Society & Politics

What does democracy expect of its citizens, and how do the citizenry match these expectations? This Oxford Handbook examines the (read more)

What does democracy expect of its citizens, and how do the citizenry match these expectations? This Oxford Handbook examines the role of the citizen in contemporary politics, based on essays from the world's leading scholars of political behavior research. The recent expansion of democracy has both given new rights and created new responsibilities for the citizenry. These political changes are paralleled by tremendous advances in our empirical knowledge of citizens and their behaviors through the institutionalization of systematic, comparative study of contemporary publics--ranging from the advanced industrial democracies to the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, to new survey research on the developing world.

These essays describe how citizens think about politics, how their values shape their behavior, the patterns of participation, the sources of vote choice, and how public opinion impacts on governing and public policy. This is the most comprehensive review of the cross-national literature of citizen behavior and the relationship between citizens and their governments. It will become the first point of reference for scholars and students interested in these key issues. (hide)

Can presidents influence whether Congress enacts their agenda? Most research on presidential-congressional relations suggests that (read more)

Can presidents influence whether Congress enacts their agenda? Most research on presidential-congressional relations suggests that presidents have little if any influence on Congress. Instead, structural factors like party control largely determine the fate of the president's legislative agenda. In The President on Capitol Hill, Jeffrey E.

Cohen challenges this conventional view, arguing that existing research has underestimated the president's power to sway Congress and developing a new theory of presidential influence. Cohen demonstrates that by taking a position, the president converts an issue from a nonpresidential into a presidential one, which leads members of Congress to consider the president's views when deciding how to vote. Presidential position taking also converts the factors that normally affect roll call voting--such as party, public opinion, and policy type--into resources that presidents can leverage to influence the vote.

Published: 25 Jun 2019 (hide)

Kurt and his crew are in a deadly race to stop the sea rising. A mission deep inside the swirling Pacific. Their objective? To save (read more)

Kurt and his crew are in a deadly race to stop the sea rising. A mission deep inside the swirling Pacific. Their objective? To save the world.

The blistering Kurt Austin adventure in the NUMA files series from UK No. 1 bestseller Clive Cussler. A global threat The world's sea levels are rising at an alarming rate, too quickly to be caused by glacier melt. (hide)

***Please note this item is currently out of stock and being reprinted*** A perfect stocking filler - whether Brexit makes you laugh (read more)

***Please note this item is currently out of stock and being reprinted*** A perfect stocking filler - whether Brexit makes you laugh or cry, Ladybird's The Story of Brexit will just make you laugh. "Leaving was the will of the people," sighs Angelica's father. He voted to leave.

Angelica voted to remain, but she feels the same way. "It is the will of the people," she sighs. They stare at the ducks.They like the ducks. Ducks are better than people.

'Brexit gave us lots of exciting new words, like brextremist, remoaner, bremoaner, remaybe, breprehensible, remaintenance, brexorcist, remaidstone, brex-girlfriend, remange, brextortion, remayhem and bregret. The new words make it harder for foreigners to understand what we are saying. In a tough, new international business world, small advantages such as this can be crucial.' (hide)

Just over a decade into the new millennium, America is beset by a sense of crisis. The seismic shifts that occurred in the space (read more)

Just over a decade into the new millennium, America is beset by a sense of crisis. The seismic shifts that occurred in the space of a generation have created a country of winners and losers, leaving the social contract in pieces. In The Unwinding, George Packer narrates the story of America over the past three decades, bringing to the task his empathy with people facing difficult challenges, his sharp eye for detail and a gift for weaving together engaging narratives.

The Unwinding moves deftly back and forth through the lives of half a dozen characters, including Dean Price, the son of tobacco farmers who becomes an evangelist for a new economy in the rural South; Tammy Thomas, a factory worker in the industrial Midwest trying to survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton, a Washington careerist; and Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire. The narrative alternates these intimately told stories with biographical sketches of the era's leading public figures, from Oprah Winfrey to Steve Jobs, capturing the year-by-year flow of events. The Unwinding portrays a superpower coming apart at the seams, its elites and institutions no longer working, leaving ordinary people to improvise their own schemes for salvation. (hide)

How memetic media -- aggregate texts that are collectively created, circulated, and transformed -- become a part of public conversations (read more)

How memetic media -- aggregate texts that are collectively created, circulated, and transformed -- become a part of public conversations that shape broader cultural debates. Internet memes -- digital snippets that can make a joke, make a point, or make a connection -- are now a lingua franca of online life. They are collectively created, circulated, and transformed by countless users across vast networks.

Most of us have seen the cat playing the piano, Kanye interrupting, Kanye interrupting the cat playing the piano. In The World Made Meme, Ryan Milner argues that memes, and the memetic process, are shaping public conversation. It's hard to imagine a major pop cultural or political moment that doesn't generate a constellation of memetic texts.
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Feeding the world, climate change, biodiversity, antibiotics, plastics - the list of concerns seems endless. But what is most pressing, (read more)

Feeding the world, climate change, biodiversity, antibiotics, plastics - the list of concerns seems endless. But what is most pressing, what are the knock-on effects of our actions, and what should we do first? Do we all need to become vegetarian? How can we fly in a low-carbon world? Should we frack? How can we take control of technology? Does it all come down to population? And, given the global nature of the challenges we now face, what on Earth can any of us do? Fortunately, Mike Berners-Lee has crunched the numbers and plotted a course of action that is practical and even enjoyable. There is No Planet B maps it out in an accessible and entertaining way, filled with astonishing facts and analysis.

Published:28 Feb 2019 (hide)

One of the most important politics books of the year, To Obama is a record of a time when politics intersected with empathy. Every (read more)

One of the most important politics books of the year, To Obama is a record of a time when politics intersected with empathy. Every day, President Obama received ten thousand letters from ordinary American citizens. Every night, he read ten of them before going to bed.

In To Obama, Jeanne Marie Laskas interviews President Obama, the letter-writers themselves and the White House staff in the Office of Presidential Correspondence who were witness to the millions of pleas, rants, thank-yous and apologies that landed in the mailroom during the Obama years. There is Peggy, a patriotic grandmother who thinks the President is trying to lead the country into socialism and recommends that he read the Constitution; Bill, a lifelong Republican whose attitude towards immigration reform was transformed when he met a boy who escaped MS-13 gang leaders in El Salvador; Jordan, a seven-year-old about to be adopted, who wants to thank the President for keeping him safe; James, who on the morning after the 2016 election tells the President to start packing; and Dawn, who writes to say that he made it possible for a very jaded generation to begin to hope and believe in the good. They wrote to Obama out of gratitude and desperation, in their darkest times of need, with anger, fear and respect. (hide)

A most timely publication in view of current concerns about snooping. Thomas Mathiesen describes how the major databases of Europe (read more)

A most timely publication in view of current concerns about snooping. Thomas Mathiesen describes how the major databases of Europe have become interlinked and accessible to diverse organizations and third States; meaning that, largely unchallenged, a 'Surveillance Monster' now threatens rights, freedoms, democracy and the Rule of Law. As information is logged on citizens' every move, data flows across borders via systems soon to be under central, global or even non-State control.

Secret plans happen behind closed doors and 'systems func tionaries' become defensive of their own role. Goals expand and entire processes are shrouded in mystery. Alongside the integration of automated systems sits a weakening of State ties as the Prum Treaty and Schengen Convention lead to systems lacking transparency, restraint or Parliamentary scrutiny. (hide)

The election of Donald Trump and the great disruption in the news and social media. Donald Trump's election as the 45th President (read more)

The election of Donald Trump and the great disruption in the news and social media. Donald Trump's election as the 45th President of the United States came as something of a surprise -- to many analysts, journalists, and voters. The New York Times's The Upshot gave Hillary Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning the White House even as the returns began to come in.

What happened? And what role did the news and social media play in the election? In Trump and the Media, journalism and technology experts grapple with these questions in a series of short, thought-provoking essays. Considering the disruption of the media landscape, the disconnect between many voters and the established news outlets, the emergence of fake news and "alternative facts," and Trump's own use of social media, these essays provide a window onto broader transformations in the relationship between information and politics in the twenty-first century. The contributors find historical roots to current events in Cold War notions of "us" versus "them," trace the genealogy of the assault on facts, and chart the collapse of traditional news gatekeepers.

Published:6 Apr 2018 (hide)