Above the din of war

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Clarence B. Jones and Joel Engel

Clarence B. Jones, lawyer and adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr., reflects upon what King might have said about issues in twenty-first-century America such as Islamic terrorism, anti-Semitism, reparations for slavery, affirmative action, and illegal immigration.

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Charles Bracelen Flood

Historian-biographer Charles Bracelen Flood brings to life the drama of Lincoln's final year, in which he oversaw the last campaigns of the Civil War, was reelected as president, and laid out his majestic vision for the nation's future in a reunified South and in the expanding West. In that crucial year, the Civil War was far from won: as the year began, Lincoln had yet to appoint Ulysses S. Grant as the general-in-chief who would finally bring victory. At the same time, with the North sick of the war, Lincoln was facing a reelection battle in which hundreds of thousands of "Peace Democrats" were ready to negotiate to leave the Confederacy as a separate American nation. In his personal life, he had to deal with the erratic behavior of his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and was unknowingly stalked by John Wilkes Booth.--From publisher description.

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Sarah Maddison

Drawing on extensive interviews with activists and politicians, Black Politics explains the dynamics of Aboriginal politics. It reveals the challenges and tensions that have shaped community, regional and national relations over the past 25 years.Why do Aboriginal communities struggle so hard to be heard in mainstream politics? How do remote and urban communities respond to frequent dramatic shifts in federal and state Aboriginal policies?Since the early 1990s Aboriginal Australia has experienced profound political changes with very real and lasting implications, from the Mabo land rights case in 1992, to the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 2005, to more recent attempts to reduce the autonomy of remote communities. Sarah Maddison identifies the tensions that lie at the heart of all Aboriginal politics, arguing that until Australian governments come to grips with this complexity they will continue to make bad policy with disastrous consequences for Aboriginal people.Based on original interviews with influential Aboriginal leaders including Mick Dodson, Tom Calma, Alison Anderson, Jackie Huggins, Warren Mundine and Larissa Behrendt, Black Politics seeks to understand why Aboriginal communities find it so difficult to be heard, get support, and organise internally. It also offers some suggestions for the future, based on the collective wisdom of political players at all levels of Aboriginal politics.'Sarah Maddison has brought together a formidable range of Indigenous voices and sources and placed their narratives within an analysis to show the depth and complexity of Indigenous cultural and political expression.' - From the foreword by Pat Dodson

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Carl Minzner

"China's reform era is ending. Core factors that characterized it-political stability, ideological openness, and rapid economic growth-are unraveling. Since the 1990s, Beijing's leaders have firmly rejected any fundamental reform of their authoritarian one-party political system, even as a decades-long boom has reshaped China's economy and society. On the surface, their efforts have been a success. Political turmoil has toppled former Communist East bloc regimes, internal unrest overtaken Middle East nations, and populist movements risen to challenge established Western democracies. China, in contrast, has appeared a relative haven of stability and growth. But as [the author] shows, a closer look at China's reform era reveals a different truth. Over the past three decades, a frozen political system has fueled both the rise of entrenched interests within the Communist Party itself, and the systematic underdevelopment of institutions of governance among state and society at large. Economic cleavages have widened. Social unrest has worsened. Ideological polarization has deepened. Now, to address these looming problems, China's leaders are progressively cannibalizing institutional norms and practices that have formed the bedrock of the regime's stability in the reform era. Technocratic rule is giving way to black-box purges; collective governance sliding back towards single-man rule. The post-1978 era of 'reform and opening up' is ending. China is closing down. Uncertainty hangs in the air as a new future slouches towards Beijing to be born. End of an Era explains how China arrived at this dangerous turning point, and outlines the potential outcomes that could result."--