Immigrants to the United States have long used the armed forces as
a shortcut to citizenship. Cristina-Ioana Dragomir profiles Lily,
Alexa, and Vikrant, three immigrants of varying nationalities and
...backgrounds who chose military service as their way of becoming
American citizens. Privileging the trio's own words and
experiences, Dragomir crafts a human-focused narrative that moves
from their lives in their home countries and decisions to join the
military to their fraught naturalization processes within the
service. Dragomir illuminates how race, ethnicity, class, and
gender impacted their transformation from immigrant to soldier,
veteran, and American. She explores how these factors both eased
their journeys and created obstacles that complicated their access
to healthcare, education, economic resources, and other forms of
social justice.
A compelling union of analysis and rich storytelling, Making
the Immigrant Soldier traces the complexities of serving in
the military in order to pursue the American dream.
This volume considers two authors who represent different but complementary responses to social injustice and human degradation. The writings of Walter Rauschenbusch and Dorothy Day respond to an ...American situation that arose out of the Industrial Revolution and reflect especially—but not exclusively—urban life on the East Coast of the United States during the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Although these two authors differ greatly, they both reacted to the extreme social inequality and strife that occurred between 1890 and the beginning of World War II. They shared a total commitment to the cause of social justice, their Christian faith, and an active engagement in the quest for a just social order. But the different ways they reacted to the situation generated different spiritualities. Rauschenbusch was a pastor, writer, historian, and seminary professor. Day was a journalist who became an organizer. The strategic differences between them, however, grew out of a common sustained reaction against the massive deprivation that surrounded them. There is no spiritual rivalry here. They complement each other and reinforce the Christian humanitarian motivation that drives them. Their work brings the social dimension of Christian spirituality to the surface in a way that had not been emphasized in the same focused way before them. They are part of an awakening to the degree to which the social order lies in the hands of the people who support it. Both Rauschenbusch and Day are examples of an explicit recognition of the social dimension of Christian spirituality and a radical acting-out of that response in two distinctly different ways.
In this book, Nye returns to the business of critically appraising America's role in the present and future. While many contemporary 'realist' scholars view China as America's most likely competitor, ...or envisage a Russia-China-India coalition, Nye feels that the real challenges to America's power come in the form of the very things that have made the last ten years so prosperous: the information revolution and globalization. In Nye's view, while these phenomena at first helped to increase America's 'soft power' (its ability to influence the world through cultural, political, and other non-military means), they will soon threaten to dilute it. As technology spreads the Internet will become less US-centric, transnational corporations and non-governmental actors will gain power, and 'multiple modernities' will mean that 'being number 1 ain't gonna be what it used to be'. Nye includes chapters on American power, the information revolution, globalization, American culture and politics, and 'defining the national interest', along the way considering what the lessons of history have to tell us about what we should do with out unprecedented power - while we still have it. This book will include a sharp analysis of the terrorist attacks on the US in 2000, and will argue that the US cannot fight terrorism by itself.
Young American Foreign Service officers are accustomed to being
teased by friends and relatives as to what they do in the "Foreign
Legion" or the "Forest Service." In the United States, unlike in
...many countries, the role of a professional diplomat is little known
or understood. In A Professional Foreigner Edward Marks
describes his life as an American diplomat who served during the
last four decades of the twentieth century, from 1959 to 2001.
Serving primarily in Africa and Asia, Marks was present during the
era of decolonization in Africa (but always seemed to be at the
opposite end of the continent from the hottest developments), was
intimately involved in the early days of the U.S. government's
antiterrorism programs, observed the unfolding of a nasty and
tragic ethnic conflict in one of the most charming countries in the
world, and saw the end of the Cold War at UN headquarters in New
York. Along the way Marks served as the U.S. ambassador to two
African nations. In this memoir Marks depicts a Foreign Service
officer's daily life, providing insight into the profession itself
and what it was like to play a role in the steady stream of
history, in a world of quotidian events often out of the view of
the media and the attention of the world. Marks's stories-such as
rescuing an American citizen from a house of ill repute in Mexico
and the attempt to recruit mongooses for drug intervention in Sri
Lanka-are both entertaining and instructive on the work of
diplomats and their contributions to the American story.
Walking the Gendered Tightrope analyzes the gendered expectations for women in high offices through the examples of British Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Even ...at their highest positions, and while completing their greatest achievements, both May and Pelosi faced gendered critiques and intraparty challenges to their leadership. While other books have analyzed the barriers to higher office that women face, this book reveals how women in positions of power are still forced to balance feminine stereotypes with the perception of power as masculine in order to prove their legitimacy. By examining intraparty dynamics, this book offers a unique comparison between a majoritarian presidential and Westminster parliamentary system. While their parties promoted Pelosi and May to highlight their progressive values, both women faced continually gendered critiques about their abilities to lead their caucuses on difficult policy issues, such as the Affordable Care Act and two Trump impeachment votes for Nancy Pelosi, or finishing Brexit for Theresa May. Grounded in the legislative literature from the United States and Britain, as well as historical accounts and personal interviews, Walking the Gendered Tightrope contributes to the fields of gender and politics, legislative studies, American politics, and British politics.
Gaylord Jackson Perry was born in 1938 as the younger son of a tobacco sharecropper in Martin County, North Carolina. He and his older brother Jim grew up against a background of backbreaking work ...six days a week in a community that boasted not a single paved road until the 1950s. Their only relaxation was playing baseball, first with their father and later at school. While both brothers would go on to succeed as pitchers in major league baseball, for Gaylord, success would require a lot of perseverance and an almost equal amount of subterfuge. After a couple of lackluster seasons with the San Francisco Giants, he learned from bullpen-mate Bob Shaw how to throw the illegal spitball. More importantly, he learned to control the tricky pitch and to conceal it from suspicious umpires, opposing managers, and baffled batters. When he finally broke out the spitter in a victory by attrition in a marathon, 32-inning, nine-hour doubleheader against the Mets in May 1964, his destiny was set. The Hall of Famer would go on to a 314–265 win-loss record, with a 3.11 earned-run average and 3,534 career strikeouts, becoming the first pitcher in major league history to win the Cy Young Award in both leagues. Sports historian David Vaught has mined archival and public records, game statistics, media accounts, and previously published works—including Perry’s 1974 autobiography—to compile the first critical biography of a player as famous for his wry humor and downhome banter as for his trademark illegal pitch. Written for baseball fans and American sports historians, Spitter: Baseball’s Notorious Gaylord Perry  provides new insights and genuine enjoyment of the game for a wide range of readers.
An intellectual history of American conservativism since the New Deal.The New Deal fundamentally changed the institutions of American constitutional government and, in turn, the relationship of ...Americans to their government. Johnathan O'Neill's Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism since the New Deal examines how various types of conservative thinkers responded to this significant turning point in the second half of the twentieth century.O'Neill identifies four fundamental transformations engendered by the New Deal: the rise of the administrative state, the erosion of federalism, the ascendance of the modern presidency, and the development of modern judicial review. He then considers how various schools of conservative thought (traditionalists, neoconservatives, libertarians, Straussians) responded to these major changes in American politics and culture. Conservatives frequently argued among themselves, and their responses to the New Deal ranged from adaptation to condemnation to political mobilization. Ultimately, the New Deal pulled American governance and society permanently leftward. Although some of the New Deal's liberal gains have been eroded, a true conservative counterrevolution was never, O'Neill argues, a realistic possibility. He concludes with a plea for conservative thinkers to seriously reconsider the role of Congress—a body that is relatively ignored by conservative intellectuals in favor of the courts and the presidency—in America's constitutional order. Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism since the New Deal explores the scope and significance of conservative constitutional analysis amid the broader field of American political thought.
Drawing Liberalism is the first book-length critical
examination of the political and social impact of the political
cartoonist Herbert Block-popularly known as Herblock. Working for
the Washington ...Post , Herblock played a central role in
shaping, propagandizing, and defending the ideals of postwar
liberalism, a normative set of values and assumptions that
dominated American politics and culture after World War II.
Best remembered for his unrelenting opposition to and skewering
cartoons of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, Herblock introduced
the term "McCarthyism" into the American political lexicon. With
its unstinting and unapologetic support for the liberal agenda,
across a career spanning over fifty years at the Post ,
Herblock's work affords a unique lens through which to interpret
and understand the shifts and contours of twentieth-century
American political culture, from the postwar period through the
civil rights era into the Nixon presidency.
The formation of a group identity has always been a major preoccupation of Mexican American political organizations, whether they seek to assimilate into the dominant Anglo society or to remain ...separate from it. Yet organizations that sought to represent a broad cross section of the Mexican American population, such as LULAC and the American G.I. Forum, have dwindled in membership and influence, while newer, more targeted political organizations are prospering—clearly suggesting that successful political organizing requires more than shared ethnicity and the experience of discrimination. This book sheds new light on the process of political identity formation through a study of the identity politics practiced by four major Mexican American political organizations—the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, the Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation, the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce, and the Mexican American Women’s National Association (now known as MANA—A National Latina Organization). Through interviews with activists in each organization and research into their records, Benjamin Marquez clarifies the racial, class-based, and cultural factors that have caused these organizations to create widely differing political identities. He likewise demonstrates why their specific goals resonate only with particular segments of the Mexican American community.