Product Description: In her latest collection of essays and lectures, Homage to Americans, Eva Brann explores the roots and essence of our American ways. In “Mile-high Meditations,” her flight’s late departure from the Denver airport prompts a consideration of her manner of waiting (i...read more

Product Description: Exhorting people to volunteer is part of the everyday vocabulary of American politics. Routinely, members of both major parties call for partnerships between government and nonprofit organizations. These entreaties increase dramatically during times of crisis, and the voluntary efforts of ordinary citizens are now seen as a necessary supplement to government intervention...read more

Product Description: This book explores the idea that table activities--the mealtime rituals of food preparation, serving, and dining--lay the foundation for a proper education on the value of civility, the importance of the common good, and what it means to be a good citizen...read more

The controversial political pundant offers her call to arms, arguing that Americans are eager to clean up government, root out corruption, and 'throw the bums out', and should do so, quickly. Reprint. 40,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

Product Description: The health of American democracy ultimately depends on our willingness and ability to work together as citizens and stakeholders in our republic. Government policies often fail to promote such collaboration. But if designed properly, they can do much to strengthen civic engagement...read more

Product Description: This brief edition of a ground-breaking textbook addresses the need for college students to develop critical reading, writing, and thinking skills for self-defense in the contentious arena of American civic rhetoric. Designed for first-year or more advanced composition and critical thinking courses, it is one-third shorter than the original edition, more affordable for students, and easier for teachers to cover in a semester or quarter...read more

Has America, in its quest for goodness, sacrificed its sense of greatness? In this sharp-witted, historically informed book, veteran political observer Alan Wolfe argues that most Americans show greater concern with saving the country's soul than with making the nation great. Wolfe castigates both conservatives and liberals for opting for small-mindedness over greatness. Liberals, who at their best insisted on policies of national solidarity, have convinced themselves that small is beautiful, prefer multiculturalism to one nation, and are mistrustful of executive political power. Conservatives, who once embraced strong, active central government and an ideal of national citizenship, now support huge tax cuts that undermine America's future ability to undertake any ambitious, long-term project at home or abroad. No great society, in Wolfe's view, has ever been built on the cheap. Wolfe notes that neither the conservatives' call for small-scale faith-based initiatives nor the recent embrace on the left of a grassroots "civil society" can provide health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans or ensure national security in an age of terrorism. To find better solutions, Wolfe looks back at specific moments in our national experience, when, in the face of sharp resistance, aspirations for the idea of national greatness shaped American history. He demonstrates how a bold and ambitious political agenda, championed at various times by Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, Abraham Lincoln, and the two Roosevelts, steered the country toward periods of national strength and unity. Steeped in a colorful, panoramic reading of history, Return to Greatness offers a fresh take on American national identity and purpose. A call to action for a renewed embrace of the ideal of an activist federal government and bold policy agendas, it is sure to become a centerpiece of national debate.

Product Description: The New American Social Compact examines the need to redefine the social compact in twenty-first-century America. Grant explores the two components of this compact—the rights and obligations of citizenship—as well as what she sees as the four substantive areas that are critical to realizing a new social compact in America...read more

Product Description: The New American Social Compact examines the need to redefine the social compact in twenty-first-century America. Grant explores the two components of this compact_the rights and obligations of citizenship_as well as what she sees as the four substantive areas that are critical to realizing a new social compact in America...read more

Product Description: Civic engagement, defined as individual and collective action to identify public issues and participate in public life, has been a hotly contested subject in recent years. Beginning with a chapter by the editors that maps current key issues and main research questions, contributors to this volume counter claims of civic decline to show how, when, where, and why people act civically in multiple ways in various settings and contexts...read more

Product Description: Civic engagement, defined as individual and collective action to identify public issues and participate in public life, has been a hotly contested subject in recent years. Beginning with a chapter by the editors that maps current key issues and main research questions, contributors to this volume counter claims of civic decline to show how, when, where, and why people act civically in multiple ways in various settings and contexts...read more

Product Description: From the architect of the US military’s “shock and awe” doctrine comes an explanation of why our current political culture is far more destructive than all of Al Qaeda’s deadly intentions.

Product Description: We have become a nation divided against ourselves with public discourse controlled by special interests blind to the needs of the larger community. There seem to be few places at present where true dialogue about issues affecting us as a nation is possible...read more

Product Description: This book calls for a pragmatic approach to contemporary U.S. social problems, stressing workable outcomes regardless of their ideological origin, be they conservative, pluralistic, or radical.  The policy analysis, grounded in social science research, claims that there is a broad cultural consensus on American values and a public willingness to help others in need...read more

Product Description: In searching for answers as to why young people differ vastly from their parents and grandparents when it comes to turning out the vote, A New Engagement challenges the conventional wisdom that today's youth is plagued by a severe case of political apathy...read more

Product Description: We are taught in civics class that the Constitution provides for three basic branches of government: executive, judicial, and legislative. While the President and Congress as elected by popular vote are representative, can they really reflect accurately the will and sentiment of the populace? Or do money and power dominate everyday politics to the detriment of true self-governance? Is there a way to put 'We the people' back into government? Ethan Leib thinks there is and offers this blueprint for a fourth branch of government as a way of giving the people a voice of their own...read more

The author of The World of Prometheus argues that the transition to political friendship offered by the Brown v. Board of Education decision has not been completed, and proposes practical techniques of bridging citizenship and trust through sacrifice.

Product Description: Commentators in popular media and professional publications alike have decried the extent to which civility, civic virtue, tolerance, and socio-cultural unity have declined in modern liberal societies. In this volume, contributors from philosophy and political science discuss this dilemma while exploring the nature of civil society, the conflict between individual liberty and the common good, and the role of law and government policy in weaving the threads of the social fabric...read more

Product Description: Pundits and social observers have voiced alarm each year as fewer Americans involve themselves in voluntary groups that meet regularly. Thousands of nonprofit groups have been launched in recent times, but most are run by professionals who lobby Congress or deliver social services to clients...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Liberty: Thriving and Civic Engagement Among America’s Youth examines what it means to develop as an exemplary young person - that is, a young person who is thriving within the community and on the rise to a hopeful future. The book explores several key characteristics of positive youth development such as competence, character, confidence, social connections, and compassion that coalesce to create a young person who is developing successfully towards an "ideal" adulthood, one marked by contributions to self, others, and the institutions of civil society...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues;—these never can be a matter of indifference in any well ordered community.The authors examine How we deal with the tension between liberty (doing what you want) and virtue (doing what you ought) How the upheavals of the 1960s transformed liberalism in a "religion of rights," undermining individual freedom by demanding unbending fidelity to a political agenda The impact of civic associations on our virtues and values—and why the government must resist conscripting them and find a way to preserve their independence How public schools have come to have a negative influence on students' virtues and values—and why neither public nor private schools can replace or compensate for the education of character that takes place outside of school, particularly in the family Why marriage and the family today run contrary to our natures and thus are in a state of disarray—and how specific public policies can strengthen marriage Although no individual author agrees with every observation and every assertion in every essay, they are united in believing that the defense of liberty in our day requires rethinking the complex relation between a citizen's character, civil society, and government...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Modern psychological and political theory meet head-on in this powerful re-evaluation of America's contradictory and sometimes dangerous addiction to individualism. Best-selling author Gaylin and co-author Jennings investigate the contentious intersections of interdependence and autonomy, rights and public responsibility...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: "Liberty and duty, freedom and responsibility. That's the deal." John W. Gardner's life was dedicated to revitalizing the American Dream, a dream that must be recreated by each generation of caring citizens as they reshape it to meet the unrolling future...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: A critical and democratic perspective on American politics, letters, and higher education. Drawing from public and personal experiences, the author invites readers to think about their own level of social consciousness. Topics include: capitalism and class inequality; and teaching and parenting...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)