In this work, Jane Mansbridge's fresh insights uncover a significant democratic irony - the development of self-defeating, contradictory forces within a democratic movement in the course of its struggle to promote its version of the common good. Mansbridge's book is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in democratic theory and practice.

An exciting yet relatively unknown episode in American labor history took place in New York City between 1965 and 1975. Rank-and-file members of numerous unions caught a "strike fever" as they challenged the entrenched power of some of the country's most powerful politicians, employers, and union leaders in a wave of contract rejections, wildcat strikes, and electoral campaigns. Workers in unions across New York wanted more than better contracts: they contested control of the work process, racism on the job, and workers' place in America's socioeconomic hierarchy while implicitly and explicitly demanding greater democratic control of their representative organizations. Some initial challenges were effective and succeeded in delivering better contracts and unseating undemocratic leaders. However, those early successes were short-lived. Glenn Dyer traces the way workers were met with employer recalcitrance and union attacks that proved too powerful to organize against. In the face of this resistance, workers retreated into a survivalist attitude of accommodation and resignation, contributing to the decline of social democratic New York and working-class power in the city. Ultimately, Dyer argues, the failures of the rank-and-file organizing efforts in New York City, which was the biggest center of organized labor in the country, shows how stunted workers' aspirations and numerous defeats not only uprooted the foundations of New York's uniquely social democratic polity but also ushered in a national era of increased working-class subservience that has resonance today.

"Reexamining feminist sexual politics since the 1970s-the rivalries and the remarkable alliances"--

"The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." John Milton, Paradise LostNew York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco is an intimate photographic journey to the pandemonium and paradise of New York City during the 1970s through the early 1990s. Carrying her camera everywhere, Meryl documented a tumultuous time in the city's history; epidemics of arson, AIDS, crack, and crime intensified by a paralyzing blackout, political and fiscal crisis. Nevertheless, Meryl's effervescent images are a personal memoir - love letters filled with compassion and humor mixed with angst, kept secret for decades. The viewer explores a serpentine-like adventure. Split seconds of a flash expose hedonistic hangouts filled with overtly sexual and drug activity, celebrities, and people out to have a good time. Daylight reveals the beauty of those who loved and thrived in the destruction of Bushwick. Unique to New York PARADISE LOST, Meryl reveals an insider's point of view of Bushwick's school life - students, staff, and families working together to create a safer space to learn and grow despite societal ills of poverty and prejudice. Meryl's photos show the beginnings of the local community and government working together to rebuild Bushwick. From one small neighborhood and a larger city on the brink- new music, art, fashion, literature, creative thinking, and culture emerge and remain influential today. Flash forward four decades - many bemoan the gentrification of cities like New York City, the renaissance of small towns and neighborhoods like Bushwick. There is nostalgia for a "realness" and a sense of community lost in the process of change. New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco is a story of discovery, tenacity, and the resilient human spirit that can inspire us today. Then and now, individuals and communities must work together locally and globally to recover from a crisis. From our losses, may we learn, preserve, create and appreciate with renewed strength.

The Ku Klux Klan has peaked three times in American history: after the Civil War, around the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and in the 1920s, when the Klan spread farthest and fastest. Recruiting millions of members even in non-Southern states, the Klan’s nationalist insurgency burst into mainstream politics. Almost one hundred years later, the pent-up anger of white Americans left behind by a changing economy has once again directed itself at immigrants and cultural outsiders and roiled a presidential election. In The Politics of Losing, Rory McVeigh and Kevin Estep trace the parallels between the 1920s Klan and today’s right-wing backlash, identifying the conditions that allow white nationalism to emerge from the shadows. White middle-class Protestant Americans in the 1920s found themselves stranded by an economy that was increasingly industrialized and fueled by immigrant labor. Mirroring the Klan’s earlier tactics, Donald Trump delivered a message that mingled economic populism with deep cultural resentments. McVeigh and Estep present a sociological analysis of the Klan’s outbreaks that goes beyond Trump the individual to show how his rise to power was made possible by a convergence of circumstances. White Americans’ experience of declining privilege and perceptions of lost power can trigger a political backlash that overtly asserts white-nationalist goals. The Politics of Losing offers a rigorous and lucid explanation for a recurrent phenomenon in American history, with important lessons about the origins of our alarming political climate.

As the cold war between the Klingon Empire and Cardassian Union intensifies, the United Federation of Planets embark on a controversial diplomatic solution that could change the entire future of the Star Trek galaxy. What begins as a discovery that would enable the Klingon Empire to reclaim a lost piece of its past becomes a prolonged struggle with the rapidly expanding Cardassian Union. Enter the Federation, whose desire to preserve interstellar stability leads Ambassador Curzon Dax to broker a controversial and tenuous peace—one that is not without opponents, including Lieutenant Elias Vaughn of Starfleet special ops. But there’s much more drama unfolding in the Betreka Nebula. Within the shadowy rooms of the Cardassian Obsidian Order, Klingon Imperial Intelligence, and even the Romulan Tal Shiar, secret scales are being balanced, and for every gain made for the sake of peace, there will come a loss.

Rerun Era is a captivating, propulsive memoir about growing up in the environmentally and economically devastated rural flatlands of Oklahoma, the entwinement of personal memory and the memory of popular culture, and a family thrown into trial by lost love and illness that found common ground in the television. Told from the magnetic perspective of Joanna Howard's past selves from the late '70s and early '80s, Rerun Era circles the fascinating psyches of her part-Cherokee teamster truck-driving father, her women's libber mother, and her skateboarder, rodeo bull-riding teenage brother. Illuminating to our rural American present, and the way popular culture portrays the rural American past, Rerun Era perfectly captures the irony of growing up in rural America in the midst of nationalistic fantasies of small town local sheriffs and saloon girls, which manifested the urban cowboy, wild west theme-parks, and The Beverly Hillbillies. Written in stunning, lyric prose, Rerun Era gives humanity, perspective, humor, and depth to an often invisible part of this country, and firmly establishes Howard as an urgent and necessary voice in American letters.

Why ERA Failed looks at the systemic problems of politics and the amending process. The author, Mary Frances Berry, considers the behavior of the two sides from the perspective of a historian and lawyer. She describes the history of the amending process, from the Constitutional Convention to the present day, and its application to the struggles for amendments concerned with the status of blacks after the Civil War, income tax, prohibition, child labor, and woman suffrage. Berry concludes that ERA approval was problematic at best and defeat predictable. Supporters did too little of what is required for ratification of a substantive proposal too late. Furthermore, the large number of state ratifications gained was deceptive. Support was eroding instead of increasing in the final stages of the campaign.

"Ellen Schrecker shows how universities shaped the 1960s, and how the 1960s shaped them. Teach-ins and walkouts-in institutions large and small, across both the country and the political spectrum-were only the first actions that came to redefine universities as hotbeds of unrest for some and handmaidens of oppression for others. The tensions among speech, education, and institutional funding came into focus as never before-and the reverberations remain palpable today"--

In today's fraught political climate, one thing is indisputable: the dream of the emerging Democratic majority is dead. How did the Democrats, who seemed unstoppable only two short years ago, lose their momentum so quickly, and what does it mean for the future of our two-party system? Here, RealClearPolitics senior analyst Sean Trende explores the underlying weaknesses of the Democratic promise of recent years, and shows how unlikely a new era of liberal values always was as demonstrated by the current backlash against unions and other Democratic pillars. Persuasively arguing that both Republicans and Democrats are failing to connect with the real values of the American people - and that long-held theories of cyclical political "realignments" are baseless - Trende shows how elusive a true and lasting majority is in today's climate, how Democrats can make up for the ground they've lost, and how Republicans can regain power and credibility. Trende's surprising insights include: The South didn't shift toward the Republicans because of racism, but because of economics. Barack Obama's 2008 win wasn't grounded in a new, transformative coalition, but in a narrower version of Bill Clinton's coalition. The Latino vote is not a given for the Democrats; as they move up the economic ladder, they will start voting Republican. Even before the recent fights about the public sector, Democratic strongholds like unions were no longer relevant political entities. With important critiques of the possible Republican presidential nominations in 2012, this is a timely, inspiring look at the next era of American politics.