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This important collection explores the social effects of popular American conspiratorial beliefs, featuring the work of 22 scholars representing multiple academic disciplines. This book aims to better understand the phenomenon of American conspiracism by investigating how people acquire their beliefs, how conspiratorial stories function in politics and society, the role of conspiracy theories in the formation of national identities, and what conspiratorial beliefs mean to individual believers. Topics include QAnon, the Boogaloo Boys, the satanic panic, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination, the Great Replacement Theory, anti-Catholic nativism, Flat Earth belief, Elvis Lives, COVID-19 denial, and much more. Each essay is accessibly and engagingly written without compromising quality. American Conspiracism is essential reading for students of psychology, political science, and U.S. history, as well as journalists, independent researchers, and anyone interested in American conspiracies.
While demagoguery is traditionally regarded as destabilizing and dangerous, this book shows how it can also be used to advance the common good. Most of us think that demagoguery is, by definition, bad. Relatedly, scholars almost invariably treat demagoguery as a divisive practice that appeals to what is worst in an audience at the expense of what is best for the public good. In Demagogues in American Politics, Charles U. Zug offers a historical analysis of the role of demagoguery in the American political system. Challenging the conventional wisdom, he argues that demagoguery is not an inherently bad form of leadership. Whereas classical thinkers had believed that demagoguery was always a threat to political order, the most sophisticated founders of the American Constitution-inspired by Enlightenment political philosophy-recognized that demagoguery, though dangerous, could be recruited by the Constitution to improve the political system. Through case studies drawn from the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court, this book argues that demagogic leadership can be deployed by public officials to advance the aspirations of constitutional democracy.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower is remembered by many as the originator of the American Interstate Highway System. He is also praised for restraining executive overreach, restoring the separation of powers, and presiding over an era of governmental equanimity and goodwill. In Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Federal Highway Act, Charles Zug contests all these assumptions. Through archival research, Zug shows that Eisenhower’s attempt to lead highway expansion during 1952–1955 ended in dismal failure. Far from championing the separation of powers, Eisenhower sought to marginalize Congress from the legislative process by secretly writing a transformative highway bill within the confines of his ...
This book, the third in a series on forgotten battles, challenges some of the most sacred myths taught in American schools. One is the concept that the US Constitution was conceived by idealists for the public good. New research, however, shows that most of the Founding Fathers were strongly motivated by their own financial self-interest and a desire to suppress highly democratic state legislatures that had provided relief to citizens facing taxes that were triple the rate charged under British rule. Turning Points also presents a fresh perspective on Indian tribes in Ohio and Indiana, who defeated two American armies sent to deny their claims to land that had been told was theirs forever. M...
In Persuading the Public, Anne Pluta rethinks the established narrative of presidential communication and offers a bold new way of thinking about how presidents have reached the American public. Most presidential scholars claim that the “rhetorical presidency,” in which presidents seek to engage directly with the public and appeal to the nation as the basis for governance, emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, shifting away from the constitutional norms of the nineteenth century when presidential communication was purely ceremonial and exceedingly rare. Pluta challenges this head-on by arguing that even the earliest presidents understood their unique relationship with the public ...
Again and again in the nation’s history, presidents of the United States have faced the dramatic challenge of domestic insurrection and sought ways to reconcile with the rebels afterward. This book is the first comprehensive study of how presidential mass pardons have helped put such conflicts to rest. Graham G. Dodds examines when and why presidents have issued mass pardons and amnesties to deal with domestic rebellion and attempt to reunite the country. He analyzes how presidents have used both deeds and words—proclamations of mass pardons and persuasive rhetoric—in order to foster political reconciliation. The book features in-depth case studies of the key instances of mass pardons ...
"On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed into law the Federal Highway Aid Act, the largest public works project in American history. Given the hurdles Eisenhower faced at every stage of the project's development, his decision to support it is quite surprising. Among numerous other challenges, Eisenhower's decision to support this unprecedented expansion of federal power had required him to break from the tradition of his own Republican Party, which had consistently opposed similar public works programs when New Dealers had pursued them in the 1930s and 40s. Years later, Eisenhower's support for highway expansion and other big-government programs served as a rallying cry for conservativ...
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A former U.S. senator joins a legal scholar to examine a hushed effort to radically change our Constitution, offering a warning and a way forward. Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism—the nation's first ever—has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power. In this important book, Feingold and Prindiville distill exte...