosopher, and the Fate of the Enlightenment
by Robert ZaretskyIn a dual biography crafted around the famous encounter between the French philosopher who wrote about power and the Russian empress who wielded it with great aplomb, Robert Zaretsky invites us to reflect on the fraught relationship between politics and philosophy, and between a man of thought and a woman of action.
Economy and Society: A New Translation (People, Markets, Goods: Economies And Societies In History Ser. #Volume 10)
by Max WeberKeith Tribe’s new translation presents Economy and Society as it stood when Max Weber died. One of the world’s leading experts on Weber’s thought, Tribe has produced a clear and faithful translation that will become the definitive English edition of one of the few indisputably great intellectual works of the past 150 years.
Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote
by Susan WareLooking beyond the national leadership of the suffrage movement, Susan Ware tells the inspiring story of nineteen dedicated women who carried the banner for the vote into communities across the nation, out of the spotlight, protesting, petitioning, and demonstrating for women’s right to become full citizens.
China and Japan: Facing History
by Ezra F. VogelChina and Japan have cultural and political connections that stretch back 1,500 years. But today they need to reset their strained relationship. Ezra Vogel underscores the need for Japan to offer a thorough apology for its atrocities during WWII, but he also urges China to recognize Japan as a potential vital partner in the region.
News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945 (Harvard historical studies ; #v. 190)
by Heidi J. TworekHeidi Tworek’s innovative history reveals how, across two devastating wars, Germany attempted to build a powerful communication empire—and how the Nazis manipulated the news to rise to dominance in Europe and further their global agenda. When the news became a form of international power, it changed the course of history.
Japan Rearmed: The Politics of Military Power
by Sheila A. SmithModern Japan is not only responding to threats from North Korea and China but is also reevaluating its dependence on the United States, Sheila Smith shows. No longer convinced they can rely on Americans to defend their country, Tokyo’s political leaders are now confronting the possibility that they may need to prepare the nation’s military for war.
The Public Option: How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality
by Ganesh SitaramanA solution to inequalities—in health care, retirement, education, recreation, communication—is as close as the public library, post office, community pool, or elementary school. The Public Option shows that opportunities to develop reasonably priced government-provided services that coexist with private options are all around us.
Statelessness: A Modern History
by Mira L. SiegelbergThe story of how a much-contested legal category—statelessness—transformed the international legal order and redefined the relationship between states and their citizens.Two world wars left millions stranded in Europe. The collapse of empires and the rise of independent states in the twentieth century produced an unprecedented number of people without national belonging and with nowhere to go. Mira Siegelberg’s innovative history weaves together ideas about law and politics, rights and citizenship, with the intimate plight of stateless persons, to explore how and why the problem of statelessness compelled a new understanding of the international order in the twentieth century and beyond.In the years following the First World War, the legal category of statelessness generated novel visions of cosmopolitan political and legal organization and challenged efforts to limit the boundaries of national membership and international authority. Yet, as Siegelberg shows, the emergence of mass statelessness ultimately gave rise to the rights regime created after World War II, which empowered the territorial state as the fundamental source of protection and rights, against alternative political configurations.Today we live with the results: more than twelve million people are stateless and millions more belong to categories of recent invention, including refugees and asylum seekers. By uncovering the ideological origins of the international agreements that define categories of citizenship and non-citizenship, Statelessness better equips us to confront current dilemmas of political organization and authority at the global level.
Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom
by Sarah A. SeoSarah Seo shows that the rise of the car, the symbol of American personal freedom, led to ever more intrusive policing, with devastating consequences for racial equality in our criminal justice system. Criminal procedures designed to safeguard us on the road undermined the nation’s commitment to equal protection before the law.
The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives
by Jen SchradieIn this counterintuitive study of digital democracy, Jen Schradie shows how the web has become another weapon in the arsenal of the powerful, and a potent weapon for conservative activists. Rather than leveling the playing field, the internet has tilted it in favor of the Right, where only the most sophisticated and well-funded players can compete.
Crime and Forgiveness: Christianizing Execution in Medieval Europe
by Adriano ProsperiA provocative analysis of how Christianity helped legitimize the death penalty in early modern Europe, then throughout the Christian world, by turning execution into a great cathartic public ritual and the condemned into a Christ-like figure who accepts death to save humanity. The public execution of criminals has been a common practice ever since ancient times. In this wide-ranging investigation of the death penalty in Europe from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, noted Italian historian Adriano Prosperi identifies a crucial period when legal concepts of vengeance and justice merged with Christian beliefs in repentance and forgiveness. Crime and Forgiveness begins with late antiquity but comes into sharp focus in fourteenth-century Italy, with the work of the Confraternities of Mercy, which offered Christian comfort to the condemned and were for centuries responsible for burying the dead. Under the brotherhoods’ influence, the ritual of public execution became Christianized, and the doomed person became a symbol of the fallen human condition. Because the time of death was known, this “ideal” sinner could be comforted and prepared for the next life through confession and repentance. In return, the community bearing witness to the execution offered forgiveness and a Christian burial. No longer facing eternal condemnation, the criminal in turn publicly forgave the executioner, and the death provided a moral lesson to the community. Over time, as the practice of Christian comfort spread across Europe, it offered political authorities an opportunity to legitimize the death penalty and encode into law the right to kill and exact vengeance. But the contradictions created by Christianity’s central role in executions did not dissipate, and squaring the emotions and values surrounding state-sanctioned executions was not simple, then or now.
The Origin of Empire: Rome from the Republic to Hadrian (History Of The Ancient World Ser. #4)
by David PotterStarting with the Roman army’s first foray beyond its borders and ending with Hadrian’s death (138 CE), David Potter’s panorama of the early Empire recounts the wars, leaders and social transformations that lay the foundations of imperial success. As today’s parallels reveal, the Romans have much to teach us about power, governance and leadership.
The Right to Do Wrong: Morality and the Limits of Law
by Mark OsielMuch of what we could do, we shouldn’t—and we don’t. Mark Osiel shows that common morality—expressed as shame, outrage, and stigma—is society’s first line of defense against transgressions. Social norms can be indefensible, but when they complement the law, they can save us from an alternative that is far worse: a repressive legal regime.
How Girls Achieve
by Sally A. NuamahThis bold and necessary book points out a simple and overlooked truth: most schools never had girls in mind to begin with. That is why the world needs what Sally Nuamah calls feminist schools, deliberately designed to provide girls with achievement-oriented identities. And she shows why doing so would help all students, regardless of their gender.
The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924
by Benny Morris Dror Ze’eviFrom 1894 to 1924 three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region’s Christian minorities. Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi’s impeccably researched account is the first to show that the three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia’s Christian population and create a pure Muslim nation.
Cold War Democracy: The United States and Japan
by Jennifer M. MillerDuring the occupation American policymakers identified elections and education as the wellsprings of a democratic consciousness in Japan. But as the extent of Japan’s economic recovery became clear, they placed prosperity at the core of a revised vision for their new ally’s future, as Jennifer Miller shows in this fresh appraisal of the Cold War.
In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School
by Jal Mehta Sarah FineAn award-winning professor and an accomplished educator, Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine take us beyond the hype of reform and inside some of America’s most innovative classrooms to show what is working—and what isn’t. In a world where test scores have been king, this boldly humanistic book offers a rich account of what education can be at its best.