Explore the vast range of titles available.

Kevin Mattson offers a history of punk rock in the 1980s. He documents how kids growing up in the sedate world of suburbia created their \"own culture\" through DIY tactics. Punk spread across the continent in the 1980s as it found expression in different media, including literature, art, and poetry. Punks dissented against Reagan's presidency, accusing the entertainer-in-chief of being mean and duplicitous (especially when it came to nuclear war and his policies in Central America). Mattson has dived deep into archives to make his case that this youthful dissent meant something more than just a style of mohawks or purple hair.

The volume documents the rise of the corporate university over the past twenty years as well as the academic labor movement that has developed in response. Universities are increasingly looking to corporations as their model for reform, investing in merit-pay packages, partnerships with high-tech companies, and anything that will reap profits from their creations. With controversial, personal stories of workplace exploitation, tenure battles, and union organizing, the book shows the challenges of working within this new system and explains the countermovement working to restore independence to university teachers. From New York University's outrageous union-busting techniques to the rise of for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix, this collection of provocative essays is both an indictment of current trends and a blueprint for combating them. (DIPF/Orig.).

Do you ever wonder why conservative pundits drop the word \"faggot\" or talk about killing and then Christianizing Muslims abroad? Do you wonder why the right's spokespeople seem so confrontational, rude, and over-the-top recently? Does it seem strange that conservative books have such apocalyptic titles? Do you marvel at why conservative writers trumpeted the \"rebel\" qualities of George W. Bush just a few years back? There is no doubt that the style of the political right today is tough, brash, and by many accounts, not very conservative sounding. After all, isn't conservatism supposed to be about maintaining standards, upholding civility, and frowning upon rebellion? Historian Kevin Mattson explains the apparent contradictions of the party in this fresh examination of the postwar conservative mind. Examining a big cast of characters that includes William F. Buckley, Whittaker Chambers, Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Kevin Phillips, David Brooks, and others, Mattson shows how right-wing intellectuals have always, but in different ways, played to the populist and rowdy tendencies in America's political culture. He boldly compares the conservative intellectual movement to the radical utopians among the New Left of the 1960s and he explains how conservatism has ingested central features of American culture, including a distrust of sophistication and intellectualism and a love of popular culture, sensation, shock, and celebrity. Both a work of history and political criticism, Rebels All! shows how the conservative mind made itself appealing, but also points to its endemic problems. Mattson's conclusion outlines how a recast liberalism should respond to the conservative ascendancy that has marked our politics for the last thirty years. Summary reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press

Do you ever wonder why conservative pundits drop the word \"faggot\" or talk about killing and then Christianizing Muslims abroad? Do you wonder why the right's spokespeople seem so confrontational, rude, and over-the-top recently? Does it seem strange that conservative books have such apocalyptic titles? Do you marvel at why conservative writers trumpeted the \"rebel\" qualities of George W. Bush just a few years back? There is no doubt that the style of the political right today is tough, brash, and by many accounts, not veryconservativesounding. After all, isn't conservatismsupposedto be about maintaining standards, upholding civility, and frowning upon rebellion? Historian Kevin Mattson explains the apparent contradictions of the party in this fresh examination of the postwar conservative mind. Examining a big cast of characters that includes William F. Buckley, Whittaker Chambers, Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Kevin Phillips, David Brooks, and others, Mattson shows how right-wing intellectuals have always, but in different ways, played to the populist and rowdy tendencies in America's political culture. He boldly compares the conservative intellectual movement to the radical utopians among the New Left of the 1960s and he explains how conservatism has ingested central features of American culture, including a distrust of sophistication and intellectualism and a love of popular culture, sensation, shock, and celebrity. Both a work of history and political criticism,Rebels All!shows how the conservative mind made itself appealing, but also points to its endemic problems. Mattson's conclusion outlines how a recast liberalism should respond to the conservative ascendancy that has marked our politics for the last thirty years.

A sweeping intellectual history that will make us rethink postwar politics and culture, When America Was Great profiles the thinkers and writers who crafted a new American liberal tradition in a conservative era -- from historians Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and C. Vann Woodward, to economist John Kenneth Galbraith and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. A compelling tale that will redefine the word \"liberal\" for a new generation, Mattson retraces the intellectual journey of these towering figures. They served in the Second World War. They opposed communism but also wanted to make America's poor visible to the affluent society. Contrary to those who characterize liberals as naïve or sentimental \"bleeding hearts,\" they had a tough-minded and nuanced vision that stressed both human limitations and hope. They felt America should stand for something more than just a strong economy.

American liberalism today is in a state of confusion and disarray, with the “L word” widely considered a term of derision. By examining both the historical past and the fractious present, Liberalism for a New Century restores a proud political tradition and carves out a formidable defense of its philosophical tenets. This manifesto for a New Liberalism issues an urgent and cogent call for the most important rethinking of its values since the late 1960s, when conservatives reenergized themselves after Barry Goldwater’s infamous loss.

A sweeping intellectual history that will make us rethink postwar politics and culture, When America Was Great profiles the thinkers and writers who crafted a new American liberal tradition in a conservative era - from historians Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and C. Vann Woodward, to economist John Kenneth Galbraith and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.A compelling tale that will redefine the word \"liberal\" for a new generation, Mattson retraces the intellectual journey of these towering figures. They served in the Second World War. They opposed communism but also wanted to make America's poor visible to the affluent society. Contrary to those who characterize liberals as naïve or sentimental \"bleeding hearts,\" they had a tough-minded and nuanced vision that stressed both human limitations and hope. They felt America should stand for something more than just a strong economy.

We bring democratic theory and democratic practice together by examining practical efforts by several different organizations around the USA to make good on the promise of democratic deliberation through organization of public forums on particular issues. Participant observation and interviews with organizers and other participants reveals that deliberation is a complicated process marked by conflict, differing orientations, and political inequalities. We conclude that deliberation can play an important role even in a representative democracy, though caution against regarding it as a cure-all for the ills of contemporary politics.

I want to recall one of the weirder experiences I had in following contemporary American politics (no slim pickings there). I was watching, being the good citizen I am, the presidential primary debates between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. I had a clear desire to watch Bernie Sanders “win,” however that would be determined. After all, my politics lean toward the robust liberalism of FDR (the American politician whom Sanders mentioned the most as a predecessor to his own ideas, when he wasn’t talking about socialism), and I thought Clinton—along with her husband—had helped push the Democrats in