In 1938 Harold E. Stassen was elected governor of Minnesota at age 31, an office he resigned in 1943 to enter the United States Navy at the height of World War II. In the postwar years he helped write the charter of the United Nations and, serving in the Eisenhower administration, very nearly achieved a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union. He is famously known as a perennial candidate for the Republican Party nomination for president, seeking it 10 times between 1944 and 1992.

A new investigation of the meteoric rise, lifetime of achievements, and unique persona of "boy wonder" and perennial candidate Harold E. Stassen

Comprehensive update of the leading Christian ethics textbook of the 21st century Ever since its original publication in 2003, Glen Stassen and David Gushee's Kingdom Ethics has offered students, pastors, and other readers an outstanding framework for Christian ethical thought, one that is solidly rooted in Scripture, especially Jesus's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. This substantially revised edition of Kingdom Ethics features enhanced and updated treatments of all major contemporary ethical issues. David Gushee's revisions include updated data and examples, a more global perspective, more gender-inclusive language, a clearer focus on methodology, discussion questions added

Believing Christians should direct their energies toward finding a set of criteria and a model for a "just peace" instead of "just war", Stassen bases his peace theory on the new reality of our world, recent Biblical interpretation, and on the experiences of people who lived in the face of oppression and nuclear threat.

A groundbreaking argument for recovering Jesus for Christian ethics.

Eisenhower cabinet member and confidant Stassen offers a personal account of the man and the policies that directed the country through the Cold War world of the 1950s. He describes the major events--the nomination and campaign, the Korean War, the McCarthy hearings, the East German famine relief effort, and the 1955 Geneva Summit--and reveals Eisenhower to have been a shrewd planner, a gifted communicator, and a seasoned leader. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In Living the Sermon on the Mount, theologian and award-winning author Glen H. Stassen helps us to see that the revolutionary ideas in the Sermon on the Mount about loving and caring for each other, living in peace, and acting justly are not unattainable ideals but a recipe for wholeness and healing in our human relationships and deliverance from the vicious cycles that we get stuck in.

A history of a remarkable political party that saw government as a practical tool for creating conditions in which individuals can thrive--and why its practices are needed today.

Harold Stassen (1907--2001) garnered accolades as the thirty-one-year-old "boy wonder" governor of Minnesota and quickly assumed a national role as aide to Admiral William Halsey Jr. during World War II. When Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in 1952, Stassen was named director of the Mutual Security Administration and then became the president's special assistant for disarmament. In this position, Stassen had the power to profoundly shape the country's foreign policy and became influential in early Cold War policy discussions about the limits and uses of conventional and nuclear weapons. In this nuanced biography, Lawrence S. Kaplan demonstrates that Stassen's role in Eisenhower's White House deserves more analysis than it has received from scholars. Stassen came to Washington advocating the total elimination of nuclear weapons, but he quickly came to recognize that this would not happen. He refocused his efforts, working for greater international transparency and communication. The liberal internationalism that Stassen espoused became embedded in Cold War policy for decades, and he consistently provided a voice for peace in an increasingly hawkish national security establishment. Stassen, in many ways, was his own worst enemy; his ambition and ego undermined his efforts and clouded his vision. His feuds with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were legendary, and while Dulles often prevailed in the meeting room, Stassen's vision of nuclear restraint was one that Eisenhower shared. Kaplan's study provides a new perspective on nuclear disarmament during a critical period in US history and sheds light on Eisenhower's approach to international relations.

"Frontiers and Ghettos is based on the idea that when it comes to ethnopolitical conflict, lousy is better than horrible. How outcomes better than horrible arise, despite ideological imperatives, hatreds, and predatory opportunities, is brilliantly analyzed in this empirically rich, vividly written, and provocative comparison of Serbian and Israeli policies toward Croatians, Muslims and Palestinians. A terrific book!"—Ian S. Lustick, author of Unsettled States, Disputed Lands "Abusive governments try to avoid leaving fingerprints on acts of repression, often using paramilitaries or death squads for deniability. James Ron reveals that territorial boundaries can serve a similar function. Abuse is more likely, he shows, as one crosses the frontiers of established state power, obscuring the signature of official action. This original and insightful book encourages us to expose cross-border involvement in human rights violations and re-establish official accountability."—Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch "With terrifying lucidity, Ron uses the experiences of Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Israel, and Palestine to examine how a state's definition of the boundary separating its favored population from a different people authorizes, channels, or inhibits its use of force. This veteran participant-observer uses first-hand observation tellingly."—Charles Tilly, author of Durable Inequality "Frontiers and Ghettos represents a major step forward in social science's effort to understand state violence. James Ron shows that while all states use violence, they do so differently in their well-policed interiors and at their margins. This book is powerful, timely, and important for both scholars, policy-makers, and those who would advance respect for human rights."—Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council "James Ron has written a strikingly clear and convincing study of the factors affecting controlled and uncontrolled state-directed violence in the current period, with an analysis that adds substantially to the sociology of the state. His book will be important for all those concerned—for scholarly reasons and for broader ones—with modern confrontations of world norms, state power and human rights. And its gripping accounts will be important for those concerned with the specific violent conflicts it examines, in Serbia and Israel."—John W. Meyer, Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, Stanford University "This ingenious and courageous comparison of the types of violence used by nationalist regimes should transform the way we think about borders and state sovereignty. In demonstrating that even the most unsavory governments can be sensitive to international norms and the appearance of legality, Ron also strikes a serious blow at standard policy prescriptions -- from imposing sanctions and isolation on offending regimes to offering autonomy packages and soft borders for ethnic minorities. This book deserves wide circulation and serious reflection."—Susan L. Woodward, author of Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War "As the horrific escalation of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories grips international headlines, the inability of commentators to locate these tragic events in a comparative analytical frame is striking. This book is an impressive exception. Ron's elegant comparative analysis of Serbia and earlier periods of Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes the dynamics of the present conflict and its future possibilities comprehensible in a way that few others have managed to do. It is a signal contribution to our understanding of modern state violence."—Peter Evans, Eliaser Chair of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley