Seducing America

These feelings have become television's distinctive currency, postmodern tokens for a manifestly uncertain world. Hart explores the considerable costs of this legacy for governance and urges that it be supplanted by a New Puritanism, a set of community-based attitudes badly needed in the nation at present.

Reviled as an imperialist power, an exporter of destructive capitalism, an arrogant crusader against Islam, and a rapacious over-consumer casually destroying the planet, it seems that the United States of America has rarely been less esteemed in the eyes of the world. In such an environment, one can easily overlook the fact that people from other countries have, in fact, been hating America for centuries. Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin here draw on sources from a wide range of countries to track the entire trajectory of anti-Americanism. With this powerful work, the Rubins trace the paradox that is America, a country that is both the most reviled and most envied land on earth. In the end, they demonstrate, anti-Americanism has often been a visceral response to the very idea--as well as both the ideals and policies--of America itself, its aggressive innovation, its self-confidence, and the challenge it poses to alternative ideologies.

A comprehensive, trusted core text on media’s impact on attitudes, behavior, elections, politics, and policymaking, Mass Media and American Politics is known for its readable introduction to the literature and theory of the field, and for staying current with each new edition on issues of new and social media, media ownership, the regulatory environment, infotainment, and war-time reporting. Written by the late Doris Graber--a scholar who has played an enormous role in establishing and shaping the field of mass media and American politics--and now lead by Johanna Dunaway, this book has set the standard for the course. New to this edition: Extensive coverage of political misinformation - the role changing communication technologies and mass media more generally are playing in its consumption and dissemination, as well as how the press is handling and should handle reporting on political misinformation, especially as it pertains to the presidency, elections, and crises like Covid-19. Updated coverage of the role social media and other popular digital platforms are playing (or not playing) in the effort to stop the spread of mis- and dis-information on their platforms, with special attention to both foreign and domestic efforts to use these platforms to incite violence, cause confusion about, and/or encourage distrust in, democratic institutions. Expanded treatment of rising affective, social, and ideological polarization in politics, with a special focus on whether and how mass media are contributing to these forms of polarization. New updates on causes and consequences of expanding news deserts, declining local news, and rampant growth of hedge-fund media ownership. Up to date coverage of what researchers are learning about the implications of growth in digital, social and mobile media use. What does it mean for attention to news and politics?

Covering Paine's intellectual career between 1775 and 1787, Aldridge summarizes his work as an apprentice magazine editor, sketches the publishing history of Common Sense and its doctrines, and shows the relations of these ideas to those in the works of Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Seeking to create a just and ordered society through reason and choice instead of through passive submission to accident and force, he developed such themes as the inherent nature of man, the meaning of virtue, and the identity of American character. This book reveals that as part of the polemics over Common Sense, Paine wrote a pamphlet, Four Letters on Interesting Subjects, which discredits the notion of reconciliation with Britain, the provincial perspective of placing Pennsylvania above the Union, the charter of the British Constitution. Aldridge also investigates The Crisis and Paine's Letter to the Abbe Raynal. ISBN 0-87413-260-6 : $38.50.

Contemporary public speaking remains an important part of our national life and a substantial force in shaping current events. Many of America's most important moments and issues, such as wars, scandals, election campaigns, September 11, 2001, have been defined by oratory. Here, over 50 essays cover a substantial and interesting group of major American social, political, economic, and cultural figures from the 1960s to the present. Each entry explains the biographical forces that shaped a speaker and his or her rhetorical approach, focuses mainly on a discussion of the orator's major speeches within the context of historical events, and concludes with an appraisal of the speaker and his or her contribution to American political and social life. All entries incorporate chronologies of major speeches, bibliographies including primary sources, biographies, and critical studies and archival collections or Web sites appropriate for student research. Entries include high profile individuals such as: John D. Ashcroft, Elizabeth Dole, Jerry Falwell, Anita Hill, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Janet Reno, Gloria Steinem, Malcolm X; and many others. Excerpts of major speeches and sidebars complement the text. Ideal for researchers and students in public speaking classes, American history classes, American politics classes, contemporary public address classes, and rhetorical theory/criticism classes.

What is the purpose of public talk in a democratic society? Do the American people interact with their government in distinctive ways? Are the nation's mass media helpful or harmful to the democratic experience? In Politics, Discourse, and American Society, some of the nation's best young scholars take us beyond conventional perspectives to present original work on how politics is transacted in American society and how public communication affects those transactions. They also lay out directions for future research, thereby putting fresh ideas on the scholarly agenda. The authors ask whether the American president is genuinely powerful, if lawsuits have become a way of changing the nation's politics, whether public opinion polling is really objective, and whether politics can still be distinguished from pop culture.

Public confidence and trust in government is low these days. Farnsworth pinpoints this disappointment to shifting expectations of what, exactly, government should do. Politicians were once expected to maintain economic growth, but in our post-scarcity era most citizens expect them to provide services - such as welfare or environmental -that are often contentious. Enlarging the scope of local political empowerment will increase public support by making politics more approachable and responsive.