Comrades at Odds explores the complicated Cold War relationship between the United States and the newly independent India of Jawaharlal Nehru from a unique perspective -- that of culture, broadly defined. In a departure from the usual way of doing diplomatic history, Andrew J. Rotter chose culture as his jumping-off point because, he says, "Like the rest of us, policymakers and diplomats do not shed their values, biases, and assumptions at their office doors. They are creatures of culture, and their attitudes cannot help but shape the policy they make". To define those attitudes, Rotter consults not only government documents and the memoirs of those involved in the events of the day, but also literature, art, and mass media. "An advertisement, a photograph, a cartoon, a film, and a short story", he finds, "tell us in their own ways about relations between nations as surely as a State Department memorandum does".

While expanding knowledge about the creation and implementation of democracy, Rotter carries his analysis across the categories of race, class, gender, religion, and culturally infused practices of governance, strategy, and economics.

Americans saw Indians as superstitious, unclean, treacherous, lazy, and prevaricating. Indians regarded Americans as arrogant, materialistic, uncouth, profane, and violent. Yet, in spite of these stereotypes, Rotter notes the mutual recognition of profound similarities between the two groups; they were indeed "comrades at odds".

"Secret Dialogues" uncovers an unexpected development in modern Latin American history: the existence of secret talks between generals and Roman Catholic bishops at the height of Brazil's military dictatorship. During the brutal term of Emilio Garrastazu Medici, the Catholic Church became famous for its progressivism. However, new archival sources demonstrate that the church also sought to retain its privileges and influence by exploring a potential alliance with the military. From 1970 to 1974 the secret Bipartite Commission worked to resolve church-state conflict and to define the boundary between social activism and subversion. As the bishops increasingly made defense of human rights their top pastoral and political goal, the Bipartite became an important forum of protest against torture and social injustice. Based on more than 60 interviews and primary sources from three continents, "Secret Dialogues" is a major addition to the historical narrative of the most violent yet, ironically, the least studied period of the Brazilian military regime. Its story is intertwined with the central themes of the era: revolutionary warfare, repression, censorship, the fight for democracy, and the conflict between Catholic notions of social justice and the anticommunist Doctrine of National Security.

"Secret Dialogues" is the first book of its kind on the contemporary Catholic Church in any Latin American country, for most work in this field is devoid of primary documentary research. Serbin questions key assumptions about church-state conflict such as the typical conservative-progressive dichotomy and the notion of church-state rupture during harsh authoritarian periods. "Secret Dialogues" is written for undergraduate and graduate students, professional scholars, and the general reader interested in Brazil, Latin America, military dictatorship, human rights, and the relationship between religion and politics.

Acclaimed by Ebony magazine as "one of those rare publishing events that generate as much excitement in the cloistered confines of the academy as they do in the general public", The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. chronicles one of the twentieth century's most dynamic personalities and one of the nation's greatest social struggles. King's call for racial justice and his faith in the power of nonviolence to engender a major transformation of American society is movingly conveyed in this authoritative, multivolume edition.

With the Montgomery bus boycott at an end, King confronts the sudden demands of celebrity while trying to identify the next steps in the burgeoning struggle for equality. Anxious to duplicate the success of the boycott, he spends much of 1957 and 1958 establishing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. But advancing the movement in the face of dogged resistance proves disheartening for the young minister, and he finds that it is easier to inspire supporters with his potent oratory than to organize a mass movement for social change. Yet King remains committed: "The vast possibilities of a nonviolent, non-cooperative approach to the solution of the race problem are still challenging indeed. I would like to remain a part of the unfolding development of this approach for a few more years".

King's budding international prestige is affirmed in March 1957 when he attends the independence ceremonies in Ghana, West Africa. Two months later his first national address, at the "Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom", is widely praised, and in June 1958, King's increasing prominence is recognized with a long-overdue White House meeting. During this period King also cultivatesalliances with the labor and pacifist movements, and international anticolonial organizations. As Volume IV closes King is enjoying the acclaim that greeted his first book, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, only to suffer a near-fatal stabbing in New York City.

Throughout the Cold War, people worldwide feared that the U.S. and Soviet governments could not prevent a nuclear showdown. Citizens from both Eastbloc and Western countries, among them prominent scientists and physicians, formed networks to promote ideas and policies that would lessen this danger. Two of their organizations -- the Pugwash Movement and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War -- won Nobel peace prizes. Still, many observers believe that their influence was negligible and that the Reagan administration deserves sole credit for ending the Cold War. 'The first book to explore the impact these activists had on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain, Unarmed Forces demonstrates the importance of their efforts on behalf of arms control and disarmament.

The assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, campus riots, Richard Nixon--the American dream was shattered in 1968. Prominent journalist Jules Witcover looks at the most pivotal year in modern American history, and its irrevocable consequences for today's society.

Uncovering the secrets behind the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, this is "a brutal, cautionary tale that serves as a painful reminder of the worst that can happen in war."—Chicago Tribune.

In this new edition of his classic 1970 memoir about the notorious U-2 incident, pilot Francis Gary Powers reveals the full story of what actually happened in the most sensational espionage case in Cold War history. After surviving the shoot-down of his reconnaissance plane and his capture on May 1, 1960, Powers endured sixty-one days of rigorous interrogation by the KGB, a public trial, a conviction for espionage, and the start of a ten-year sentence. After nearly two years, the U.S. government obtained his release from prison in a dramatic exchange for convicted Soviet spy Rudolph Abel. The narrative is a tremendously exciting suspense story about a man who was labeled a traitor by many of his countrymen but who emerged a Cold War hero.

Bush at War reveals in stunning detail how an untested president with a sweeping vision for remaking the world and war cabinet members often at odds with each other responded to the September 11 terrorist attacks and prepared to confront Iraq. Woodward's virtual wiretap into the White House Situation Room is the first history of the war on terrorism.

"The Long War" is a serious, radical critique of the poltical economy and recent history of El Salvador, set in the context of the troubled history of the entire Central Amercan region and detailing in full the extent of US intervention and its importancce as a destabilising factor.
With the addition of a postscript, this new edition brings the narrative fully up to date.

THIS IS OUR MOMENT

"This is our time--to put people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth--that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can."

-- President Barack Obama, Acceptance Speech; Chicago, IL; November 4, 2008

Born in the U.S.A., the son of an African father and an American mother, a boy who spent his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii, Barack Obama is truly a citizen of the world. In kindergarten, he wrote an essay titled, "I Want to Become President," and now, with his fierce optimism, exuberant sense of purpose and determination, and above all, his belief that change "can" happen, Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the United States, has made that dream come true.

Garen Thomas takes us through the life of Barack Obama, from his struggle to fit in with his classmates, and concern about not knowing his biological father, through his term as an Illinois senator, and the long campaign for president, to his historic victory.

Hurricane Katrina shredded one of the great cities of the South, and as levees failed and the federal relief effort proved lethally incompetent, a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe. As an editor of New Orleans' daily newspaper, the Pulitzer Prize--winning "Times-Picayune," Jed Horne has had a front-row seat to the unfolding drama of the city's collapse into chaos and its continuing struggle to survive.
As the Big One bore down, New Orleanians rich and poor, black and white, lurched from giddy revelry to mandatory evacuation. The thousands who couldn't or wouldn't leave initially congratulated themselves on once again riding out the storm. But then the unimaginable happened: Within a day 80 percent of the city was under water. The rising tides chased horrified men and women into snake-filled attics and onto the roofs of their houses. Heroes in swamp boats and helicopters braved wind and storm surge to bring survivors to dry ground. Mansions and shacks alike were swept away, and then a tidal wave of lawlessness inundated the Big Easy. Screams and gunshots echoed through the blacked-out Superdome. Police threw away their badges and joined in the looting. Corpses drifted in the streets for days, and buildings marinated for weeks in a witches' brew of toxic chemicals that, when the floodwaters finally were pumped out, had turned vast reaches of the city into a ghost town.
Horne takes readers into the private worlds and inner thoughts of storm victims from all walks of life to weave a tapestry as intricate and vivid as the city itself. Politicians, thieves, nurses, urban visionaries, grieving mothers, entrepreneurs with an eye for quick profit at public expense-all of these lives collide in a chronicle that is harrowing, angry, and often slyly ironic.
Even before stranded survivors had been plucked from their roofs, government officials embarked on a vicious blame game that further snarled the relief operation and bedeviled scientists striving to understand the massive levee failures and build New Orleans a foolproof flood defense. As Horne makes clear, this shameless politicization set the tone for the ongoing reconstruction effort, which has been haunted by racial and class tensions from the start.
Katrina was a catastrophe deeply rooted in the politics and culture of the city that care forgot and of a nation that forgot to care. In "Breach of Faith," Jed Horne has created a spellbinding epic of one of the worst disasters of our time.

"From the Hardcover edition."

How Barack Obama Won--by one of the most lauded political journalists of our time, and one of the most respected pollsters in the business--gives us not only the inside state-by-state guide to how Obama achieved his victory, but also the essential toolbox for understanding the political implications of the 2008 presidential election--where the country stands vis-a-vis Red and Blue states, where it currently is and is headed politically, and whether a political realignment has taken place.
The book features an introduction by Chuck Todd, putting the 2008 presidential election in political and demographic perspective, even as it reveals national trends. The final electoral map will appear in the front matter, as will unexpected "fun facts." The book is divided into four parts, each of which proceeds alphabetically state by state: Battleground States (e.g., Colorado, Florida, Idaho); Emerging Battleground States (e.g., Arizona, Georgia, Montana); Receding Battleground States (e.g., Michigan, Pennsylvania); Red and Blue States (e.g., Idaho and Mississippi, California and New York).
The votes in each state for Obama and McCain are broken down by percentage according to gender, age, race, party, religious affiliation, education, household income, size of city, and according to views about the most important issue (the economy, terrorism, Iraq, energy, healthcare), the future of the economy (worried, not worried) and the war in Iraq (approve, disapprove). Comparative figures for the 2004 Bush-Kerry election are provided. Each state profile is comprised of a table of numbers--with crucial lines highlighted--and analysis. From the book's treasury of facts you will learn about:
First Time Voters: The ratio of first-time to previous voters was identical to the 2004 split. Eleven percent (11%) of the electorate voted for the first time in 2004 and 2008. In 2008 70% voted for Obama whereas in 2004 only 53% voted for Kerry.
White Voters: Obama won the white vote in 18 states and the District of Columbia: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, IA, ME, MA, MI, MN, NH, NY, OR, RI, WA, WI and VT. Obama received less than 35% of the white vote in 13 states, with Louisiana (14%), Mississippi (11%) and Alabama (10%) picking up the rear.
The Bush Factor: With the exception of Missouri (which barely went to McCain), Obama won every state where Bush's approval rating was below 35% in the exit polls; he lost every state where Bush's approval rating was above 35%. Bush's approval rating was highest in Utah (47%), which supported McCain by a 29 point margin, and lowest in Washington, D.C. (8%), where McCain received only 7% of the vote.
Florida: Votes for McCain were 25,000 fewer than for Bush in 2004; Obama's exceeded Kerry's by 540,000.
Ohio: Votes for Obama were 34,000 fewer than for Kerry in 2004; McCain's, however, were 350,000 short of Bush's.
By the way, since 1928 there has not been a winning Republican presidential/vice-presidential ticket without a Bush or Nixon.

Castro's Cuba is isolated; the guerrillas who once spread havoc through Uruguay and Argentina are dead, dispersed, or running for office as moderates. And in 1990, Nicaragua's Sandinistas were rejected at the polls by their own constituents. Are these symptoms of the fall of the Latin American left? Or are they merely temporary lulls in an ongoing revolution that may yet transform our hemisphere?

This perceptive and richly eventful study by one of Mexico's most distinguished political scientists tells the story behind the failed movements of the past thirty years while suggesting that the left has a continuing relevance in a continent that suffers from destitution and social inequality. Combining insider's accounts of intrigue and armed struggle with a clear-sighted analysis of the mechanisms of day-to-day power, Utopia Unarmed is an indispensable work of scholarship, reportage, and political prognosis.