front cover of The Sagebrush State, 3d Edition
The Sagebrush State, 3d Edition
Nevada's History, Government, and Politics
Michael W. Bowers
University of Nevada Press, 2006
Since its publication in 1996, The Sagebrush State has served as the text for the required course on Nevada’s history and constitution given at the state’s colleges and universities. The third edition of this work is updated through 2005 to include information on the elections of 2002 and 2004 and two very controversial sessions of the legislature. The full text of the state constitution is provided for reference in an appendix and includes extensive annotations that note and explain amendments and other changes made to the original 1864 document.
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The Sagebrush State, 4th Ed
Nevada’s History, Government, and Politics
Michael W. Bowers
University of Nevada Press, 2013
Nevada’s politics have been formed in large measure by its turbulent history and harsh environment. Bowers’ concise volume explains the dynamics of this process, which is strikingly unique among the fifty states. This is a readable and insightful explanation of how Nevada’s history has formed its political culture, and how its government works today. The Sagebrush State includes the full text of the state constitution, with extensive annotations of all amendments to the original 1864 document. The Sagebrush State serves as a text for the study of Nevada’s history and constitution, which is a graduation requirement at the state’s colleges and universities. The fourth edition of this work is updated through 2012 to include information on the elections of 2010 and 2012 and recent controversial sessions of the Legislature.
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front cover of The Sagebrush State, 5th Edition
The Sagebrush State, 5th Edition
Nevada's History, Government, and Politics
Michael W. Bowers
University of Nevada Press, 2018
Nevada’s politics are in large measure the result of its turbulent history and harsh environment. Michael W. Bowers’ concise volume explains the dynamics of the political formation process, which is strikingly unique among the fifty states.  Even today, Nevada is unlike the other states in its politics and culture: it’s economically right, yet libertarian, the home of widespread gaming and a 24/7 lifestyle, has a high percentage of federally-owned lands, and has one of the highest rates of urbanism in the U.S., yet is often governed by rural legislators.

This comprehensive and insightful explanation discusses how Nevada’s history has shaped its political culture, and how its government operates today. The Sagebrush State serves as a highly readable and accessible text for the study of Nevada’s political history and constitution, which is a graduation requirement at the state’s colleges and universities. The fifth edition is updated through 2017 and includes the full text of the state constitution with extensive annotations of all amendments to the original 1864 document.
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front cover of The Sagebrush State, 6th Edition
The Sagebrush State, 6th Edition
Nevada's History, Government, and Politics
Michael W. Bowers
University of Nevada Press, 2021
Nevada’s politics are in large measure the result of its turbulent history and harsh environment. Michael W. Bowers’s concise volume explains the dynamics of the state’s political formation process, which is strikingly unique among the fifty states. Even today, Nevada is unlike the other states in its politics and culture: economically right, yet libertarian and home to widespread gaming and a 24/7 industry. It has a high percentage of federally owned lands and one of the highest rates of urbanism in the United States, yet is often dominated by rural legislators. 

This comprehensive and insightful explanation discusses how Nevada’s history has shaped its political culture, and how its government operates today. The Sagebrush State serves as a highly readable and accessible text for the study of Nevada’s political history and constitution, which is a graduation requirement at the state’s colleges and universities. The sixth edition is updated through 2020 and includes the latest changes in the selection process of municipal court judges in the state, the resurgence of the Democrats after their losses in 2016, and the full text of the state constitution with extensive annotations of all amendments to the original 1864 document. It also examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic downturn on the state’s budget.
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The Saints and the State
The Mormon Troubles in Illinois
James Simeone
Ohio University Press, 2021

A compelling history of the 1846 Mormon expulsion from Illinois that exemplifies the limits of American democracy and religious tolerance.

When members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (known as Mormons) settled in Illinois in 1839, they had been persecuted for their beliefs from Ohio to Missouri. Illinoisans viewed themselves as religiously tolerant egalitarians and initially welcomed the Mormons to their state. However, non-Mormon locals who valued competitive individualism perceived the saints‘ western Illinois settlement, Nauvoo, as a theocracy with too much political power. Amid escalating tensions in 1844, anti-Mormon vigilantes assassinated church founder Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Two years later, the state expelled the saints. Illinois rejected the Mormons not for their religion, but rather for their effort to create a self-governing state in Nauvoo.

Mormons put the essential aspirations of American liberal democracy to the test in Illinois. The saints’ inward group focus and their decision to live together in Nauvoo highlight the challenges strong group consciousness and attachment pose to democratic governance. The Saints and the State narrates this tragic story as an epic failure of governance and shows how the conflicting demands of fairness to the Mormons and accountability to Illinois’s majority became incompatible.

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The Salem Clique
Oregon's Founding Brothers
Barbara S. Mahoney
Oregon State University Press, 2017
During the decade of the 1850s, the Oregon Territory progressed toward statehood in an atmosphere of intense political passion and conflict. Editors of rival newspapers blamed a group of young men whom they named the “Salem Clique,” along with the Oregon Statesman newspaper that they controlled, for the bitter party struggles of the time. They accused the so-called Clique of dictatorship and corruption. They charged it with the intention of imposing slavery on the Territory. The Clique, they maintained, even conspired to establish a government separate from the United States, conceivably a “bigamous Mormon republic.”   
 
While not in agreement with some of the more extreme contemporary accusations against the Clique, many historians have concluded that its members were vicious men who were able, because of their command of the Democratic party, to impose their hegemony on the Oregon Territory’s inhabitants. Other scholars have seen them as merely another instance of the contentious politics of the period. 
 
Although the Salem Clique has been given considerable prominence in nearly every account of Oregon’s Territorial period, there has not been a detailed study of its role until now. What sort of people were these men? What was their impact on the issues, events, and movements of the period? What role did they play in the years after Oregon became a state? In The Salem Clique, Historian Barbara Mahoney sets out to answer these and many other questions in this comprehensive and deeply researched history.
 
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Salt and State
An Annotated Translation of the Songshi Salt Monopoly Treatise
Cecilia Lee-fang Chien
University of Michigan Press, 2004
Salt and State is an annotated translation of a treatise on salt from Song China. From its inception in the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.), the salt monopoly was a key component in the Chinese government's financial toolkit. Salt, with its highly localized and large-scale production, was an ideal target for bureaucratic management.
In the Song dynasty (960–1279), fiscal pressures on the government had intensified with increased centralization and bureaucratization. A bloated administration and an enormous standing army maintained against incursions by aggressive steppe neighbors placed tremendous strain on Song finances. Developing the salt monopoly seemed a logical and indeed urgent strategy, but each actor in this plan—the emperor, local officials, monopoly administrators, producers, merchants, and consumers—had his own interests to protect and advance. Thus attempts to maximize the effectiveness of the monopoly meant frequent policy swings and led to levels of corruption that would ultimately undo the Song.
Unlike other contemporary sources, the Songshi treatise organizes its subject into an intelligible and detailed narrative, elucidating special terminology, the bureaucracy and its processes, and debates relating to Chinese finance and politics, as well as the salt industry itself. Professor Chien's extensive annotation relies on parallel histories that corroborate and supplement the Songshi account, together providing a comprehensive study of this important institution in China's premodern political economy.
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The Sanitation of Brazil
Nation, State, and Public Health, 1889-1930
Gilberto Hochman
University of Illinois Press, 2016
Celebrated as a major work since its original publication, The Sanitation of Brazil traces how rural health and sanitation policies influenced the formation of Brazil's national public health system. Gilberto Hochman's pioneering study examines the ideological, social and political forces that approached questions of health and government action. The era from 1910 to 1930 offered unique opportunities for public health reform, and Hochman examines its successes and failures. He looks at how health became a state concern, tying the emergence of public health policies to a nationalistic movement and to a convergence of the elites' social consciousness with their political and material interests. Politicians weighed the costs and benefits of state-run public health versus the burdens imposed by disease. Physicians and intellectuals, meanwhile, swayed them with warnings that endemic disease and official neglect might affect everyone--rich and poor, rural and urban, interior and coastal--if left unchecked. The book shows how disease and health were and are associated with nation-state building in Brazil.
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Savages and Citizens
How Indigeneity Shapes the State
Andrew Canessa and Manuela Lavinas Picq
University of Arizona Press, 2024
Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens takes the provocative view that Indigenous people have been fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty was imagined, theorized, and practiced.

Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, the book shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral byproduct; it was a political project in its own right. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural “survivors” rooted in the past.

With insights drawn from diverse global contexts and empirical research from Bolivia and Ecuador, this work advocates for the relevance of Indigenous studies within political science and argues for an ethnography of sovereignty in anthropology. Savages and Citizens makes a compelling case for the centrality of Indigenous perspectives to understand the modern state from political theory to international studies.
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The Scandal of the State
Women, Law, and Citizenship in Postcolonial India
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
Duke University Press, 2003
The Scandal of the State is a revealing study of the relationship between the postcolonial, democratic Indian nation-state and Indian women’s actual needs and lives. Well-known for her work combining feminist theory and postcolonial studies, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan shows how the state is central to understanding women’s identities and how, reciprocally, women and “women’s issues” affect the state’s role and function. She argues that in India law and citizenship define for women not only the scope of political rights but also cultural identity and everyday life. Sunder Rajan delineates the postcolonial state in implicit contrast with the “enlightened,” postfeminist neoliberal state in the West. Her analysis wrestles with complex social realities, taking into account the influence of age, ethnicity, religion, and class on individual and group identities as well as the shifting, heterogeneous nature of the state itself.

The Scandal of the State develops through a series of compelling case studies, each of which centers around an incident exposing the contradictory position of the Indian state vis-à-vis its female citizens and, ultimately, the inadequacy of its commitment to women’s rights. Sunder Rajan focuses on the custody battle over a Muslim child bride, the compulsory sterilization of mentally retarded women in state institutional care, female infanticide in Tamilnadu, prostitution as labor rather than crime, and the surrender of the female outlaw Phoolan Devi. She also looks at the ways the Uniform Civil Code presented many women with a stark choice between allegiance to their religion and community or the secular assertion of individual rights. Rich with theoretical acumen and activist passion, The Scandal of the State is a powerful critique of the mutual dependence of women and the state on one another in the specific context of a postcolonial modernity.

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Scapegoats of September 11th
Hate Crimes & State Crimes in the War on Terror
Welch, Michael
Rutgers University Press, 2006
From its largest cities to deep within its heartland, from its heavily trafficked airways to its meandering country byways, America has become a nation racked by anxiety about terrorism and national security. In response to the fears prompted by the tragedy of September 11th, the country has changed in countless ways. Airline security has tightened, mail service is closely examined, and restrictions on civil liberties are more readily imposed by the government and accepted by a wary public.

The altered American landscape, however, includes more than security measures and ID cards. The country's desperate quest for security is visible in many less obvious, yet more insidious ways. In Scapegoats of September 11th, criminologist Michael Welch argues that the "war on terror" is a political charade that delivers illusory comfort, stokes fear, and produces scapegoats used as emotional relief. Regrettably, much of the outrage that resulted from 9/11 has been targeted at those not involved in the attacks on the Pentagon or the Twin Towers. As this book explains, those people have become the scapegoats of September 11th. Welch takes on the uneasy task of sorting out the various manifestations of displaced aggression, most notably the hate crimes and state crimes that have become embarrassing hallmarks both at home and abroad.

Drawing on topics such as ethnic profiling, the Abu Ghraib scandal, Guantanamo Bay, and the controversial Patriot Act, Welch looks at the significance of knowledge, language, and emotion in a post-9/11 world. In the face of popular and political cheerleading in the war on terror, this book presents a careful and sober assessment, reminding us that sound counterterrorism policies must rise above, rather than participate in, the propagation of bigotry and victimization.
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School, Society, and State
A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890-1940
Tracy L. Steffes
University of Chicago Press, 2012

 “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife,” wrote John Dewey in his classic work The School and Society. In School, Society, and State, Tracy Steffes places that idea at the center of her exploration of the connections between public school reform in the early twentieth century and American political development from 1890 to 1940.

American public schooling, Steffes shows, was not merely another reform project of the Progressive Era, but a central one. She addresses why Americans invested in public education and explains how an array of reformers subtly transformed schooling into a tool of social governance to address the consequences of industrialization and urbanization. By extending the reach of schools, broadening their mandate, and expanding their authority over the well-being of children, the state assumed a defining role in the education—and in the lives—of American families.

In School, Society, and State, Steffes returns the state to the study of the history of education and brings the schools back into our discussion of state power during a pivotal moment in American political development.

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Secret Dialogues
Kenneth Serbin
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000

Secret Dialogues uncovers an unexpected development in modern Latin American history: the existence of secret talks between generals and Roman Catholic bishops at the height of Brazil's military dictatorship. During the brutal term of Emílio Garrastazú Médici, the Catholic Church became famous for its progressivism. However, new archival sources demonstrate that the church also sought to retain its privileges and influence by exploring a potential alliance with the military. From 1970 to 1974 the secret Bipartite Commission worked to resolve church-state conflict and to define the boundary between social activism and subversion. As the bishops increasingly made defense of human rights their top pastoral and political goal, the Bipartite became an important forum of protest against torture and social injustice. Based on more than 60 interviews and primary sources from three continents, Secret Dialogues is a major addition to the historical narrative of the most violent yet, ironically, the least studied period of the Brazilian military regime. Its story is intertwined with the central themes of the era: revolutionary warfare, repression, censorship, the fight for democracy, and the conflict between Catholic notions of social justice and the anticommunist Doctrine of National Security.

Secret Dialogues is the first book of its kind on the contemporary Catholic Church in any Latin American country, for most work in this field is devoid of primary documentary research. Serbin questions key assumptions about church-state conflict such as the typical conservative-progressive dichotomy and the notion of church-state rupture during harsh authoritarian periods. Secret Dialogues is written for undergraduate and graduate students, professional scholars, and the general reader interested in Brazil, Latin America, military dictatorship, human rights, and the relationship between religion and politics.

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Semblances of Sovereignty
The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Harvard University Press, 2002

In a set of cases decided at the end of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court declared that Congress had "plenary power" to regulate immigration, Indian tribes, and newly acquired territories. Not coincidentally, the groups subject to Congress' plenary power were primarily nonwhite and generally perceived as "uncivilized." The Court left Congress free to craft policies of assimilation, exclusion, paternalism, and domination.

Despite dramatic shifts in constitutional law in the twentieth century, the plenary power case decisions remain largely the controlling law. The Warren Court, widely recognized for its dedication to individual rights, focused on ensuring "full and equal citizenship"--an agenda that utterly neglected immigrants, tribes, and residents of the territories. The Rehnquist Court has appropriated the Warren Court's rhetoric of citizenship, but has used it to strike down policies that support diversity and the sovereignty of Indian tribes.

Attuned to the demands of a new century, the author argues for abandonment of the plenary power cases, and for more flexible conceptions of sovereignty and citizenship. The federal government ought to negotiate compacts with Indian tribes and the territories that affirm more durable forms of self-government. Citizenship should be "decentered," understood as a commitment to an intergenerational national project, not a basis for denying rights to immigrants.

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Separating Church and State
ROGER WILLIAMS AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
Timothy L. Hall
University of Illinois Press, 1998
      Roger Williams, founder of the colony of Rhode Island, is famous as an
        apostle of religious tolerance and a foe of religious establishments.
      In Separating Church and State, Timothy Hall combines impressive
        historical and legal scholarship to explore Williams's theory of religious
        liberty and relate it to current debate. Williams's fierce religious dogmaticism,
        Hall argues, is precisely what led to his religious tolerance, making
        him one of the most articulate champions of the argument for the necessary
        separation of church and state.
      "Both timely and provocative. . . . Offers Williams's largely overlooked
        but deeply important perspective on the peaceful coexistence of committed
        believers of diverse faiths. The book also brings into question crucial
        tenets of the United States Supreme Court's First Amendment religion clause
        jurisprudence at a time when many are raising questions about it."
        -- Marci A. Hamilton, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York City
      "Hall has the entire Williams corpus under his command, and he plays
        the relevant texts like a master organist. He also has the legal corpus
        equally at his fingertips. One of the great strengths of his book is that
        it bridges the too often separate fields of history and jurisprudence."
        -- Edwin Gaustad, author of Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in
        America
 
 
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Separation of Church and State
Philip Hamburger
Harvard University Press, 2004

In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Philip Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled here shows that eighteenth-century Americans almost never invoked this principle. Although Thomas Jefferson and others retrospectively claimed that the First Amendment separated church and state, separation became part of American constitutional law only much later.

Hamburger shows that separation became a constitutional freedom largely through fear and prejudice. Jefferson supported separation out of hostility to the Federalist clergy of New England. Nativist Protestants (ranging from nineteenth-century Know Nothings to twentieth-century members of the K.K.K.) adopted the principle of separation to restrict the role of Catholics in public life. Gradually, these Protestants were joined by theologically liberal, anti-Christian secularists, who hoped that separation would limit Christianity and all other distinct religions. Eventually, a wide range of men and women called for separation. Almost all of these Americans feared ecclesiastical authority, particularly that of the Catholic Church, and, in response to their fears, they increasingly perceived religious liberty to require a separation of church from state. American religious liberty was thus redefined and even transformed. In the process, the First Amendment was often used as an instrument of intolerance and discrimination.

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Separation of Church and State
Dina de-Malkhuta Dina in Jewish Law
Gil Graff
University of Alabama Press, 1985
Observes that the significance of dina de-malkhuta dina and its interpretation is vital for an understanding of modern Jewish life as well as the relationship of Diaspora Jews to the Jewish community in the state of Israel
 
For the Jewish community, the end of the Middle Ages and the emergence of the modern nation-state brought the promise of equal citizenship as well as the possible loss of Jewish corporate identity. The legal maxim dina de-malkhuta dina (the law of the State is law) invoked in Talmidic times to justify the acceptance of the king’s law and qualified in the Middle Ages by Maimonides and Rashbam to include the requirement of consent by the governed underwent further redefinition by Jews in the Napoleonic age. Graff focuses on the struggle between 18th and 19th-century Jewish religious reformers and traditionalists in defining the limits of dina de-malkhuta dina. He traces the motivations of the reformers who, in their zeal to gain equality for the formerly disenfranchised Jewish communities in Western Europe, were prepared to render unto the State compromising authority over Jewish religious life under the rubric of dina de-malkhuta dina was intended to strike a balance between synagogue and state and not to be used as a pretext for the liquidation of the community’s corporate existence.
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Separation of Church and State in the United States
Alvin W. Johnson and Frank H. Yost
University of Minnesota Press, 1948

Separation of Church and State in the United States was first published in 1948. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This book is more than a revised and enlarged edition of Dr. Johnson's Legal Status of Church-State Relationships in the United States. Besides rewriting and bringing up to date much of the original material, the authors have added a number of chapters dealing with subjects that have gained prominence in recent years: citizenship and the bearing of arms, saluting the flag, distribution of religious literature, and freedom of speech for Communists. Such recent cases as the Supreme Court decision in McCollum v. Board of Education—better known as the Champaign, Illinois, case—are discussed in some detail.

School administrators will find the book of great practical value, for it deals predominantly with church-state relationships in the public schools, one of the chief areas of conflict. These conflicts include such questions as Bible readings and religious instruction in the public schools, dismissed and released time for religious education, the allowing of credit for religious instruction, public aid to sectarian schools, the wearing of religious garb, furnishing free textbooks and transportation for students in parochial schools.

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Shamanism, History, and the State
Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1996
The literature on shamanism and related topics is extensive, but has in general been biased toward curing and trance; the political and historical significance of shamanic activities has been largely neglected. The contributors to Shamanism, History, and the State--distinguished anthropologists and historians from England, Australia, and France--show that shamanism is not static and stable, but always changing as a result of political dynamics and historical processes.
Contributors are Tamsyn Barton, Sysan Bayly, Mary Beard, Maurice Bloch, Peter Gow, Roberte N. Hamayon, Stephen Hugh-Jones, Caroline Humphrey, and Nicholas Thomas.
"The importance of this collection lies in the painstaking, many-sided ways in which it shows 'shamanism' to be a multifarious and continuously changing 'dialogue' or interaction with specific, local contexts. . . . Thus, rather than tackling the issue in principle, this collection tries to demonstrate through 'case studies' just how different 'shamanism' becomes if seen through a lens sensitive to history and the influence of institutions, such as the state, which seem far removed from it. I think the demonstrations add up to an impressive force." --Michael Taussig
"This new, ably edited volume provides . . . chapters that are rich in historic detail and that provide insights into general cultural processes and social interactions." --Historian
Nicholas Thomas is Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow, Department of Prehistory and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra. He is the author of Out of Time: History and Evolution in Anthropological Discourse. Caroline Humphrey, author of Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm, is Fellow of King's College and Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
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Shaped by the State
Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century
Edited by Brent Cebul, Lily Geismer, and Mason B. Williams
University of Chicago Press, 2019
American political history has been built around narratives of crisis, in which what “counts” are the moments when seemingly stable political orders collapse and new ones rise from the ashes. But while crisis-centered frameworks can make sense of certain dimensions of political culture, partisan change, and governance, they also often steal attention from the production of categories like race, gender, and citizenship status that transcend the usual break points in American history.

Brent Cebul, Lily Geismer, and Mason B. Williams have brought together first-rate scholars from a wide range of subfields who are making structures of state power—not moments of crisis or partisan realignment—integral to their analyses. All of the contributors see political history as defined less by elite subjects than by tensions between state and economy, state and society, and state and subject—tensions that reveal continuities as much as disjunctures. This broader definition incorporates investigations of the crosscurrents of power, race, and identity; the recent turns toward the history of capitalism and transnational history; and an evolving understanding of American political development that cuts across eras of seeming liberal, conservative, or neoliberal ascendance. The result is a rich revelation of what political history is today.
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Sharing the Balance of Power
An Examination of Shared Power in the Michigan House of Representatives, 1993-1994
Daniel Loepp
University of Michigan Press, 1999

Like national politicians, state legislators all too often focus on partisanship instead of policy making, engaging themselves in rancorous debate that achieves little beyond gridlock. However, during one short period in Michigan's history, legislators stopped bickering and focused on forging compromise. Daniel Loepp's Sharing the Balance of Power chronicles the 87th Michigan Legislature (1993-1994), in which Republicans and Democrats successfully shared power.

In 1992, Michigan voters elected exactly fifty-five Republicans and fifty-five Democrats to the state house. As a result, the two parties each elected a co-speaker, and a shared power agreement was forged. Given the history of intense partisanship in the state house, political pundits predicted that any plan for shared power would disintegrate within months. What resulted instead was one of the most productive legislatures in Michigan history.

Author Daniel Loepp, chief of staff to Democratic Co-Speaker Curtis Hertel at the time, skillfully takes the reader "inside" the State Capitol, examining the key policy debates (including school finance reform), important personalities, and difficult negotiations. Loepp's balanced presentation is testimony to the two years of bi-partisan cooperation in which he took part.

In an age of public cynicism about the legislative process, Daniel Loepp offers the reader a refreshing story about two co-speakers and their 108 colleagues who came together in the spirit of bi-partisan representation to successfully serve their constituents, the people of Michigan.

Daniel Loepp is a partner in the firm of Karoub Associates, Michigan's oldest multi-client lobbying firm.

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Shot In America
Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema
Chon A. Noriega
University of Minnesota Press, 2000
Redefines media history through Chicano film and television. One of the most influential figures in ethnic media studies takes direct aim at how Chicano filmmaking has been represented in the history of media in the United States. Shot in America tackles seemingly intractable dilemmas involving the political and market functions of film and TV to provide a definitive response to the debates over cultural and racial identity that have embroiled media and cultural studies over the past two decades. Noriega offers a compelling and detailed description of an enormous body of work by Chicano media makers against the backdrop of Chicano social movements, politics, and activism over a forty-year period-an extraordinary exposition of the civil rights movement, media reform activities, and public affairs programming that constitutes the prehistory of independent and minority cinemas. Noriega reveals the ways in which Chicano and other minority protests both emerged within and were regulated by the very institutions that excluded them. Shot in America is a study with broad implications for our understanding of cultural politics and the entertainment industries. "This comprehensive study has broad implications for our understanding of cultural politics and the entertainment industries." Hispanic Outlook "A substantial contribution to the study of Chicano cinema, broadcast policy, and cultural politics in the United States." Film Quarterly Chon A. Noriega is associate professor of critical studies in the Department of Film and Television at UCLA. His books include Chicanos and Film (1992), The Ethnic Eye (1996), and Visible Nations(2000).
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A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles
A History of Politics and Race in Texas
By Bill Minutaglio
University of Texas Press, 2021
Finalist, 2021 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award

For John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, there was one simple rule in politics: “You’ve got to bloody your knuckles.” It’s a maxim that applies in so many ways to the state of Texas, where the struggle for power has often unfolded through underhanded politicking, backroom dealings, and, quite literally, bloodshed. The contentious history of Texas politics has been shaped by dangerous and often violent events, and been formed not just in the halls of power but by marginalized voices omitted from the official narratives.

A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles traces the state’s conflicted and dramatic evolution over the past 150 years through its pivotal political players, including oft-neglected women and people of color. Beginning in 1870 with the birth of Texas’s modern political framework, Bill Minutaglio chronicles Texas political life against the backdrop of industry, the economy, and race relations, recasting the narrative of influential Texans. With journalistic verve and candor, Minutaglio delivers a contemporary history of the determined men and women who fought for their particular visions of Texas and helped define the state as a potent force in national affairs.

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Slavery and Secession in Arkansas
A Documentary History
James J. Gigantino
University of Arkansas Press, 2015
2016 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

The absorbing documents collected in Slavery and Secession in Arkansas trace Arkansas’s tortuous road to secession and war. Drawn from contemporary pamphlets, broadsides, legislative debates, public addresses, newspapers, and private correspondence, these accounts show the intricate twists and turns of the political drama in Arkansas between early 1859 and the summer of 1861. From an early warning of what Republican political dominance would mean for the South, through the initial rejection of secession, to Arkansas’s final abandonment of the Union, readers, even while knowing the eventual outcome, will find the journey both suspenseful and informative.

Revealing both the unique features of the secession story in Arkansas and the issues that Arkansas shared with much of the rest of the South, this collection illustrates how Arkansans debated their place in the nation and, specifically, how the defense of slavery—as both an assurance of continued economic progress and a means of social control—remained central to the decision to leave the Union and fight alongside much of the South for four bloody years of civil war.
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Slaves of the State
Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary
Dennis Childs
University of Minnesota Press, 2015

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, passed in 1865, has long been viewed as a definitive break with the nation’s past by abolishing slavery and ushering in an inexorable march toward black freedom. Slaves of the State presents a stunning counterhistory to this linear narrative of racial, social, and legal progress in America.

Dennis Childs argues that the incarceration of black people and other historically repressed groups in chain gangs, peon camps, prison plantations, and penitentiaries represents a ghostly perpetuation of chattel slavery. He exposes how the Thirteenth Amendment’s exception clause—allowing for enslavement as “punishment for a crime”—has inaugurated forms of racial capitalist misogynist incarceration that serve as haunting returns of conditions Africans endured in the barracoons and slave ship holds of the Middle Passage, on plantations, and in chattel slavery.

Childs seeks out the historically muted voices of those entombed within terrorizing spaces such as the chain gang rolling cage and the modern solitary confinement cell, engaging the writings of Toni Morrison and Chester Himes as well as a broad range of archival materials, including landmark court cases, prison songs, and testimonies, reaching back to the birth of modern slave plantations such as Louisiana’s “Angola” penitentiary.

Slaves of the State paves the way for a new understanding of chattel slavery as a continuing social reality of U.S. empire—one resting at the very foundation of today’s prison industrial complex that now holds more than 2.3 million people within the country’s jails, prisons, and immigrant detention centers.

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Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870-1930
Geoff Eley, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 1997
Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870-1930 draws together important new work on the Kaiserreich--the period between Bismarck's unification of Germany and the First World War.
Work on the Kaiserreich built up impressive momentum during the 1970s and 1980s, when a series of inspiring but divisive controversies called into question the ways in which German historical development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was mainly understood. These discussions focused on issues of continuity between Bismarck and Hitler and the peculiar strength of authoritarianism in German political culture, raising important questions about the deep origins of Nazism and about Germany's alleged differences from the West.
The collection purposefully brings certain issues and approaches into the foreground. These include the value of taking gender seriously as a priority of historical work; the emergence of social policy and welfare during the early twentieth century; religious belief and affiliation as a neglected dimension in modern German history; the tremendous importance of the First World War as a climacteric; and the exciting potentials of cultural studies and the new cultural history.
A varied group, the contributors embrace different kinds of history and certainly do not subscribe to a common line. Some essays suggest alternative periodizations and focus on the early twentieth century decades rather than the integral unity of the Kaiserreich as such. Together, they take stock of the field, critically synthesizing existing knowledge and laying down agendas for the future.
Geoff Eley is Professor of History, University of Michigan.
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The Sociology of the State
Bertrand Badie and Pierre Birnbaum
University of Chicago Press, 1983
Too often we think of the modern political state as a universal institution, the inevitable product of History rather than a specific creation of a very particular history. Bertrand Badie and Pierre Birnbaum here persuasively argue that the origin of the state is a social fact, arising out of the peculiar sociohistorical context of Western Europe. Drawing on historical materials and bringing sociological insights to bear on a field long abandoned to jurists and political scientists, the authors lay the foundations for a strikingly original theory of the birth and subsequent diffusion of the state.

The book opens with a review of the principal evolutionary theories concerning the origin of the institution proposed by such thinkers as Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. Rejecting these views, the authors set forward and defend their thesis that the state was an "invention" rather than a necessary consequence of any other process. Once invented, the state was disseminated outside its Western European birthplace either through imposition or imitation. The study concludes with concrete analyses of the differences in actual state institutions in France, Prussia, Great Britain, the United States, and Switzerland.
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Socrates of Constantinople
Historian of Church and State
Theresa Urbainczyk
University of Michigan Press, 1997
The fourth century c.e. saw the death of the ancient world and the birth of the medieval. Pagan temples crumbled through disuse, while Christian churches sprang up around the fledgling Holy Roman Empire. The emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity changed history: pagans blamed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire on Christianity, but Christians explained events differently.
The church history written by Socrates of Constantinople is one of the most important sources, Eastern or Western, pagan or Christian, for these complex centuries. Socrates of Constantinople: Historian of Church and State is the first detailed study of Socrates' history--it describes the historical situation in which he wrote his work, and it pulls together all the personal information available about the author. The volume then examines Socrates' own work: how it was composed, which sources were used and how, and it looks at the relationship between Socrates' work and other church histories. It goes on to consider Socrates' attitudes towards bishops, emperors, and their enemies.
Socrates is sometimes dismissed by modern scholars for being a poor ecclesiastical historiographer. However, Theresa Urbainczyk carefully demonstrates Socrates' theory of causation, which affected the way he wrote his history, and she argues that he introduced secular material deliberately. In his view arguments and division in the church caused trouble in the state. In other words, when church leaders quibbled over theology, they endangered the state. It was therefore their duty, for the sake of church and state, to unite--under the emperor. This study not only calls on scholars to reexamine Socrates of Constantinople but makes the wider arguments that the ancients were far less concerned with genre than are modern scholars, and that ecclesiastical history is a continuation of, not a deviation from, political history.
Socrates of Constantinople: Historian of Church and State will be of interest to students and scholars interested in late Roman and early Christian history, theology, and historiography. Anyone studying late antiquity will find an examination of Socrates' attitudes essential.
Theresa Urbainczyk is College Lecturer in the Department of Classics, University College, Dublin.
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Soft Corruption
How Unethical Conduct Undermines Good Government and What To Do About It
Schluter, William E
Rutgers University Press, 2017
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The Soldier and the State
The Theory and Politics of Civil–Military Relations
Samuel P. Huntington
Harvard University Press, 1957

In a classic work, Samuel P. Huntington challenges most of the old assumptions and ideas on the role of the military in society. Stressing the value of the military outlook for American national policy, Huntington has performed the distinctive task of developing a general theory of civil–military relations and subjecting it to rigorous historical analysis.

Part One presents the general theory of the "military profession," the "military mind," and civilian control. Huntington analyzes the rise of the military profession in western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and compares the civil–military relations of Germany and Japan between 1870 and 1945.

Part Two describes the two environmental constants of American civil–military relations, our liberal values and our conservative constitution, and then analyzes the evolution of American civil–military relations from 1789 down to 1940, focusing upon the emergence of the American military profession and the impact upon it of intellectual and political currents.

Huntington describes the revolution in American civil–military relations which took place during World War II when the military emerged from their shell, assumed the leadership of the war, and adopted the attitudes of a liberal society. Part Three continues with an analysis of the problems of American civil–military relations in the era of World War II and the Korean War: the political roles of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the difference in civil–military relations between the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, the role of Congress, and the organization and functioning of the Department of Defense. Huntington concludes that Americans should reassess their liberal values on the basis of a new understanding of the conservative realism of the professional military men.

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The Sound of the Whistle
Railroads and the State in Meiji Japan
Steven Ericson
Harvard University Press, 1996
In this thorough and detailed study of the development of the Japanese railroad industry during the Meiji period, Steven Ericson explores the economic role of government and the nature of state-business relations during Japan’s modern transformation. Ericson challenges the tendency of current scholarship to minimize the roles of the Japanese government and commercial banks in Meiji industrialization. By providing a fresh perspective on the “strong state/weak state” debate through a detailed analysis of the 1906–1907 railway nationalization, Ericson’s study sheds new light on the Meiji origins of modern Japanese industrial policy and politics, filling a major gap in the available literature on the Meiji political economy.
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Southern Fried
Going Whole Hog in a State of Wonder
Rex Nelson
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 2016

For decades, Rex Nelson has been traveling Arkansas. He learned to love the back roads, small towns, and people of the state while going on trips with his father, who sold athletic supplies to high schools. They sat in old Depression-era gyms built by the Works Progress Administration, ate in small-town cafes, and waded in streams on warm spring days.

Throughout his career as a sportswriter, political writer, senior staff member in the governor’s office, presidential appointee to the Delta Regional Authority, and now corporate communications director for Simmons Bank, Nelson has written millions of words about Arkansas and its people.

In this collection of columns from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Nelson brings to life the personalities, communities, festivals, and tourist attractions that make Arkansas unique. As he says, “Arkansas is a hard place to explain to outsiders. We’re mostly Southern but also a bit Midwestern and a tad Southwestern. The Ozarks are different from the pine woods of the Gulf Coastal Plain, and the Delta is different from the Ouachitas. Invariably, though, those who take the time to get off the main roads and get to know the real Arkansas are entranced by the place.”

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Southern Politics State & Nation
Introduction Alexander Heard
V.O. Key
University of Tennessee Press, 1984
More than thirty years after its original publication, V. O. Key's classic remains the most influential book on its subject. Its author, one of the nation's most astute observers, drew on more than five hundred interviews with Southerners to illuminate the political process in the South and in the nation.
Key's book explains party alignments within states, internal factional competition, and the influence of the South upon Washington. It also probes the nature of the electorate, voting restrictions, and political operating procedures. This reprint of the original edition includes a new introduction by Alexander Heard and a profile of the author by William C. Havard.

"A monumental accomplishment in the field of political investigation."
—Hodding Carter, New York Times

"The raw truth of southern political behavior."
—C. Vann Woodward, Yale Review

"[This book] should be on the 'must' list of any student of American politics."
—Ralph J. Bunche
    
V.O. Key (1908-1963) taught political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at Johns Hopkins, Yale, and Harvard universities. He was president of the American Political Science Association and author of numerous books, including American State Politics: An Introduction (1956); Public Opinion and American Democracy (1961); and The Responsible Electorate (1966).
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Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States
The State of the Field
Sara M. Beaudrie and Marta Fairclough, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2012

There is growing interest in heritage language learners—individuals who have a personal or familial connection to a nonmajority language. Spanish learners represent the largest segment of this population in the United States.

In this comprehensive volume, experts offer an interdisciplinary overview of research on Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. They also address the central role of education within the field. Contributors offer a wealth of resources for teachers while proposing future directions for scholarship.

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Spanish Second Language Acquisition
State of the Science
Barbara A. Lafford and Rafael Salaberry, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2003

Spanish Second Language Acquisition provides a panoramic overview of previous studies on the acquisition of Spanish as a second or foreign language, the theoretical approaches used in these studies, and the effects of various pedagogical approaches on the development of Spanish interlanguage systems. Barbara Lafford and Rafael Salaberry have compiled the first volume to provide a comprehensive critical overview of the research done and data compiled on how adults acquire Spanish as a second language. Major scholars in the field of SLA have contributed chapters having to do with a wide range of "products" (phonology, tense/aspect, subjunctive, clitics, lexicon, discourse/pragmatics) and "processes" (generative, cognitive and sociocultural theories) involved in the acquisition process-concluding with a discussion of the effects of instruction on Spanish interlanguage development.

While being an invaluable reference tool for undergraduate and graduate programs that focus on the acquisition of Spanish as a second language, due to the extraordinary range of the review research on theoretical and methodological issues, this is also an extremely useful volume for second language theoreticians and practitioners involved in all aspects of the pedagogy of other second languages. It is the editors' desire that students, teachers, program administrators and scholars alike will benefit from the insights that the contributors bring to the myriad issues that language professionals confront.

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Sponsored Migration
The State and Puerto Rican Postwar Migration to the United States
Edgardo Meléndez
The Ohio State University Press, 2017
Puerto Rico is often left out of conversations on migration and transnationalism within the Latino context. Sponsored Migration: The State and Puerto Rican Postwar Migration to the United States by Edgardo Meléndez seeks to rectify this oversight, serving as a comprehensive study of the factors affecting Puerto Rican migration to the United States from the late 1940s to the 1960s. Examining the consequences of the perceived problem of Puerto Rican overpopulation as well as the cost of U.S. imperialism on the lives of Puerto Rican workers, Meléndez scrutinizes Puerto Rican migration in the postwar period as a microcosm of the political history of migration throughout Latin America.
 
 
Sponsored Migration places Puerto Rico’s migration policy in its historical context, examining the central role the Puerto Rican government played in encouraging and organizing migration during the postwar period. Meléndez sheds an important new light on the many ways in which the government intervened in the movement of its people: attempting to provide labor to U.S. agriculture, incorporating migrants into places like New York City, seeking to expand the island’s air transportation infrastructure, and even promoting migration in the public school system. One of the first scholars to explore this topic in depth, Meléndez illuminates how migration influenced U.S. and Puerto Rican relations from 1898 onward. 
 
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Standing on Principle
Lessons Learned in Public Life
Florio, James J
Rutgers University Press, 2018
James J. Florio is best known as governor of New Jersey from 1990 to 1994. But his career in local, state, and national government is far more varied, and his achievements as a progressive reformer are more substantial than most realize. 

This political memoir tells the remarkable story of how Florio, a high school dropout who left to join the Navy as a teenager, went on to become an attorney, a state assemblyman, a congressman, and a governor. A passionate defender of the environment, Florio played a crucial role in the enactment of 1980s-era Superfund laws, which helped to clean up toxic waste sites in New Jersey and around the country. As governor, he fought for the groundbreaking Clean Water Enforcement Act. But his reforms quite literally came at a cost, as he raised New Jersey sales taxes and income taxes to balance the state budget. Florio reflects upon the challenges of meeting the state’s budgetary needs while keeping his tax-averse constituents happy.  

Standing on Principle reveals a politician who has never been afraid to take a progressive stand—including a firm stance against semiautomatic weapons that led gun lobbyists to bankroll his opponent. His story is sure to inspire readers from New Jersey and across the nation.

Published in cooperation with the Center on the American Governor, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University
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State and Cosmos in the Art of Tenochtitlan
Richard Fraser Townsend
Harvard University Press
Richard Fraser Townsend offers an interpretation of major examples of Mexica monumental art by identifying three interrelated iconographic themes: the conception of the universe as a sacred structure, the correspondence of the social order and the territory of the nation with the cosmic structure, and the representation of Tenochtitlan as the historically legitimate successor to the civilization of the past.
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State and Crafts in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)
Christine Moll-Murata
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
This book, full of quantitative evidence and limited-circulation archives, details manufacturing and the beginnings of industrialisation in China from 1644 to 1911. It thoroughly examines the interior organisation of public craft production and the complementary activities of the private sector. It offers detailed knowledge of shipbuilding and printing. Moreover, it contributes to the research of labour history and the rise of capitalism in China through its examination of living conditions, working conditions, and wages.
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State and Economy in Republican China
A Handbook for Scholars, Volumes 1 and 2
William C. Kirby
Harvard University Press, 2000

This manual for students focuses on archival research in the economic and business history of the Republican era (1911–1949). Following a general discussion of archival research and research aids for the Republican period, the handbook introduces the collections of archives in the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan that contain materials in the areas of economics and business, with data on the history of the archives, descriptions of their holdings, and publications on their collections.

The second half of the work consists of guided readings in Republican-era documents, such as government decrees, regulations, and business letters, with complete vocabulary lists and explanations of terms. Also included with the handbook are facsimile reproductions of these documents.

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The State and Insurrection
New Interventions in Latin American Marxist Theory
Bruno Bosteels
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023
Claims that students are too sensitive are familiar on and around college campuses. The ideas of cancel culture, safe spaces, and political correctness are used to shut down discussion and prevent students from being recognized as stakeholders in higher education and as advocates for their own interests. Further, universities can claim that student activists threaten academic freedom. In Sensitive Rhetorics, Kendall Gerdes puts these claims and common beliefs into conversation with rhetorical theory to argue that critiques of sensitivity reveal a deep societal discomfort with the idea that language is a form of action. Gerdes poses important questions: What kind of harm can language and representation actually do, and how? What responsibilities do college and university teachers bear toward their students? Sensitive Rhetorics explores the answers by surfacing submerged assumptions about higher education, the role of instructors and faculty, and the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. 
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State and Opposition in Military Brazil
By Maria Helena Moreira Alves
University of Texas Press, 1985

Based on extensive research into opposition and government documents, including the previously unavailable Manual Básico da Escola de Guerra, Maria Helena Moreira Alves provides a rich description of the long and tortuous attempt by the Brazilian military government to create a workable “national security state” in the face of determined and resilient opposition.

She interviewed more than one hundred key figures in government, the military, business, professional associations, the Catholic church, grassroots organizations, and trade unions in order to analyze politically and historically the relationship between civil society and government structures in Brazil during the years 1964–1983. Her study charts the rise and subsequent decline of the military government’s power, concluding with a discussion of the abertura policy instituted under General João Batista Figueiredo.

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State and Reservation
New Perspectives on Federal Indian Policy
Edited by George Pierre Castile and Robert L. Bee
University of Arizona Press, 1992
Ten original essays focus on the rise, change, and persistence of the Native American reservation system. Contributors drawn from history, anthropology, sociology, and political science offer divergent points of view buttressed by historical and ethnographic case studies. Together, these articles suggest that the time has come—or is long overdue—to rethink the basic assumptions underlying Federal Indian policy.

CONTENTS
Introduction, George Pierre Castile & Robert L. Bee
Part I—Historical Foundations of the Reservation System
An Elusive Institution: The Meanings of Indian Reservations in Gold Rush California, John M. Findlay
Crow Leadership Amidst Reservation Oppression, Frederick E. Hoxie
Part II—The Nonreservation Experience
Utah Indians and the Homestead Laws, Martha C. Knack
The Enduring Reservations of Oklahoma, John H. Moore
Without Reservation: Federal Indian Policy and the Landless Tribes of Washington, Frank W. Porter, III
Part III—Power and Symbols
Riding the Paper Tiger, Robert L. Bee
Indian Sign: Hegemony and Symbolism in Federal Indian Policy, George P. Castile
Part IV—The Resource Base
Primitive Accumulation, Reservations, and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Lawrence Weiss & David C.Maas
Shortcomings of the Indian Self-Determination Policy, George S. Esber, Jr.
Getting to Yes in the New West: The Negotiation of Policy, Thomas R. McGuire
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State and Society in Conflict
Comparative Perspectives on the Andean Crises
ra
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006

State and Society in Conflict analyzes one of the most volatile regions in Latin America, the Andean states of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.  For the last twenty-five years, crises in these five Andean countries have endangered Latin America's democracies and strained their relations with the United States. As these nations struggle to cope with demands from Washington on security policies (emphasizing drugs and terrorism), neoliberal economics, and democratic politics, their resulting domestic travails can be seen in poor economic growth, unequal wealth distribution, mounting social unrest, and escalating political instability.

The contributors to this volume examine the histories, politics, and cultures of the Andean nations, and argue that, due to their shared history and modern circumstances, these countries are suffering a shared crisis of deteriorating relations between state and society that is best understood in regional, not purely national, terms.  The results, in some cases, have been semi-authoritarian hybrid regimes that lurch from crisis to crisis, often controlled through force, though clinging to a notion of democracy. The solution to these problems--whether through democratic, authoritarian, peaceful, or violent means--will have profound implications for the region and its future relations with the world.

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The State and the City
Ted Robert Gurr and Desmond King
University of Chicago Press, 1987
Many of the oldest and largest Western cities today are undergoing massive economic decline. The State and the City deals with a key issue in the political economy of cities—the role of the state. Ted Robert Gurr and Desmond S. King argue that theoreticians from both the left and the right have underestimated the significance of state action for cities. Grounding theory in empirical evidence, they argue that policies of the local and national state have a major impact on urban well-being.

Gurr and King's analysis assumes modern states have their own interests, institutional momentum, and the capacity to act with relative autonomy. Their historically based analysis begins with an account of the evolution of the Western state's interest in the viability of cities since the industrial revolution. Their agument extends to the local level, examining the nature of the local state and its autonomy from national political and economic forces.

Using cross-national evidence, Gurr and King examine specific problems of urban policy in the United States and Britain. In the United States, for example, they show how the dramatic increases in federal assistance to cities in the 1930s and the 1960s were made in response to urban crises, which simultaneously threatened national interests and offered opportunities for federal expansion of power. As a result, national and local states now play significant material and regulatory roles that can have as much impact on cities as all private economic activities.

A comparative analysis of thirteen American cities reflects the range and impact of the state's activities at the urban level. Boston, they argue, has become the archetypical postindustrial public city: half of its population and personal income are directly dependent on government spending. While Gurr and King are careful to delineate the limits to the extent and effectiveness of state intervention, they conclude that these limits are much broader than formerly thought. Ultimately, their evidence suggests that the continued decline of most of the old industrial cities is the result of public decisions to allow their economic fate to be determined in the private sector.
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The State and the Stork
The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History
Derek S. Hoff
University of Chicago Press, 2012
From the colonial era to the present, the ever-shifting debate about America’s prodigious population growth has exerted a profound influence on the evolution of politics, public policy, and economic thinking in the United States. In a remarkable shift since the late 1960s, Americans of all political stripes have come to celebrate the economic virtues of population growth. As one of the only wealthy countries experiencing significant population growth in the twenty-first century, the United States now finds itself at a demographic crossroads, but policymakers seem unwilling or unable to address the myriad economic and environmental questions surrounding this growth.

From the founders’ fears that crowded cities would produce corruption, luxury, and vice to the zero population growth movement of the late 1960s to today’s widespread fears of an aging crisis as the Baby Boomers retire, the American population debate has always concerned much more than racial composition or resource exhaustion, the aspects of the debate usually emphasized by historians. In The State and the Stork, Derek Hoff draws on his extraordinary knowledge of the intersections between population and economic debates throughout American history to explain the many surprising ways that population anxieties have provoked unexpected policies and political developments—including the recent conservative revival. At once a fascinating history and a revelatory look at the deep origins of a crucial national conversation, The State and the Stork could not be timelier.
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The State as a Work of Art
The Cultural Origins of the Constitution
Eric Slauter
University of Chicago Press, 2009

The founding of the United States after the American Revolution was so deliberate, so inspired, and so monumental in scope that the key actors considered this new government to be a work of art framed from natural rights. Recognizing the artificial nature of the state, these early politicians believed the culture of a people should inform the development of their governing rules and bodies. Eric Slauter explores these central ideas in this extensive and novel account of the origins and meanings of the Constitution of the United States. Slauter uncovers the hidden cultural histories upon which the document rests, highlights the voices of ordinary people, and considers how the artifice of the state was challenged in its effort to sustain inalienable natural rights alongside slavery and to achieve political secularization at a moment of growing religious expression.

A complement to classic studies of the Constitution’s economic, ideological, and political origins, The State as a Work of Art sheds new light on the origins of the Constitution and on ongoing debates over its interpretation.

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The State as Investment Market
Kyrgyzstan in Comparative Perspective
Johan Engvall
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016
Based on the case of Kyrgyzstan, while going well beyond it to elaborate a theory of the developing state that comprehends corruption as not merely criminal, but a type of market based on highly rational decisions made by the powerful individuals within, or connected to, the state.
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State Constitutional Politics
Governing by Amendment in the American States
John Dinan
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Since the US Constitution came into force in 1789, it has been amended just twenty-seven times, with ten of those amendments coming in the first two years following ratification. By contrast, state constitutions have been completely rewritten on a regular basis, and the current documents have been amended on average 150 times. This is because federal amendments are difficult, so politicians rarely focus on enacting them. Rather, they work to secure favorable congressional statutes or Supreme Court decisions. By contrast, the relative ease of state amendment processes makes them a realistic and regular vehicle for seeking change.

With State Constitutional Politics, John Dinan looks at the various occasions in American history when state constitutional amendments have served as instruments of governance. Among other things, amendments have constrained state officials in the way they levy taxes and spend money; enacted policies unattainable through legislation on issues ranging from minimum wage to the regulation of marijuana; and updated understandings of rights, including religious liberty, equal protection, and the right to bear arms. In addition to comprehensively chronicling the ways amendments shape politics in the states, Dinan also assesses the consequences of undertaking changes in governance through amendments rather than legislation or litigation. For various reasons, including the greater stability and legitimacy of changes achieved through the amendment process, he argues that it might be a more desirable way of achieving change.
 
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The State, Ethnicity, and Gender in Africa
Intellectual Legacies of Crawford Young
Edited by Scott Straus and Aili Mari Tripp
University of Wisconsin Press, 2024
Postcolonialism, the politics of ethnic and religious identity, and the role of women in African society and politics have become important, and often connected, foci in African studies. Here, fifteen chapters explore these themes in tandem. With essays that span the continent, this volume showcases the political histories, challenges, and promise of contemporary Africa.

Written in honor of Crawford Young, a foundational figure in the study of African politics, the essays reflect the breadth and intellectual legacy of this towering scholar and illustrate the vast impact Young had, and continues to have, on the field. The book’s themes build from his seminal publications, and the essays were written by leading scholars who were trained by Young.
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State, Labor, Capital
Democratizing Class Relations in the Southern Cone
Paul G. Buchanan
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995
Organized labor has played a critical role in political transition away from authoritarianism in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Buchanan views the institutional networks where these new governments strive to maintain democracy, focusing on the role of national labor administrations.

This book argues that because democratic capitalist regimes are founded on a state-mediated class compromise, institutionalizing labor relations is a major concern. Institutions that foster equitable labor-management bargaining are at the foundation of workers' acquiescence to bourgeois rule.
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State of Ambiguity
Civic Life and Culture in Cuba's First Republic
Steven Palmer, José Antonio Piqueras, Amparo Sánchez Cobos, eds.
Duke University Press, 2014
Cuba's first republican era (1902–1959) is principally understood in terms of its failures and discontinuities, typically depicted as an illegitimate period in the nation's history, its first three decades and the overthrow of Machado at best a prologue to the "real" revolution of 1959. State of Ambiguity brings together scholars from North America, Cuba, and Spain to challenge this narrative, presenting republican Cuba instead as a time of meaningful engagement—socially, politically, and symbolically. Addressing a wide range of topics—civic clubs and folkloric societies, science, public health and agrarian policies, popular culture, national memory, and the intersection of race and labor—the contributors explore how a broad spectrum of Cubans embraced a political and civic culture of national self-realization. Together, the essays in State of Ambiguity recast the first republic as a time of deep continuity in processes of liberal state- and nation-building that were periodically disrupted—but also reinvigorated—by foreign intervention and profound uncertainty.

Contributors. Imilcy Balboa Navarro, Alejandra Bronfman, Maikel Fariñas Borrego, Reinaldo Funes Monzote, Marial Iglesias Utset, Steven Palmer, José Antonio Piqueras Arenas, Ricardo Quiza Moreno, Amparo Sánchez Cobos, Rebecca J. Scott, Robert Whitney

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State of Change
Colorado Politics in the Twenty-first Century
Courtenay W. Daum
University Press of Colorado, 2011
Colorado has recently been at the center of major shifts in American politics. Indeed, over the last several decades the political landscape has altered dramatically on both the state and national levels. State of Change traces the political and demographic factors that have transformed Colorado, looking beyond the major shift in the dominant political party from Republican to Democratic to greater long-term implications.

The increased use of direct democracy has resulted in the adoption of term limits, major reconstruction of fiscal policy, and many other changes in both statutory and constitutional law. Individual chapters address these changes within a range of contexts--electoral, political, partisan, and institutional--as well as their ramifications. Contributors also address the possible impacts of these changes on the state in the future, concluding that the current state of affairs is fated to be short-lived.

State of Change is the most up-to-date book on Colorado politics available and will be of value to undergraduate- and graduate-level students, academics, historians, and anyone involved with or interested in Colorado politics.

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The State of Democracy in America
William J. Crotty, Editor
Georgetown University Press, 2001

In this wide-ranging assessment of democracy in America today, fifteen respected scholars of American politics chart the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s democratic mechanisms and outline the challenges that lie ahead. They focus not on specific policies or elections but on the quality of American political life, the representativeness of its governing institutions, and the issues of racial and economic equity.

The contributors cover a broad spectrum of the American political process. Topics include the extent and nature of political participation, the relevance of political parties, political fundraising and its policy consequences, demographic change and its likely effect on the national political agenda, and the future of racial politics. Others explore how representative Congress really is today, how the market economy affects public policy, the use of impeachment as a political weapon, and the degree of corporate influence on the political process. A final chapter explores the circumstances likely to shape policy agendas over the course of the twenty-first century.

Taken together, these essays provide a clear picture of political evolution during the past fifty years and discuss possible problems and issues of the future. Written for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, the book is a thoughtful, well-documented, critical analysis of contemporary American democracy.

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State of Empowerment
Low-Income Families and the New Welfare State
Carolyn Barnes
University of Michigan Press, 2020

On weekday afternoons, dismissal bells signal not just the end of the school day but also the beginning of another important activity: the federally funded after-school programs that offer tutoring, homework help, and basic supervision to millions of American children. Nearly one in four low-income families enroll a child in an after-school program. Beyond sharpening students’ math and reading skills, these programs also have a profound impact on parents. In a surprising turn—especially given the long history of social policies that leave recipients feeling policed, distrusted, and alienated—government-funded after-school programs have quietly become powerful forces for political and civic engagement by shifting power away from bureaucrats and putting it back into the hands of parents. In State of Empowerment Carolyn Barnes uses ethnographic accounts of three organizations to reveal how interacting with government-funded after-school programs can enhance the civic and political lives of low-income citizens.

[more]

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The State of Europe
Transformation of Statehood from a European Perspective
Edited by Sonja Puntscher Riekmann, Monika Mokre, and Michael Latzer
Campus Verlag, 2004
While globalization affects the sovereignty of every nation-state, European countries face special challenges due to the emergence of the European Union. The State of Europe explores the transformation of ideas of statehood in light of the EU’s continued development, including rapidly changing notions of democracy, representation, and citizenship alongside major shifts in economic regulation. This book will be an essential guide for students and teachers of economics, political science, and international relations, as well as anyone interested in the expanding role of the EU worldwide.
[more]

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State of Exception
Giorgio Agamben
University of Chicago Press, 2004
Two months after the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration, in the midst of what it perceived to be a state of emergency, authorized the indefinite detention of noncitizens suspected of terrorist activities and their subsequent trials by a military commission. Here, distinguished Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses such circumstances to argue that this unusual extension of power, or "state of exception," has historically been an underexamined and powerful strategy that has the potential to transform democracies into totalitarian states.

The sequel to Agamben's Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, State of Exception is the first book to theorize the state of exception in historical and philosophical context. In Agamben's view, the majority of legal scholars and policymakers in Europe as well as the United States have wrongly rejected the necessity of such a theory, claiming instead that the state of exception is a pragmatic question. Agamben argues here that the state of exception, which was meant to be a provisional measure, became in the course of the twentieth century a normal paradigm of government. Writing nothing less than the history of the state of exception in its various national contexts throughout Western Europe and the United States, Agamben uses the work of Carl Schmitt as a foil for his reflections as well as that of Derrida, Benjamin, and Arendt.

In this highly topical book, Agamben ultimately arrives at original ideas about the future of democracy and casts a new light on the hidden relationship that ties law to violence.
[more]

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State of Fear
Policing a Postcolonial City
Joshua Barker
Duke University Press, 2024
In State of Fear, Joshua Barker reckons with how fear and violence are produced and reproduced through everyday practices of rule and control. Examining the ethnographic and historical genealogies of Indonesian policing, Barker focuses on the city of Bandung, which is permeated by anxieties about security, all in spite of the fact that it’s a relatively safe city according to the data. Drawing from his fieldwork there during the latter years of the authoritarian New Order regime, Barker traces the complex relationship between the state and vigilante groups like neighborhood watch patrols and street gangs. Through interviews with police officers, vigilantes, and street-level toughs, he uncovers a struggle between two visions of social control that continues to animate policing in Indonesia: the modern, bureaucratic approach favored by the state, and a territorial approach that divides the city into fiefdoms overseen by charismatic individuals of authority. Synthesizing insights from in-depth ethnographic, historical, and theoretical work, Barker reveals how authoritarianism can take root not just from the top-down but also the bottom up.
[more]

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State of Giving
Stories of Oregon Nonprofits, Donors, and Volunteers
Greg Chaillé
Oregon State University Press, 2015
State of Giving is at once an authoritative overview of Oregon’s toughest challenges and a
much-needed manifesto for greater civic engagement. Chaillé and Anderson highlight the crucial
role that nonprofits play as pillars of Oregon’s civic structure through their engaging profiles of
the charismatic civic leaders, grassroots organizations, donors, and volunteers who are working
to combat some of Oregon’s most enduring problems, including:

• Education Inequity
• Environmental Conservation
• Social Inequity and Discrimination
• Hunger and Homelessness
• The Urban/Rural Divide
• Arts, Culture, and Heritage Funding

Traversing the state from a remote Great Basin field station to an intercultural center in north
Portland, State of Giving shows the many faces of public engagement in people like education
activist Ron Herndon, volunteer historians Gwen Carr and Willie Richardson, and Wallowa
County philanthropist and rancher Doug McDaniel. Their stories reveal that there are ways
in which we all—regardless of wealth, location, age, or background—can give back to our
communities.

In addition to introducing Oregon’s key areas of need and demonstrating diverse pathways
into civic engagement, the book provides extensive resources for prospective volunteers and
donors. Rousing, accessible, and enlivened by photographs of its people and places, State of Giving
is an essential reference for anyone interested in building a better Oregon, starting today.
[more]

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A State of Health
New Jersey's Medical Heritage
Reeds, Karen
Rutgers University Press, 2002

Did you know that New Jersey spearheaded the discovery of antibiotics? Or that the Garden State had the first state hospital serving the mentally ill and the first community rescue squad? And did you know that close to a million people around the world can walk again, thanks to the New Jersey Knee?

New Jersey is a small state that has played a big role in the history of medicine. Adrenalin, streptomycin, pure milk, tranquilizers, malaria control, cortisone, vitamins, revelations of radium's dangers—New Jersey’s impressive contributions to American health have been on display in a major traveling exhibition, “A State of Health: New Jersey’s Medical Heritage.” By 2002, more than twelve sites throughout New Jersey and Philadelphia will have hosted this display.

This catalogue to the exhibition celebrates more than four centuries of New Jersey medicine through original essays and 150-plus striking illustrations of artifacts, manuscripts, books, photographs, works of art, and postcards. Taking subjects of perennial interest—epidemics, children’s health, public health, hospitals, and biomedical research—curator Karen Reeds explores the state’s rich medical heritage and its uniqueplace as the heart of the world’s pharmaceutical industry.

Engagingly written and handsomely produced, A State of Health: New Jersey’s

Medical Heritage
is at once a lasting resource for students, teachers, and historians and the perfect gift to your favorite healthcare professional or local history buff.

[more]

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The State of Housing Design 2023
Joint Center for Housing Studies
Harvard University Press

The State of Housing Design 2023 is the first report in a new series that reviews national trends, ideas, and critical issues as they relate to residential design. This volume examines recently built housing projects of notable design that address issues of affordability, social cohesion, sustainability, aesthetics, density, and urbanism. Through critical essays, visual content, and a crowdsourced survey of responses, it provides both designers and the general public with an overview of the forces at play in contemporary design of housing.

The State of Housing Design series is published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies, a research center affiliated with the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, that has produced analyses of housing markets and policy for over sixty years.

[more]

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The State of Islam
Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan
Saadia Toor
Pluto Press, 2011

The State of Islam tells the story of Pakistan through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the global rise of militant Islam.

Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly-defined ‘political’ realm, Saadia Toor highlights the significance of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period. This extra dimension allows Toor to explain how the struggle between Marxists and liberal nationalists was influenced and eventually engulfed by the agenda of the religious right.

Timely and unique, this book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the roots of modern Pakistan and the likely outcome of current power struggles in the country.

[more]

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State of Israel, Diaspora, and Jewish Continuity
Essays on the “Ever-Dying People”
Simon Rawidowicz
Brandeis University Press, 1998
This readable, insightful, and thought-provoking collection of essays, presents an original and innovative ideology that stirringly affirms the unity of the Jewish people. Rawidowicz's rich themes include the relationship between the State of Israel and the Diaspora; Jewish "difference" and its repercussions; Jewish learning; and Jewish continuity in the post-Holocaust world. In his foreword to the paper edition, Michael A. Meyer writes, "Forty years after his death, [Rawidowicz's] sober analyses, his realism with regard to both the State of Israel and the Diaspora, and his striving to find unities among dichotomies that divide the Jewish people -- all of these make his images and ideas still worthy of our reflection."
[more]

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State of Lake Michigan
Ecology, Health, and Management
T. Edsall
Michigan State University Press, 2005
State of Lake Michigan is part of the Ecovision World Monograph Series, which is devoted to exploring the state, ecology, and integrity of the lakes. It is the formal outcome of an international symposium on Lake Michigan, organized by the Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society, and chaired by T. Edsall and M. Munawar.
State of Lake Michigan reviews the status of the major Lake Michigan ecosystem components and provides a basis for evaluating the health of the lake and for promoting integrated management of this exceptional natural resource. The book consists of papers by professionals in the Great Lakes region who are recognized for their contributions to the advancement of Great Lakes science and management. The book also includes an extensive subject index. Other sections explore physical and chemical regimes, food web, water birds, wetlands, and management and initiatives.
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State of Lake Ontario
Past, Present and Future
M. Munawar
Michigan State University Press, 2003
The State of Lake Ontario is a giant step forward in the study of Lake Ontario’s fisheries and limnology. The sixty-three authors have contributed twenty-two papers on physical and chemical limnology, food-web linkages, fish community dynamics, contaminants, water birds, and impacts of nonindigenous species. As the “lake below the Falls,” Lake Ontario has long been impacted by invasive species. The historic invaders (sea lamprey, alewife, and white perch) were trouble enough, but recent invasions of dreissenid mussels, gobies, and crustaceans have further disrupted an unstable system. Contaminant burdens in fish and water birds have been a persistent problem. As the smallest of the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario has some of the biggest ecosystem health problems.
[more]

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State of Lake Superior
M. Munawar
Michigan State University Press, 2009
Lake Superior was saved from the extremes felt elsewhere because it is the top of the drainage landscape. Superior offered the prospects of greatest success because it was, in general, least altered. Many decades later, Superior serves as the best example of success in recovering from environmental adversity. This is not to say that restoration is complete or that all ecological problems are resolved. The heavy hand of humanity continues to cause important threats to the present and future state of Lake Superior. State of Lake Superior offers a polythetic view of current conditions in Lake Superior and insightful suggestions about where and how improvements should continue. The chapters range from basic reviews of what we know as a consequence of effective research to explorations of what little we know about challenging environmental issues for the future. Among these are the continuing concerns about contaminants, the burgeoning march of invasive species, and the portent of global change. We find some encouragement in the resilience of this large lake ecosystem. In many respects, it is a success story, as is shown from the insights of research merged with the mindful attention of management agencies.
[more]

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State of Minds
Texas Culture and Its Discontents
By Don Graham
University of Texas Press, 2011

John Steinbeck once famously wrote that "Texas is a state of mind." For those who know it well, however, the Lone Star State is more than one mind-set, more than a collection of clichés, more than a static stereotype. There are minds in Texas, Don Graham asserts, and some of the most important are the writers and filmmakers whose words and images have helped define the state to the nation, the world, and the people of Texas themselves. For many years, Graham has been critiquing Texas writers and films in the pages of Texas Monthly and other publications. In State of Minds, he brings together and updates essays he published between 1999 and 2009 to paint a unique, critical picture of Texas culture.

In a strong personal voice—wry, humorous, and ironic—Graham offers his take on Texas literary giants ranging from J. Frank Dobie to Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy and on films such as The Alamo, The Last Picture Show, and Brokeback Mountain. He locates the works he discusses in relation to time and place, showing how they sprang (or not) from the soil of Texas and thereby helped to define Texas culture for generations of readers and viewers—including his own younger self growing up on a farm in Collin County. Never shying from controversy and never dull, Graham's essays in State of Minds demolish the notion that "Texas culture" is an oxymoron.

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The State of Nature
Ecology, Community, and American Social Thought, 1900-1950
Gregg Mitman
University of Chicago Press, 1992
Although science may claim to be "objective," scientists cannot avoid the influence of their own values on their research. In The State of Nature, Gregg Mitman examines the relationship between issues in early twentieth-century American society and the sciences of evolution and ecology to reveal how explicit social and political concerns influenced the scientific agenda of biologists at the University of Chicago and throughout the United States during the first half of this century.

Reacting against the view of nature "red in tooth and claw," ecologists and behavioral biologists such as Warder Clyde Allee, Alfred Emerson, and their colleagues developed research programs they hoped would validate and promote an image of human society as essentially cooperative rather than competitive. Mitman argues that Allee's religious training and pacifist convictions shaped his pioneering studies of animal communities in a way that could be generalized to denounce the view that war is in our genes.
[more]

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The State of Southern Illinois
An Illustrated History
Herbert K. Russell
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012

In The State of Southern Illinois: An Illustrated History, Herbert K. Russell offers fresh interpretations of a number of important aspects of Southern Illinois history. Focusing on the area known as “Egypt,” the region  south of U.S. Route 50 from Salem south to Cairo, he begins his book with the earliest geologic formations and  follows Southern Illinois’s history into the twenty-first century. The volume is richly illustrated with maps and photographs, mostly in color, that highlight the informative and straightforward text.

Perhaps most notable is the author’s use of dozens of heretofore neglected sources to dispel the myth that Southern Illinois is merely an extension of Dixie. He corrects the popular impressions that slavery was introduced by early settlers from the South and that a majority of Southern Illinoisans wished to secede. Furthermore, he presents the first in-depth discussion of twelve pre–Civil War, free black communities located in the region. He also identifies the roles coal mining, labor violence, gangsters, and the media played in  establishing the area’s image. He concludes optimistically, unveiling a twenty-first-century Southern Illinois filled with myriad attractions and opportunities for citizens and tourists alike.

The State of Southern Illinois is the most accurate all-encompassing volume of history on this unique area that often regards itself as a state within a state. It offers an entirely new perspective on race relations, provides insightful information on the cultural divide between north and south in Illinois, and pays tribute to an often neglected and misunderstood region of this multidimensional state, all against a stunning visual backdrop.


Superior Achievement from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2013

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The State of the African American Male
Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher
Michigan State University Press, 2010

The circumstances affecting many African American males in schools and society remain complex and problematic. In spite of modest gains in school achievement and graduation rates, conditions that impede the progress of African American males persist: high rates of school violence and suspensions, overrepresentation in special education classes, poor access to higher education, high incidence of crime and incarceration, gender and masculine identity issues, and HIV/AIDS and other health crises.
     The essays gathered here focus on these issues as they exist for males in grades K-12 and postsecondary education in Michigan. However, the authors intend their analyses and policy recommendations to apply to African American males nationally.
     Although it recognizes the current difficulties of this population overall, this is an optimistic volume, with a goal of creating policies and norms that help African American males achieve their educational and social potential. In this era of widespread change for all members of American society-regardless of race-this book is a must-read for educators and policymakers alike.

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The State of the American Mind
16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism
Mark Bauerlein
Templeton Press, 2015
In 1987, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind was published; a wildly popular book that drew attention to the shift in American culture away from the tenants that made America—and Americans—unique. Bloom focused on a breakdown in the American curriculum, but many sensed that the issue affected more than education. The very essence of what it meant to be an American was disappearing.
 
That was over twenty years ago. Since then, the United States has experienced unprecedented wealth, more youth enrolling in higher education than ever before, and technology advancements far beyond what many in the 1980s dreamed possible. And yet, the state of the American mind seems to have deteriorated further. Benjamin Franklin’s “self-made man” has become a man dependent on the state. Independence has turned into self-absorption. Liberty has been curtailed in the defense of multiculturalism. 
 
In order to fully grasp the underpinnings of this shift away from the self-reliant, well-informed American, editors Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow have brought together a group of cultural and educational experts to discuss the root causes of the decline of the American mind.  The writers of these fifteen original essays include E. D. Hirsch, Nicholas Eberstadt, and Dennis Prager, as well as Daniel Dreisbach, Gerald Graff, Richard Arum, Robert Whitaker, David T. Z. Mindich, Maggie Jackson, Jean Twenge, Jonathan Kay, Ilya Somin, Steve Wasserman, Greg Lukianoff, and R. R. Reno. Their essays are compiled into three main categories:
 
  • States of Mind: Indicators of Intellectual and Cognitive Decline
    • These essays broach specific mental deficiencies among the population, including lagging cultural IQ, low Biblical literacy, poor writing skills, and over-medication.
  • Personal and Cognitive Habits/Interests
    • These essays turn to specific mental behaviors and interests, including avoidance of the news, short attention spans, narcissism, and conspiracy obsessions.
  • National Consequences
    • These essays examine broader trends affecting populations and institutions, including rates of entitlement claims, voting habits, and a low-performing higher education system.
 The State of the American Mind is both an assessment of our current state as well as a warning, foretelling what we may yet become. For anyone interested in the intellectual fate of America, The State of the American Mind offers an accessible and critical look at life in America and how our collective mind is faring. 
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The State of the Art
A Chronicle of American Poetry, 1988-2014
David Lehman
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015
The acclaimed annual, The Best American Poetry, is the most prestigious showcase of new poetry in the United States and Canada. Each year since the series began in 1988, David Lehman has contributed a foreword, and this has evolved into a sort of state-of-the-art address that surveys new developments and explores various matters facing poets and their readers today. This book collects all twenty-nine forewords (including the two written for the retrospective “Best of the Best” volumes for the tenth and twenty-fifth anniversaries.)  Beginning with a new introduction by Lehman and a foreword by poet Denise Duhamel (guest editor for The Best American Poetry 2013), the collection conveys a sense of American poetry in the making, year by year, over the course of a quarter of a century.
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The State of the Japanese State
Contested Identity, Direction and Role
Gavan McCormack
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
In this his latest work, Gavan McCormack argues that Abe Shinzo’s efforts to re-engineer the Japanese state may fail, but his radicalism continues to shake the country and will have consequences not easy now to predict. The significance of this book will be widely recognized, particularly by those researching contemporary world politics, international relations and the history of modern Japan. McCormack here revisits and reassesses his previous formulations of Japan as construction state (doken kokka), client state (zokkoku), constitutional pacifist state, and colonial state (especially in its relationship to Okinawa). He adds a further chapter on what he calls the ‘rampant state’, that outlines the increasingly authoritarian or ikkyo (one strong) turn of the Abe government in the fifth year of its second term. And he critically addresses the Abe agenda for constitutional revision.
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The State of the Nation
Government and the Quest for a Better Society
Derek Bok
Harvard University Press, 1996

Never before have Americans been so anxious about the future of their society. But rarely has anyone offered a clear statement about why, in a nation so prosperous, free, and stable, we tend to assume that the country is in dire straits and that the government can do little to help. This book is just such a statement, an eloquent assessment of where America stands, how our society has changed in the past half-century, and who or what is responsible for our current frustrations.

Derek Bok examines the nation's progress in five areas that Americans generally consider to be of paramount importance: economic prosperity, quality of life, opportunity, personal security, and societal values. He shows that although we are better off today in most areas than we were in 1960, we have performed poorly overall compared with other leading industrial nations. And when it comes to providing adequate health care at a reasonable cost, educating our young people for high-skilled jobs, alleviating poverty and urban blight, and reducing crime, our record has been dismal. Comparing the United States with other leading industrial nations on more than sixty key indicators, Bok shows that we rank below average in more than two-thirds of the cases and at the bottom in more than half.

What has caused this decline, and what can be done about it? In virtually all important areas of American life, Bok concludes, government policies have played a significant, often decisive role in accounting for our successes as well as our failures. But whereas others call for downsizing the federal government, Bok argues that government is essential to achieving America's goals. In short, Ronald Reagan was only half right. Government is the problem. But it is also the most important part of the solution. By assessing the state of the nation and identifying the reasons for its current condition, this book helps set the agenda for improving America's performance in the future.

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The State of the Nation's Ecosystems 2008
Measuring the Land, Waters, and Living Resources of The United States
The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, RobinO'Malley, Project Director
Island Press, 2008
Revised and updated periodically, The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems is widely recognized as America’s most comprehensive report on the condition of our lands, waters, and living resources. Like the acclaimed first edition, this second edition provides nonpartisan, scientifically reliable information for policymakers, scientists, journalists, and anyone who is interested in the state of America’s environment.
 
The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems provides a way to “take the pulse” of America’s environment. It is organized around the nation’s primary ecosystems: farmlands, forests, fresh waters, coasts and oceans, grasslands and shrublands, urban and suburban areas, and the nation as a whole. For each, it identifies what should be measured, counted, and reported so that decision makers and others can understand the changes that are occurring, set priorities for action, and measure whether we are achieving our environmental goals. Conditions are tracked using approximately 100 indicators, agreed upon by hundreds of experts from universities, government agencies, corporations, and environmental organizations. The new report refines the set of indicators and supplies data.
 
Until its publication, there was no environmental equivalent to the kind of “key economic indicators” that help to gauge the economic health of the nation, like gross domestic product. The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems provides our first set of “key environmental indicators.” It won’t eliminate differences of opinion about environmental policy, but it will provide a common set of data to inform the debate as well as a common yardstick for measuring the effectiveness of our actions. Most importantly, it will provide much-needed assistance in setting our future agenda.
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State of the Union
America in the 1990s, Economic Trends
Reynolds Farley
Russell Sage Foundation, 1995
 "The Census is a most valuable source of information about our lives; these volumes make the story it has to tell accessible to all who want to know." —Lee Rainwater, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences "A lucid and balanced overview of major trends in the United States and essential reading for policymakers. State of the Union is a reality check that provides the factual basis for policy analysis."—Peter Gottschalk, Boston College State of the Union: America in the 1990s is the definitive new installment to the United States Census Series, carrying forward a tradition of census-based reports on American society that began with the 1930 Census. These two volumes offer a systematic, authoritative, and concise interpretation of what the 1990 Census reveals about the American people today. •Volume One: Economic Trends focuses on the schism between the wealthy and the poor that intensified in the 1980s as wages went up for highly educated persons but fell for those with less than a college degree. This gap was reflected geographically, as industries continued their migration from crumbling inner cities to booming edge cities, often leaving behind an impoverished minority population. Young male workers lost ground in the 1980s, but women made substantial strides, dramatically reducing the gender gap in earnings. The amount of family income devoted to housing rose over the decade, but while housing quality improved for wealthy, older Americans, it declined for younger, poorer families. •Volume Two: Social Trends examines the striking changes in American families and the rapid shifts in our racial and ethnic composition. Americans are marrying much later and divorcing more often, and increasing numbers of unmarried women are giving birth. These shifts have placed a growing proportion of children at risk of poverty. In glaring contrast, the elderly were the only group to make gains in the 1980s, and are now healthier and more prosperous than ever before. The concentrated immigration of Asians and Latinos to a few states and cities created extraordinary pockets of diversity within the population. Throughout the 1990s, the nation will debate questions about the state of the nation and the policies that should be adopted to address changing conditions. Will continued technological change lead to even more economic polarization? Will education become an increasingly important factor in determining earnings potential? Did new immigrants stimulate the economy or take jobs away from American-born workers? Will we be able to support the rapidly growing population of older retirees? State of the Union will help us to answer these questions and better understand how well the nation is adapting to the pervasive social and economic transformations of our era. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series
[more]

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State of the Union
America in the 1990s, Social Trends
Reynolds Farley
Russell Sage Foundation, 1995
 "The Census is a most valuable source of information about our lives; these volumes make the story it has to tell accessible to all who want to know." —Lee Rainwater, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences "A lucid and balanced overview of major trends in the United States and essential reading for policymakers. State of the Union is a reality check that provides the factual basis for policy analysis."—Peter Gottschalk, Boston College State of the Union: America in the 1990s is the definitive new installment to the United States Census Series, carrying forward a tradition of census-based reports on American society that began with the 1930 Census. These two volumes offer a systematic, authoritative, and concise interpretation of what the 1990 Census reveals about the American people today. •Volume One: Economic Trends focuses on the schism between the wealthy and the poor that intensified in the 1980s as wages went up for highly educated persons but fell for those with less than a college degree. This gap was reflected geographically, as industries continued their migration from crumbling inner cities to booming edge cities, often leaving behind an impoverished minority population. Young male workers lost ground in the 1980s, but women made substantial strides, dramatically reducing the gender gap in earnings. The amount of family income devoted to housing rose over the decade, but while housing quality improved for wealthy, older Americans, it declined for younger, poorer families. •Volume Two: Social Trends examines the striking changes in American families and the rapid shifts in our racial and ethnic composition. Americans are marrying much later and divorcing more often, and increasing numbers of unmarried women are giving birth. These shifts have placed a growing proportion of children at risk of poverty. In glaring contrast, the elderly were the only group to make gains in the 1980s, and are now healthier and more prosperous than ever before. The concentrated immigration of Asians and Latinos to a few states and cities created extraordinary pockets of diversity within the population. Throughout the 1990s, the nation will debate questions about the state of the nation and the policies that should be adopted to address changing conditions. Will continued technological change lead to even more economic polarization? Will education become an increasingly important factor in determining earnings potential? Did new immigrants stimulate the economy or take jobs away from American-born workers? Will we be able to support the rapidly growing population of older retirees? State of the Union will help us to answer these questions and better understand how well the nation is adapting to the pervasive social and economic transformations of our era. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series
[more]

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State of the Wild 2008-2009
A Global Portrait of Wildlife, Wildlands, and Oceans
Wildlife Conservation Society
Island Press, 2008
State of the Wild is a biennial series that brings together international conservation experts and writers to discuss emerging issues in the conservation of wildlife and wild places.
 
Each volume in the series combines evocative writings with a fascinating tour of conservation news highlights and vital statistics from around the world. One-third of each volume focuses on a topic of particular concern to conservationists working to protect wildlife and our last wild places. This 2008–2009 edition considers the integration of wildlife health, ecosystem health, human health, and the health of domestic animals—a “One World–One Health” approach to disease and conservation.
 
This focus is complemented with essays clustered into sections that address other key issues—conservation of species; conservation of wild places; people, culture, and conservation; and the art and practice of conservation. Essays cover a broad range of topics, from restoring biodiversity on the prairies to mapping the state of the oceans to the conservation impacts of lawlessness and coca cultivation in Colombia. Essay contributions come from people directly involved in on-the-ground conservation efforts and offer a unique and valuable perspective on often-overlooked topics.
 
State of the Wild’s accessible approach educates a wide range of audiences while at the same time presenting leading-edge scientific overviews of hot topics in conservation. Uniquely structured with magazine-like features up front, conservation news in the middle, and essays from eminent authors and experienced scientists throughout, this landmark series is an essential addition to any environmental bookshelf.
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State of the Wild 2010-2011
A Global Portrait
Wildlife Conservation Society
Island Press, 2010
State of the Wild is a biennial series that brings together international conservation experts and writers to discuss emerging issues in the conservation of wildlife and wild places.

In addition to evocative writings and a fascinating tour of conservation news highlights and vital statistics from around the world, this 2010-2011 edition examines how destabilization and war affect wildlife and wild places.
State of the Wild's accessible approach educates a wide range of audiences while at the same time presenting leading-edge scientific overviews of hot topics in conservation. Uniquely structured with magazine-like features up front, conservation news in the middle, and essays from eminent authors and experienced scientists throughout, this landmark series is an essential addition to any environmental bookshelf.
[more]

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State of the Wild
A Global Portrait of Wildlife, Wildlands, and Oceans
Wildlife Conservation Society
Island Press, 2005

In wild places where nature thrives, humanity prospers; our well-being is inextricably linked with that of the planet's web of life. In fact, one could argue that the state of the world can be measured by the state of the wild.

But how do we gauge the state of earth's wildlife, wildlands, and oceans? State of the Wild is a new series that brings together some of the world's most renowned conservationists and writers-George Schaller, Alan Rabinowitz, Sylvia Earle, Rick Bass, Bill McKibben, Tom Lovejoy, and many others-to assess wildlife and wilderness, and to provide insights into how humans can become better stewards of the wild.

This new series combines evocative writings with a fascinating tour of news highlights and vital statistics from around the world. One-third of each volume will focus on a topic of particular concern to conservationists working to protect wildlife and our last wild places. This 2006 edition explores the impacts of hunting and the wildlife trade through a range of essays: Ted Kerasote traces the history of hunting in North America; Carl Safina, Eric Gilman, and Wallace J. Nichols quantify the toll taken by commercial fishing on seabirds, turtles, and other marine species; James Compton and Samuel K. H. Lee explore the global reach of the wildlife trade for traditional Asian medicine.

Contributors also examine other pivotal conservation issues, from the reasons why one in eight of the world's birds are endangered, to the impacts of global climate change, to the complexity of conserving seals, flamingos, zebras, and other wide-ranging species. The book's closing essay, "The Relative Wild," considers what exactly it means for a place to be "wild," where even the most remote corners of the planet have been altered by human activities.

Uniquely structured with magazine-like features up front, conservation news in the middle, and essay contributions from eminent authors and biologists throughout, this landmark series is an essential addition to any environmental bookshelf.

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front cover of State of the World 1998
State of the World 1998
Environmental Threats of Economic Growth
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
In this fifteenth edition of State of the World, Lester R. Brown and the Worldwatch research team look at the environmental effects of continuing economic growth as the economy outgrows the earth's ecosystem. As the global economy has expanded from $5 trillion of output in 1950 to $29 trillion in 1997, its demands have crossed many of the earth's sustainable yield thresholds.
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front cover of State of the World 1999
State of the World 1999
Looking Toward a Sustainable 21st Century
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
Written in clear and concise language, with easy-to-read charts and tables, State of the World presents a view of our changing world that we cannot afford to ignore.
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front cover of State of the World 2000
State of the World 2000
Building a Sustainable Economy
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
State of the World 2000 shines a sharp light on the great challenge our civilization faces: how to use our political systems to manage the difficult and complex relationships between the global economy and the Earth's ecosystems. If we cannot build an environmentally sustainable global economy, then we have no future that anyone would desire.
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front cover of State of the World 2001
State of the World 2001
The Challenge of a Globalizing World
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
From the thinning of the Arctic sea ice to the invasion of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, State of the World 2001 shows how the economic boom of the last decade has damaged natural systems. The increasingly visible evidence of environmental deterioration is only the tip of a much more dangerous problem: the growing inequities in wealth and income between countries and within countries, inequities that will generate enormous social unrest and pressure for change.
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front cover of State of the World 2002
State of the World 2002
Addressing Climate Change and Overpopulation
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
State of the World 2002 includes chapters on climate change, farming, toxic chemicals, sustainable tourism, population, resource conflicts and global governance.
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front cover of State of the World 2003
State of the World 2003
Reinventing Human Civilization
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
The challenges are still immense, of course, as the book also documents, but the building blocks for a historic reinvention of human civilization are now within reach.
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front cover of State of the World 2004
State of the World 2004
Special Focus: The Consumer Society
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
With chapters on food, water, energy, the politics of consumption and redefining the good life, Worldwatch’s award-winning research team asks whether a less-consumptive society is possible—and then argues that it is essential.
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front cover of State of the World 2005
State of the World 2005
Redefining Global Security
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
In State of the World 2005, Worldwatch researchers explore underlying sources of global insecurity including poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, and rising competition over oil and other resources. Find out why terrorism is just symptomatic of a far broader set of complex problems that require more than a military response.
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front cover of State of the World 2006
State of the World 2006
Special Focus: China and India
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
State of the World 2006 provides a special focus on China and India and their impact on the world as major consumers of resources and polluters of local and global ecosystems. The report explains the critical need for both countries to "leapfrog" the technologies, policies, and even the cultures that now prevail in many western countries for the sake of global sustainability—and reports on some of the strategies that China and India are starting to implement. Besides the focus on China and India, State of the World 2006 looks at actions corporations can take to be more socially responsible; examines the potential socioeconomic, health, and environmental implications of nanoscale technologies; assesses the impacts of large-scale development of biofuels on agriculture and the environment; describes mercury sources, industrial uses, and health hazards worldwide; and provides an overview of the need to safeguard freshwater ecosystems, with examples of proven approaches in cities, villages, and farming regions around the world.
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front cover of State of the World 2007
State of the World 2007
Our Urban Future
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
In 2008, half of the Earth’s population will live in urban areas, marking the first time in history that humans are an urban species. State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future examines changes in the ways cities are managed, built, and lived in that could tip the balance towards a healthier and more peaceful urban future.
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State of the World 2008
Innovations for a Sustainable Economy
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
Environmental issues were once regarded as irrelevant to economic activity, but today they are dramatically rewriting the rules for business, investors, and consumers. Around the world, innovative responses to climate change and other environmental problems are affecting more than $100 billion in annual capital flows as pioneering entrepreneurs, organizations, and governments take steps to create the Earth’s first “sustainable” global economy.
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front cover of State of the World 2009
State of the World 2009
Into a Warming World
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
It's New Year's Day, 2101. Somehow, humanity survived the worst of global warming—the higher temperatures and sea levels and the more intense droughts and storms—and succeeded in stabilizing the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gas concentrations are peaking and are expected to drift downward in the 22nd century. The rise in global temperatures is slowing and the natural world is gradually healing. The social contract largely held. And humanity as a whole is better fed, healthier, and more prosperous today than it was a century ago. This scenario of an imagined future raises a key question: What must we do in the 21st century to make such a future possible, and to head off the kind of climate catastrophe that many scientists now see as likely? This question inspires the theme of the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2009 report: how climate change will play out over the coming century, and what steps we most urgently need to take now.
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front cover of State of the World 2010
State of the World 2010
Transforming Cultures From Consumerism to Sustainability
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
Like a tsunami, consumerism has engulfed human cultures and Earth’s ecosystems. Left unaddressed, we risk global disaster. But if we channel this wave, intentionally transforming our cultures to center on sustainability, we will not only prevent catastrophe, but may usher in an era of sustainability—one that allows all people to thrive while protecting, even restoring, Earth. In State of the World 2010, sixty renowned researchers and practitioners describe how we can harness the world’s leading institutions—education, the media, business, governments, traditions, and social movements—to reorient cultures toward sustainability.
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front cover of State of the World 2011
State of the World 2011
Innovations that Nourish the Planet
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
A compelling look at the global food crisis, with particular emphasis on global innovations that can help solve a worldwide problem. State of the World 2011 not only introduces us to the latest agro-ecological innovations and their global applicability but also gives broader insights into issues including poverty, international politics, and even gender equity.
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front cover of State of the World 2012
State of the World 2012
Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2012
In the 2012 edition of its flagship report, Worldwatch celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit with a far-reaching analysis of progress toward building sustainable economies. Written in clear language with easy-to-read charts, State of the World 2012 offers a new perspective on what changes and policies will be necessary to make sustainability a permanent feature of the world's economies. The Worldwatch Institute has been named one of the top three environmental think tanks in the world by the University of Pennsylvania's Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program.
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front cover of State of the World 2013
State of the World 2013
Is Sustainability Still Possible?
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2013
Every day, we are presented with a range of “sustainable” products and activities—from “green” cleaning supplies to carbon offsets—but with so much labeled as “sustainable,” the term has become essentially sustainababble, at best indicating a practice or product slightly less damaging than the conventional alternative. Is it time to abandon the concept altogether, or can we find an accurate way to measure sustainability? If so, how can we achieve it? And if not, how can we best prepare for the coming ecological decline?

In the latest edition of Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World series, scientists, policy experts, and thought leaders tackle these questions, attempting to restore meaning to sustainability as more than just a marketing tool. In State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?, experts define clear sustainability metrics and examine various policies and perspectives, including geoengineering, corporate transformation, and changes in agricultural policy, that could put us on the path to prosperity without diminishing the well-being of future generations. If these approaches fall short, the final chapters explore ways to prepare for drastic environmental change and resource depletion, such as strengthening democracy and societal resilience, protecting cultural heritage, and dealing with increased conflict and migration flows.

State of the World 2013 cuts through the rhetoric surrounding sustainability, offering a broad and realistic look at how close we are to fulfilling it today and which practices and policies will steer us in the right direction. This book will be especially useful for policymakers, environmental nonprofits, and students of environmental studies, sustainability, or economics.
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front cover of State of the World 2014
State of the World 2014
Governing for Sustainability
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2014
Citizens expect their governments to lead on sustainability. But from largely disappointing international conferences like Rio II to the U.S.’s failure to pass meaningful climate legislation, governments’ progress has been lackluster. That’s not to say leadership is absent; it just often comes from the bottom up rather than the top down. Action—on climate, species loss, inequity, and other sustainability crises—is being driven by local, people’s, women’s, and grassroots movements around the world, often in opposition to the agendas pursued by governments and big corporations.

These diverse efforts are the subject of the latest volume in the Worldwatch Institute’s highly regarded State of the World series. The 2014 edition, marking the Institute’s 40th anniversary, examines both barriers to responsible political and economic governance as well as gridlock-shattering new ideas. The authors analyze a variety of trends and proposals, including regional and local climate initiatives, the rise of benefit corporations and worker-owned firms, the need for energy democracy, the Internet’s impact on sustainability, and the importance of eco-literacy. A consistent thread throughout the book is that informed and engaged citizens are key to better governance.

The book is a clear-eyed yet ultimately optimistic assessment of citizens’ ability to govern for sustainability. By highlighting both obstacles and opportunities, State of the World 2014 shows how to effect change within and beyond the halls of government. This volume will be especially useful for policymakers, environmental nonprofits, students of environmental studies, sustainability, or economics—and citizens looking to jumpstart significant change around the world.

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front cover of State of the World 2015
State of the World 2015
Confronting Hidden Threats to Sustainability
The Worldwatch Institute
Island Press, 2015
We think we understand environmental damage: pollution, water scarcity, a warming world. But these problems are just the tip of the iceberg. Food insecurity, financial assets drained of value by environmental damage, and a rapid rise in diseases of animal origin are among the underreported consequences of an unsustainable global system.

In State of the World 2015, the flagship publication of The Worldwatch Institute, experts explore hidden threats to sustainability and how to address them. How will nations deal with migration as climate change refugees cross borders in order to escape flooding, drought, or other extreme weather events? What will happen to the price and availability of fossil energy—the foundation of industrial civilization--as these resources oscillate between surplus and scarcity? If perpetual economic growth on a finite planet is impossible, what are the alternatives? Can national governments manage the transition? Eight key issues are addressed in depth, along with the central question of how we can develop resilience to these and other shocks.

For decades, The Worldwatch Institute has been a leader in identifying and analyzing emerging environmental threats. With the latest edition of State of The World, the authorities at Worldwatch bring to light challenges we can no longer afford to ignore.
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front cover of State of Translation
State of Translation
Turkey in Interlingual Relations
Einar Wigen
University of Michigan Press, 2018

International politics often requires two or more languages. The resulting interlingual relations mean translation, either by interpreters who are quite literally in the middle of conversations, or by bilingual statesmen who negotiate internationally in one language and then legitimize domestically in another. Since no two languages are the same, what can be argued in one language may be impossible in another. Political concepts can thus be significantly reformulated in the translation process. State of Translation examines this phenomenon using the case of how 19th-century Ottoman and later Turkish statesmen struggled to reconcile their arguments in external languages (French, then English) with those in their internal language (Ottoman, later Turkish), and in the process further entangled them. Einar Wigen shows how this process structured social relations between the Ottoman state and its interlocutors, both domestically and internationally, and shaped the dynamics of Turkish relations with Europe.

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front cover of State of Virginity
State of Virginity
Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern Catholic State
Ulrike Strasser
University of Michigan Press, 2006

Winner: 2005 Book Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women; Selected by the German Studies Association as one of the top five books of 2004 in early modern history

"A fresh, original study of gender roles and religious ideology in the early modern Catholic state. . . . Using a rich array of archival sources, Strasser explores ways in which an increasingly centralized Bavarian government in Munich inaugurated marriage and convent reforms and a civil religion based on the veneration of the Virgin Mary. Her carefully selected case studies show how church and state collaborated to produce a shared discourse and consistent policies proscribing extramarital sex, and excluding those without property from marriage. "

Choice

Ulrike Strasser is Associate Professor of History, Affiliate Faculty in Women's Studies, and Core Faculty in Religious Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

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