The Center Holds

From the bestselling author of The Promise, the thrilling story of one of the most momentous contests in American history, the Battle Royale between Obama and his enemies from the 2010 midterms through the 2013 inauguration. The election of 2012 will be remembered as a hinge of history. With huge victories in the 2010 midterm elections the Republican Party had blocked President Obama at every turn and made plans to wrench the country sharply to the right. 2012 offered the GOP a clear shot at controlling all three branches of government and repealing much of the social contract dating back to the New Deal. Facing free-spending billionaires, Fox News, and a concerted effort in 19 states to tilt the election by suppressing Democratic votes, Obama repelled the assault and navigated the nation back to the center. In The Center Holds, Jonathan Alter produces the first full account of America at the crossroads. With exclusive reporting and rare historical insight, he pierces the bubble of the White House and the presidential campaigns in a landmark election that marked the return of big money and the rise of big data. He tells the epic story of an embattled president fighting back with the first campaign of the Digital Age. Alter relates the untold story behind Obama’s highs and lows, from the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound to the frustration of the debt ceiling fiasco to his unexpected run-ins with black and Latino activists. There are fresh details about the Koch brothers, Grover Norquist, Roger Ailes, and the online haters who suffer from “Obama Derangement Syndrome.” Alter takes us inside Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s Boston campaign as well as Obama’s disastrous preparation for the first debate. We meet Obama’s analytics geeks working out of “The Cave” and the man who secretly videotaped Romney’s infamous comments on the “47 percent.” The Center Holds will deepen our understanding of the Obama presidency, the stakes of the 2012 election, and the future of the country.

Traces Obama's reelection campaign against a backdrop of unemployment and a vindictive political climate, offering insights into Mitt Romney's campaign and how the race reflected views about the roles of government and societal values.

The Center Holds provides an intimate look at who the Supreme Court justices are, how they have made critical decisions, and why, ultimately, the Rehnquist Revolution failed. Focusing on four key areas of civil rights and liberties—racial discrimination, abortion, criminal law, and First Amendment freedoms—The Center Holds provides an in-depth look at the Supreme Court documents that illustrate the battle between the old liberal order and emerging conservative majority, beginning in the early 1980s. James F. Simon, a former Time correspondent and contributing editor, ex-dean of New York Law School, and nationally recognized scholar of constitutional law, examines key decisions on civil rights and civil liberties in a readable, intimate look at some key Supreme Court Cases and includes absorbing descriptions of confidential memos and drafts gleaned from sources from within the court.

The United Nations remains a unique institutional hope for addressing and resolving the world's major environmental, developmental, and humanitarian problems. It representsglobal aspirations for a just and peaceful world by inspiring the political imagination of individuals and collectivities. But, because it is now viewed primarily as a "trade union" for expressing the national political interests of 192 state parties, as Clements and Mizner's volume of essaysdemonstrate the UN has succumbed to political cynicism and skepticism. Only the UN can champion emerging international regimes, the rule of law, and global processes that generate structural stability, justice, and peace in the international system. Unlike some central security organs of the UN, specialized UN agencies have addressed these problems. With the exception of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the UN and its affiliates have played an important role in ending violent, political conflict and in preventing further conflict. According to the Human Security Report (2005), the 80 percent decline in deadly conflicts since the early 1990s can be explained by the extraordinary upsurge of activity by the international community,which t has been directed towards conflict prevention and peace-making. This work explores how the UN can establish global norms to reinforce adoctrine of internal and external political responsibility. How can the UN ensure that the interests of the peoples of the world receive equal attention as the interests of state parties? How does it deal with non-sovereign actors, not represented directly in the UN, who may command power and resources that are more significant than those available to nation states? How does it deal with state parties deemed ineffective, incapable, and illegitimate by their own citizens? How can the organization enhance its role with regional organizations? Finally, how will the UN ensure a positive and proactive role with respect to diverse globa

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

A ball drops to the ground. Leaves fall from a tree. Gravity is at work all around you. But what exactly is gravity? And how does it affect different objects? Read this book to find out! Learn all about matter, energy, and forces in the Exploring Physical Science series—part of the Lightning Bolt BooksTM collection. With high-energy designs, exciting photos, and fun text, Lightning Bolt BooksTM bring nonfiction topics to life!

Winner, 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Award Winner, 2021 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry Winner, 2022 Indiana Author Award in Poetry Be Holding is a love song to legendary basketball player Julius Erving—known as Dr. J—who dominated courts in the 1970s and ‘80s as a small forward for the Philadelphia ‘76ers. But this book-length poem is more than just an ode to a magnificent athlete. Through a kind of lyric research, or lyric meditation, Ross Gay connects Dr. J’s famously impossible move from the 1980 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers to pick-up basketball and the flying Igbo and the Middle Passage, to photography and surveillance and state violence, to music and personal histories of flight and familial love. Be Holding wonders how the imagination, or how our looking, might make us, or bring us, closer to each other. How our looking might make us reach for each other. And might make us be reaching for each other. And how that reaching might be something like joy.

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.