Burke McCarty sets out a complex alternative theory regarding the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, namely the notion that the event was orchestrated by shadowy religious powers. McCarty gathers and presents correspondences and other documents; together these offer an alternate explanation for Lincoln's heinous murder. He alleges that a Treaty in Verona in 1822 was the start of a plot to kill an American President, a plot whose pieces would gradually fall into place in the four decades which followed. McCarty alleges involvement by the Pope and the Catholic church, plus other clandestine figures, pointing to what he considers coded references in letters. Modern historians and scholars consider alternative theories behind the death of President Lincoln as spurious conspiracy. The overwhelming evidence remains that John Wilkes Booth, a vain and agitated man with a craving for notoriety, acted alone in his scheme to murder Abraham Lincoln as the President watched a performance at Ford's Theater.

An examination of the long-ignored vicious side to the legend of Brazilian President Getulio Dornelles Vargas, this is the tale uncovered by the first civilian to spend months in the secret police archives of Rio de Janeiro. Rose has utilized new eyewitness testimony and insider information in offering explanations to several events that proved pivotal in Brazil during the 1930s and 1940s. During Vargas's tenure, the quality and quantity of human rights abuses reached unprecedented heights. Violence, as a means of coercing the public, was evident in all sectors of the security apparatus. Several tools of torture developed during the hunt for communists are still in use today. Almost by definition, politicians have to offer a semblance of providing something for each different sector of society. Vargas was better at this than his predecessors in that with ease he proudly wore the various vestments of dictator, fascist, democrat, and populist as necessary. For the poor, he was the paternalistic benefactor; for the middle class, he was the one who brought stability; and for the wealthy, he supported the status quo. This ability to juggle forces and interests was grounded in his security apparatus. Beginning with the unsuccessful Communist Revolution of 1935, the nation's police forces redefined and in some cases reinvented the torture that had occurred in Brazil from colonial times onward. The harshness of their methods was matched only by the ardor of their example for coming generations.

This A–Z encyclopedia provides a detailed overview of America's 11th president and connects Polk's public and personal life to his historical significance. In 1844, James K. Polk was not a promising presidential nominee—he was not popular, charismatic, or even well known. But by the time he left office in 1849, he had acquired the enormous Oregon Territory by negotiation and had taken by force more than half of Mexico's territory, an area of about 500,000 square miles. Yet Polk's territorial successes inspired the rancorous debate over whether slavery should be allowed in the new territories—a debate that ended in civil war. Modern critics charge that Polk's actions toward Mexico were amoral if not immoral. In this comprehensive examination of Polk's life and career, our 11th president emerges as a complex man and a skillful politician who pursued power relentlessly.

There is no more important decision an American voter can make than selecting who will become the next president of the United States, and voters should not be forced to guess whether a candidate is qualified to become president. In "Qualified," author Jamin Soderstrom proposes a resume challenge that could revolutionize the election system and help to bring the presidential hiring process into the twenty-first century.

"Qualified" presents a tool, developed by Soderstrom, to help voters compare presidential candidates with each other and with past presidents. This resume-based approach focuses on the candidates experiences and abilities and evaluates legislative, executive, military, foreign, and private experience; education and intellect; and writing and public speaking ability. It ensures that future presidents will be leaders qualified by constitutional, historical, and practical standards.

A blend of analysis and insight, "Qualified" seeks to provide information to voters to help ensure the public elects presidents who have the experience, ability, and temperament to rise above the fray and become historically successful. The innovative resume challenge will help shed light on which candidates in 2012 meet the QUALIFIED THRESHOLD for presidential success.

"Conservative Intellectuals and Richard Nixon" explores the relationship between postwar conservatives and the president from 1968 to 1974. Seemingly casting those years out of their history, conservatives have never fully explored how Richard Nixon affected their movement. They fail to realize the extent his presidency helped refocus their fight against liberalism and communism.""Mergel uses the Nixon years as a window into the Right's effort to turn ideology into successful politics. It""combines an assessment of Nixon's presidency through the eyes of conservative intellectuals with an attempt to understand what the Right gained from its experience with Nixon.

This book demonstrates that the Parallel Lives of Plutarch (c. AD 45-120) are far more than simply `sources' for history. A vast retrospective series of biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen, written when Greece was under Roman rule, they aim both to inculcate in the reader the virtues of Greek philosophy and to champion the supremacy of Greek culture against a dominant Rome. As Dr Duff argues, they explore and challenge issues of psychology, education, morality, and cultural identity.

This is the essential Nigerian story. In order to tell it, one has to live it, one has to acquire the skill of telling the story and the perspective to see it whole. TONY OYATEDOR has done all these and more. This is an exhilarating book. DR. EPHRAIM OKORO, Ph.D., Howard University, Washington, D.C. Tony Oyatedor started his journalism career as a reporter with the NEW BAYVIEW newspaper in San Francisco, California, United States of America, from 1979-1981. He returned to Nigeria in 1981 where he first worked at OPHELIA magazine as a reporter and later moved to RADIO NIGERIA TWO AM/FM where he worked as a broadcaster. He hosted a Wednesday prime time program called the "Dawn Show" from 7:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m., "Reggae Time" every Monday from Noon - 1:00 p.m., "Teen and Twenty Beats" and other variety programs. Tony interviewed many eminent personalities including musicians such as Millie Jackson, Kool and the Gang, Fela Anikulapo-kuti, Sonny Okosun, Everlyn Champaign King, Ebenezer Obey, Sunny Ade along with many others. He was also Master of Ceremonies for numerous events at the National Arts Theater Lagos. He later moved to Nigerian Television Authority (N.T.A.) where he first worked in the programs department organizing variety shows including serving as host of the network program "Young World" which brought him much acclaim. He then switched to the network news department where he became a news reporter and news-caster. Later he served as U.S. correspondent for the now defunct THIS WEEK magazine and subsequently worked as a consultant to the AFRICAN GUARDIAN magazine. Tony Oyatedor was the editor of the DESCENDANT newspaper, based in Washington, D.C., United States of America, and heis the publisher/editor-in-chief of NEWSTIME magazine and President of NEWSTIME foundation. He is also the President/Chief executive officer of NEWSTIME LTD., a publishing/consulting firm. Tony Oyatedor is a speaker, international consultant and philanthropist.

The Turkish journalist and intellectual Celal Nuri Ileri's unique blend of advocacy for modernity and westernization with Turkish nationalism and Muslim reformism set him apart from his fellow "Young Turk" thinkers, politicians and publicists, all of whom sought to halt the decay of the Ottoman Empire in its competition with the European powers. Although a supporter of the national resistance movement after World War I, his core beliefs about the need for a continued role for Islam in society, and maintenance of the Ottoman caliphate, were increasingly at odds with the secularist and Turkish-nationalist republic established by Mustafa Kemal and his circle from 1923. Here, in the first monograph in English on Celal Nuri, York Norman outlines and analyses his ideas and policies, from Nuri's position on minorities, to women and family and Islamic reform. Based on a broad range of primary and secondary sources, Norman reveals the prophetic qualities of and renewed interest in Nuri's ideas after the rise of Islamist political movements in Turkey in the 1990s.

The 2012 congressional elections played an equally vital role in determining the future course of America as the presidential race that topped the electoral ticket. Readers of this book will gain insights about the formative aspects of the 2012 campaign season as well as in depth coverage of key races for Congress. Exclusive to this volume are three chapters that look at important processes which impacted the campaign cycle: voter suppression laws passed in nearly every state, the role of Super PACs and independent expenditures in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and the results of redistricting and partisan gerrymandering throughout the country. Then the case studies follow the path of seven House and six Senate races from inception to election postmortem. The chapters are both narrative and provide analysis of an array of interesting and diverse contests from throughout the country. Each entry was written by one or more experts living in the state or region of the race. The authors provide succinct and highly readable chapters meant to illustrate the distinctive nature of the campaigns they are examining. Readers will see individual campaigns and elections "up close" and be able to compare and contrast one from another because of the common format employed throughout the book. Taken together, the chapters reveal that the roads to Congress, while similar in so many ways, each follow a unique route to Capitol Hill.

Behind every leader is an instructive life story. It often promotes a public image that inspires others to live by it. And, sometimes, even to live or to die for it. As leadership qualities and image issues gain significance in the public discourse, the psychological study of leadership is a critical factor in any discussion. With its trenchant insights into leaders past and present, The Leader: Psychological Essays, Second Edition, updates a pioneering text in this field and provides a solid basis for ongoing dialogue on this important subject. Within the context of the ever-evolving disciplines of psychoanalysis and psychodynamics, this thought-provoking volume examines the lives of several prominent leaders from ancient Greece through the start of the 21st century. The authors explore how these leaders imposed their individual missions and mystiques on others, thereby fulfilling -- and, sometimes, creating -- distinct needs in their followers. The volume brings into vivid focus issues with the potential for devastating consequences on the global stage. Coverage includes: * Biblical times, ancient Greeks and the seeds of leadership. * Lincoln during the 1850s, leading a dividing nation. * Thomas A. Kohut on Kaiser Wilhelm II and the German national character. * George W. Bush, atonement/redemption narratives and the American Dream. * Bin Laden, man and myth. * A study of paranoid leadership and its implications for future politics and policy. This must-have Second Edition is indispensable reading for researchers, professors, and graduate students across many disciplines, including political psychology, psychoanalysis, history and political science, psychiatry, anthropology, and personality and social psychology. It is important reading for anyone with an interest in the life stories of leaders past and present and how they affect our world even long after they are gone.

After a landslide electoral victory in 2006, Evo Morales became the first indigenous President of Bolivia. Morales's stunning ascent was mirrored by the rising fortunes of his political party, the leftist Movimiento al Socialismo, which today continues to challenge the status quo in Bolivian politics and implement ambitious social reforms. This study examines how the state and social movements have impacted democratization in Bolivia, along with other sectors such as NGOs and the media. Soledad Valdivia Rivera's analysis helps us to understand how the movement's relationships have come to transform the Bolivian political process as we know it.

There are few individuals in modern Spanish history that have been as thoroughly mythologized as Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, a leading figure in the Spanish Civil War who was executed by the Republicans in 1936 and celebrated as a martyr following the victory of the Falangists. In this long-awaited translation, Joan Maria Thomas provides a measured, exhaustively researched study of Primo de Rivera's personality, beliefs, and political activity. His biography shows us a man dedicated to the creation of a fascist political regime that he aspired to one day lead, while at the same carefully distinguishing his aims from those of the Falangists and the Franco Regime.

Leadership has never played a more prominent role in America's national discourse, and yet our opinions of leaders are at all-time lows. Private sector leaders are widely seen as greedy to the point of being corrupt. Public sector leaders are viewed as incompetent to the point of being inept. And, levels of trust in government have plummeted. As the title of this book conveys, leaders in America are experiencing hard times.
Barbara Kellerman argues that we focus on leaders, and even on followers, while ignoring an essential element of leadership: context. This book is a corrective. It enables leaders to track the terrain that they must navigate in order to create change. Rather than a handy-dandy manual on what to do and how to do it, "Hard Times" is structured as a checklist. Twenty-four brief sections cover key aspects of the American landscape. They trace evolutions and revolutions that have revised our norms, transformed our populations and institutions, and shifted our culture.
Kellerman's crash course on context reveals how significant it is to leadership. Clearer still is the fact that leadership is more difficult than it has ever been. It is context that explains why leadership is so fraught with frustration. And, it is context that makes evident why leadership will be better exercised if it is better understood. Calling out patterns that emerge from the checklist, Kellerman challenges leaders to do better. This fascinating read will change the way that all of us think about leadership, while compelling us to consider what it means for our future.

The collapse of the Irish "Celtic Tiger" economy, in the wake of a banking disaster, provoked a joint EU/IMF rescue plan in late 2010. The election that followed saw Europe's most successful ever party lose more than half of its vote and almost three quarters of its seats. This book provides the definitive analysis of an electoral earthquake.

Wladyslaw Gomulka was a key player within Polish politics for over four decades and one of the most influential of the East European Communist Party leaders. As the architect of the 'Polish road to socialism', he claimed for Poland the right to define its own model of economic and political development, yet he was nevertheless committed to Poland's membership of the Soviet bloc. Anita Prazmowska here traces Gomulka's progression from a poorly educated worker in the Krosno district of Poland, to his election as First Party Secretary in 1956 and finally to his forced resignation in 1970. She considers Gomulka's pivotal role in building a communist-led resistance in occupied Poland during World War II as well as the critical part he played in post-war Polish politics and the 'de-Stalinization' process. Incorporating recently released and previously unpublished sources, this book provides a vivid picture of how Communism functioned in Poland and an original analysis of Poland's international role in the Cold War era.

John Howard said, The times will suit me,' and they did. For over a decade John Howard took advantage of international crises and local anxieties to not only stay in government, but to radically reshape Australian public life.The Times Will Suit Them digs behind the headlines to explain the success of Howard's radical new conservatism. It shows how the Howard government and its small legion of culture warriors responded to deep changes engendered by two decades of economic reform by importing moral agendas from the US. The result was a brand of deeply postmodern' conservatism which undermined much that traditional conservatives hold dear.From Hansonism to children overboard to the Intervention in the Northern Territory and beyond, The Times Will Suit Them offers a fresh and provocative analysis from two Young Turks. It is compelling reading for anyone seeking to understand the drivers in contemporary Australian politics.

Bill Clinton's administration was filled with new policies and achievements for the nation's future, but those achievements were easily overshadowed by personal flaws and scandal. Despite his personal problems, Clinton captured the American public and served two terms as one of our more memorable presidents. This comprehensive bibliography on Clinton will provide students with information from his childhood, his pre-presidential career, presidency (including assessments of it) and the beginning of his post-presidential life. Key access points to this information are provided in the Table of Contents and detailed author and subject indexes. Also included, is an invited essay providing an overview of the Clinton presidency and an extensive chronology of significant events.

As a general, Ulysses S. Grant is routinely described in glowing terms - the man who turned the tide of the Civil War, who accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and who had the stomach to see the war through to final victory. But his presidency is another matter - the most common word used to characterize it is "scandal." Grant is routinely portrayed as a man out of his depth, whose trusting nature and hands-off management style opened the federal coffers to unprecedented plunder. But that caricature does not do justice to the realities of Grant's term in office, as Josiah Bunting III shows in this provocative assessment of our eighteenth president. Grant came to Washington in 1869 to lead a capital and a country still bitterly divided by four years of civil war. His predecessor, Andrew Johnson, had been impeached and nearly driven from office, and the radical Republicans in Congress were intent on imposing harsh conditions on the Southern states before allowing them back into the Union. Grant made it his priority to forge the states into a single nation, and Bunting shows that despite the troubles that characterized Grant's terms in office, he was able to accomplish this most important task-very often through the skillful use of his own popularity with the American people. Grant was indeed a military man of the highest order, and he was a better president than he is often given credit for.

Common Wealth, Common Good is a study of the political discourse of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It argues that the Polish-Lithuanian political tradition was preoccupied during this period with moral concepts, in particular that of public virtue, understood as the subordination of private interests to the common good. Polish-Lithuanian politicians and commentators analysed their politics primarily in moral terms, arguing that the Commonwealth existed for the promotion of virtue, and depended for its survival upon on the retention of virtue among rulers and citizens. They analysed the acute political dysfunction that the Commonwealth experienced from the late seventeenth century as the result of corruption in the body politic. Proposals for reform of the Commonwealth's government aimed at reversing this corruption and restoring virtuous government in the service of the common good. Benedict Wagner-Rundell analyses the most important political treatises, including reform proposals, of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, to demonstrate how virtue was central to contemporaries' understanding of the Commonwealth and its situation. He also argues that a concern with promoting virtue drove the development of local government during this period, and animated efforts for reform of the Commonwealth at the Sejm (Parliament) of 1712-13, and during the General Confederation of Tarnogrod of 1715-17, a mass uprising by the Polish-Lithuanian nobility against King Augustus II. Placing the subject in international context, Common Wealth, Common Good argues that the Polish-Lithuanian political tradition's continuing preoccupation with virtue set it apart from republican traditions elsewhere in early-modern Europe and North America, where thinkers were beginning to consider whether self-interest could be harnessed as a positive political force. The Polish-Lithuanian tradition's failure to match such developments elsewhere in Europe arguably demonstrates its backwardness: however, its emphasis on the need for political systems to be underpinned by shared values still has great relevance today.

In this book, contributors address aspects of presidential leadership in essays on how presidential values are determined or constructed, how they are condoned and criticized, how they are packaged and conveyed, and how they are interpreted and acted upon. It includes scholars from communication, history, law, philosophy, political science, and psychology.

America is under attack from within. "American Manifesto" identi?es the enemy self-serving federal legislators and proposes a peaceful, legal solution: depriving them of re-election.

"American Manifesto" highlights the current decline and envisions the possible destruction of the United States of America. It places responsibility on the self-serving and self-perpetuating behavior of the United States senators and representatives who have spent and borrowed us to the brink of ?nancial collapse. By pandering to the American Left, labor unions, lawyers, environmentalists, and other vote-buying interests instead of conscientiously serving us by effectively addressing our excessive spending, the insolvency of entitlement programs, our arbitrary and unduly burdensome tax laws, and the erosion of our military strength and international standing, these professional politicians have our once-great country on the brink of ruin.

"American Manifesto" proposes to make federal legislators work for us rather than themselves in the only way possible and outlines just how this can be done.