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The rise to power of populists like Donald Trump is usually attributed to the shifting values and policy preferences of voters-the demand side. Why Populism shifts the public debate on populism and examines the other half of the equation-the supply side. Kenny argues that to understand the rise of populism is to understand the cost of different strategies for winning and keeping power. For the aspiring leader, populism-appealing directly to the people through mass communication-can be a quicker, cheaper, and more effective strategy than working through a political party. Probing the long history of populism in the West from its Ancient Greek roots to the present, this highly readable book shows that the 'economic laws of populism are constant.' 'Forget ideology. Forget resentment. Forget racism or sexism.' Populism, the author writes, is the result of a hidden strategic calculus.
Local Government in Early America is a concise and thought-provoking exploration of the American desire for political participation, most notably in the 'town hall meeting.' A product of early New England democracy, this form of direct local participation remains one of the most celebrated, yet feared, institutions in our political life. Depending upon one's political perspective on the issue at hand, a lively town hall meeting can be the glorious epitome of grassroots activism or the wretched embodiment of reactionary zeal. For all of the media attention devoted to the conservative revolt against health care reform at town hall meetings across the country, the political right is late to gam...
The rhetoric of Revolutionary America successfully cast King George III as an oppressive tyrant who crushed his North American colonists through excessive fiscal demands and political constraints. Yet for nearly a century prior to the Revolution, the English king had occupied a vital and overwhelmingly positive role in the political imagination of his colonial subjects. In this insightful new book on the subject, Benjamin Price argues that for most of the eighteenth century North American colonists viewed themselves as Englishmen, loyal to the monarchy and to the English constitution as recast by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Price astutely analyzes the political ideology of kingship in colonial America, concluding that it was only on the very eve of the Revolution that most colonists rejected the vision of the king as a 'nursing father, ' that is, as a 'benevolent and just' protector of their lives, property, civil rights, and religious freedom. This fresh and exciting book should find a wide readership among historians of colonial America, early modern England, and Anglo-American political theory
"Opening Scripture provides a thorough and original account of ministerial and lay strategies for interpreting Scripture in the Massachusetts Bay. Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast literature and history of the period, Lisa Gordis moves deftly through discussions of major figures and events. This is a significant intervention in the study of Puritan New England."—Sandra M. Gustafson, University of Notre Dame What role did the Bible really play in Puritan New England? Many have treated it as a blunt instrument used to cudgel dissenters into submission, but Lisa M. Gordis reveals instead that Puritan readings of the Bible showed great complexity and literary sophistication—so...
A far-reaching re-interpretation of the origins of American judicial review.
Of crucial strategic importance to both the British and the Continental Army, Staten Island was, for a good part of the American Revolution, a bastion of Loyalist support. With its military and political significance, Staten Island provides rich terrain for Phillip Papas's illuminating case study of the local dimensions of the Revolutionary War. Papas traces Staten Island's political sympathies not to strong ties with Britain, but instead to local conditions that favored the status quo instead of revolutionary change. With a thriving agricultural economy, stable political structure, and strong allegiance to the Anglican Church, on the eve of war it was in Staten Island's self-interest to thr...
Richard B. Morris, an internationally known early American scholar, was a historian at both City College of New York and Columbia University. His dissertation, Studies in the History of American Law, helped establish American legal history as a field. This biography is based primarily upon Morris' extensive papers and the recollections of historians who knew him well.
Fifty-five men met in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a document that would create a country and change a world: the Constitution. Here is a remarkable rendering of that fateful time, told with humanity and humor. Decision in Philadelphia is the best popular history of the Constitutional Convention; in it, the life and times of eighteenth century America not only come alive, but the very human qualities of the men who framed the document are brought provocatively into focus—casting many of the Founding Fathers in a new light. A celebration of how and why our Constitution came into being, Decision in Philadelphia is also a testament of the American spirit at its finest.
The dramatic story of the debate over the ratification of the Constitution, the first new account of this seminal moment in American history in years.
Protestants: A History from Wittenberg to Pennsylvania, 1517-1740 presents a comprehensive thematic history of the rise and influence of the branches of Christianity that emerged out of the Protestant Reformation. Represents the only English language single-volume survey of the rise of early modern Protestantism from its Lutheran beginnings in Germany to its spread to America Offers a thematic approach to Protestantism by tracing its development within the social, political, and cultural context of early modern Europe Introduces innovative argument that the central dynamic of Protestantism was not its struggle with Catholicism but its own inner dynamic Breaks from traditional scholarship by arguing that the rise of Reformation Protestantism lasted at least two centuries Unites Old World and New World Protestant histories