Peaceful Revolution

If you think world peace is a naive concept, Paul K. Chappell’s very existence will give you pause. It’s not enough to say that Chappell – a West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran – is a soldier turned peace leader. Experiencing a traumatic upbringing and growing up mixed race in Alabama, he’s a young man forged by violence, rage, and racism into a living weapon for peace. By unlocking the mysteries of human nature, he shows how the muscles of hope, empathy, appreciation, conscience, reason, discipline, and curiosity give us the power to end the wars between countries, our ongoing war with nature, and the war in our hearts.

Few Americans understand the Constitution’s workings. Its real importance for the average citizen is as an enduring reminder of the moral vision that shaped the nation's founding. Maxwell Bloomfield looks at the broader appeal that constitutional idealism has always made to the American imagination through publications and films.

A probing study of the veil's recent return—from one of the world's foremost authorities on Muslim women—that reaches surprising conclusions about contemporary Islam's place in the West todayIn Cairo in the 1940s, Leila Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, Ahmed asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West?When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations. Ahmed observed that Islamism, with its commitments to activism in the service of the poor and in pursuit of social justice, is the strain of Islam most easily and naturally merging with western democracies' own tradition of activism in the cause of justice and social change. It is often Islamists, even more than secular Muslims, who are at the forefront of such contemporary activist struggles as civil rights and women's rights. Ahmed's surprising conclusions represent a near reversal of her thinking on this topic.Richly insightful, intricately drawn, and passionately argued, this absorbing story of the veil's resurgence, from Egypt through Saudi Arabia and into the West, suggests a dramatically new portrait of contemporary Islam.

This book outlines in an accessible manner the wide-ranging and revolutionary development of one of the most crucial and dynamic EU policy areas since the Maastricht Treaty: that of police and judicial cooperation between its Member States. It examines the subject in light of burning issues surrounding migration, terrorism and, of course, Brexit.

As if by unseen signal toward the end of the 1980s, many Latin American governments suddenly transferred money and decision-making power to local municipalities. At the same time, national authorities allowed local governments to choose their leaders in free and open elections. The resulting revolution has been profound in its reach and stunning in the silent shift of power from central to local authorities. The Quiet Revolution traces the growth and effects of decentralization and democratization in Latin America throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Based on first-hand accounts from mayors, local officials, and neighborhood leaders, Tim Campbell focuses on those cities and towns that made the most of their new intergovernmental arrangements. He further argues that the reforms, which are vital to long-term sustainable growth in the region, are in danger of being smothered by current policy responses from national and international institutions. Campbell's research, conducted over a ten-year span, counters conventional wisdom about the role of development banks in the process of state reform and offers timely insights into similar events taking place in other parts of the world.

If you think world peace is a naive concept, Paul K. Chappell’s very existence will give you pause. It’s not enough to say that Chappell – a West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran – is a soldier turned peace leader. Experiencing a traumatic upbringing and growing up mixed race in Alabama, he’s a young man forged by violence, rage, and racism into a living weapon for peace. By unlocking the mysteries of human nature, he shows how the muscles of hope, empathy, appreciation, conscience, reason, discipline, and curiosity give us the power to end the wars between countries, our ongoing war with nature, and the war in our hearts.

Your country needs your help, not physically or monetarily but intellectually. The attacks of 9/11 required the physical volunteering of many young, concerned citizens to defend the nation. And volunteering they did, even though many of them returned in body bags and as mutilated bodies in huge numbers. Now we have a different threat, a threat that destroys our country from the inside out. Now it’s your turn to help and heal the country and decrease the race, religion, and national origin biases. So everybody can be part of it. But more so, you can help define and provide solutions to our nation’s problems. If you are like most US citizens, you must be concerned about our country’s direction. We spend trillions of dollars on questionable public initiatives and expect future generations to pay the bills. We have college graduates with thousands of dollars in debt and virtually no job prospects. We have structural budget deficits and trade deficits. We collect record tax revenues but are unable to cover our expenses. And the list goes on and on! We have a political establishment on both sides of the aisle that fights for power and not for the people who elected them. That said, if you are a conservative or progressive, young or old, gay or straight, Black or White, male or female, or any other classification you might fall into, the book Dreaming of Nirvana or the Next Peaceful Revolution is for you. It addresses the nation’s most pressing problems and offers viable solutions as a starting point for a nationwide discussion. You can be part of it by contributing your ideas and bringing our country back to sanity. The website “www.thenextpeacefulrevolution.com” is for collecting all your input and feedback for subsequent republishing.