Brennan's book surveys the history of the Roman praetorship, which was one of the most enduring Roman political institutions, occupying the practical center of Roman Republican administrative life for over three centuries. The study addresses political, social, military and legal history, as well as Roman religion. Volume I begins with a survey of Roman (and modern) views on the development of legitimate power--from the kings, through the early chief magistrates, and down through the creation and early years of the praetorship. Volume II discusses how the introduction in 122 of C. Gracchus' provincia repetundarum pushed the old city-state system to its functional limits.

A woman of intelligence and energy, Lou Henry Hoover's talents benefited a large number of cultural and philanthropic organizations, but her distaste for publicity obscured her many achievements until now. By the time her husband reached the White House in 1929, she had already established herself as a woman with high goals. The first woman to earn a university degree in geology, she collaborated with her husband in the translation of a classic book on mining methods. During World War I, she organized assistance for American travelers stranded in Europe, campaigned on behalf of the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, and set up a boarding house in Washington D.C. for young women working in war-related agencies.

Lou Hoover served as president of the Girl Scouts during its formative years, organized the Women's Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation to encourage public participation in sports, and raised money for a number of cultural and philanthropic organizations. As First Lady, she redecorated the White House to make it a suitable residence for a head of state, cataloging its furnishings for posterity. She founded a school for underprivileged Appalachian children and ran a private, unpublicized relief network for Americans suffering under the Great Depression. After leaving the White House, she resumed the volunteer work that remained such a treasured part of her life.

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What happened in Florida after the 2000 presidential election brought out the ugliest side of American politics. Now acclaimed journalist Jake Tapper takes us deep inside the post-Election Day vote-trolling and the battle for the presidency of the United States in a book that reveals, once and for all, what actually happened, who got away with what, and how both sides—Democrats and Republicans—plotted to steal the presidency.

Down & Dirty explains exactly how the Bush forces out-maneuvered the Gore team, from the courtrooms to the canvassing boards, from the press rooms to the corridors of the legislature. Tapper paints vivid portraits of the major players—Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush, Sanders Sauls, David Boies, Bill Daley, Jim Baker, Phil Beck, supreme court justices, local judges, lawyers, pols, spinners, activists, and voters—drawing upon exclusive insider information and interviews. He reveals shocking details about what happened behind closed doors, what deals were cut and who did what. And he gives us wickedly perceptive insight into the two men at the center of it all: Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Like a master detective, Tapper has pieced together the clues, followed up every lead, and kept going until he reached the dark heart of an American mystery. Anyone who thinks they know what really happened in Florida should prepare to be surprised. It is a landmark in investigative reporting and a book that will change forever the way we look at our president and our political process. Down & Dirty reads like a classic political thriller, with an ultimate revelation that hits with the power of a lightning bolt, and every word is true.

In 2015, Matteo Renzi's government continued to elicit contrasting reactions while dealing with both internal and external constraints. Some say it passed crucial reforms for economic development in fields such as the labor market, the banking system, education, and public administration, in addition to passing a new electoral law. However, others criticize the substance and, even more, the way reforms were passed by constructing variable parliamentary majorities according to the vote at hand, thus avoiding the need to build consensual decision-making relationships with interest groups and further centralizing power in the office of the prime minister. Be that as it may, the government was able to impose its own agenda in domestic affairs. Although the success of the 2015 Universal Exposition in Milan helped to bolster the image of the country, Italy continued to play a marginal role in key international areas, such as migration, European austerity policies, and the fight against terrorism.

The administrations of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy faced critical international challenges - including, most notably, using nuclear weapons against Japan, intervening militarily in Korea, toppling an emerging regime in Guatemala, restraining the actions of US allies during the Suez Canal Crisis, overthrowing Castro's Cuban regime, and forcing the USSR to remove nuclear missiles from Cuban soil. In this meticulously documented book, Alex Roberto Hybel tests the extent to which today's most important foreign policy decision-making models can explain the actions of the principal figures responsible for addressing each crisis. The book carefully analyses each president's cognitive system, the advisory structure each leader set up, and the pervading mindsets of Washington's insiders from each period. By evaluating the quality of each president's foreign policy decision-making process, readers will become familiar with core foreign policy decisions, how they were formulated, and the types of cognitive impediments that in certain instances undermined the quality of the decision-making process.

This book discusses five cases of hatred politics on the margins of global capital: Turkey under Erdogan (assumed office in 2003), Hungary under Orban (assumed office in 2010), India under Modi (assumed office in 2014); the Philippines under Duterte (assumed office in 2016) and Brazil under Bolsonaro (assumed office in 2019). How did they come to power? What strategies of legitimation do they employ? What resistances do they face? Country case studies lay the foundation for a systematic comparison that illuminates the key dynamics of this novel political form. Analyses of their responses to the Covid-19 pandemic further shed light on their methods in a time of crisis and a chapter that considers the Trump presidency indicates how we can understand these leaderships given their pronounced counterpart in the Global North - and vice-versa. This is not a mere collection of texts commissioned from specialists, but the result of a two-year-long collective endeavor: an international taskforce to respond to a global phenomenon. Contributors are: Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos, Daniel Feldmann, Agnes Gagyi, Daniel Geary, Tamas Gerocs, Sefika Kumral, Cecilia Lero, Devika Misra, Ilhan Can Ozen and Aparna Sundar.

Prince, Pen, and Sword offers a synoptic interpretation of rulers and elites in Eurasia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Four core chapters zoom in on the tensions and connections at court, on the nexus between rulers and religious authority, on the status, function, and self-perceptions of military and administrative elites respectively. Two additional concise chapters provide a focused analysis of the construction of specific dynasties (the Golden Horde and the Habsburgs) and narratives of kingship found in fiction throughout Eurasia. The contributors and editors, authorities in their fields, systematically bring together specialised literature on numerous Eurasian kingdoms and empires. This book is a careful and thought-provoking experiment in the global, comparative and connected history of rulers and elites.

Debate on public issues--and where candidates stand on them-- have traditionally represented the focal point of presidential campaigns. In recent decades, however, rather than asking where candidates stand on the issues, the public increasingly wants to know who they are. The issue of character has thus come to dominate presidential elections.

While there is increasing public awareness that the psychology, judgment, and leadership qualities of presidential candidates count, the basis on which these judgments should made remains unclear. Does it matter that Gary Hart changed his name or had an affair? Should Ed Muskie's loss of composure while defending his wife during a campaign speech, or Thomas Eagleton's hospitalization for depression, have counted against them?

Looking back over the past 25 years, Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst, provides the first comprehensive accounting of how character has become an increasingly important issue in a presidential campaign. He traces two related but distinctive approaches to the issue of presidential character and psychology. The first concerns the mental health of our candidates and presidents. Are they emotionally and personally stable? Is their temperament suitable for the presidency? The second concerns character. Is the candidate honest? Does he possess the necessary judgment and motivation to deal with the tremendous responsibilities and pressures of the office?

Drawing on his clinical and political science training, Renshon has devised a theory which will allow the public to better evaluate presidential candidates. Why are honesty, integrity, and personal ideals so important in judging candidates? Is personal and political ambition necessarily a bad trait? Do extra-marital affairs really matter? Finally, and most importantly, how can the public tell whether a candidate's leadership will be enhanced or impeded by aspects of his personality?

With this sweeping volume, Stanley Renshon has provided us with the most comprehensive account to date of how the public judges, and should judge, our future presidents.

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.

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.

The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats each allow their members to participate in the selection of the party leader. It also examines the consequences of all-member ballots in leadership elections. It looks at how parties remove leaders, showing that each of the major British parties sought to make it harder to evict incumbents.

This book is about a variety of national arrangements and practices, whose common characteristics are to constitute 'presidential republics' and which as such have become the main form of government in the contemporary world.

* THE INTERNATIONAL AND SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER * In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald's only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who threatened the world's health, economic security and social fabric. Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents' large, imposing house in New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who went on to occupy the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald. A first-hand witness, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humour to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald's place in the family spotlight and Ivana's penchant for regifting to her grandmother's frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump's favourite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer's. Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists and journalists have sought to explain Donald Trump's lethal flaws. Mary Trump has the education, insight and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider's perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world's most powerful and dysfunctional families.

CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE 2015 Do women national leaders represent a breakthrough for the women's movement, or is women's leadership weaker than the numbers imply? This unique book, written by an experienced politician and academic, is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of how and why women in 53 countries rose to the top in the years since World War II. Packed with fascinating case studies detailing the rise to power of all 73 female presidents and prime ministers from around the world, from 1960 (when the first was elected) to 2010, the motives, achievements and life stories of the female top leaders, including findings from interviews carried out by the author, provide a nuanced picture of women in power. The book will have wide international appeal to students, academics, government officials, women's rights activists and political activists, as well as anyone interested in international affairs, politics, social issues, gender and equality.

John F. Kennedy began his political communication in the neighborhoods of the Eleventh Congressional District of Massachusetts, using informal more than formal speaking as he learned to speak and began his career as a political leader. For 18 years he practiced the art of communication that is so intrinsic to the art of politics--speeches, small group deliberation, stump speaking in campaigns, radio and television press conferences, debates, and interviews.

Silvestri describes the political and social contexts that shaped Kennedy's earliest efforts as a communicator and politician until his death in 1963. His first campaign became the blueprint for his future political contests; his warnings as Congressman and Senator about Vietnam and Algeria proved prophetic. Kennedy's greatest communication tests involved his persuasion of the public that a Roman Catholic had the right to run for President, his memorable Inaugural Address to a world deadlocked in nuclear stockpiling, his deliberation in the Cuban Missile crisis, his eloquent reasoning for peaceful measures and conciliatory attitudes through his address at American University, his advocacy of civil rights, and his televised presidency--historical firsts for a charismatic American leader of the nuclear half of the 20th century. Scholars, students, and other researchers as well as lay readers will find this study of JKF, political communication, and recent American history fascinating and instructive.

Barack Obama swept into office in 2008 on a wave of popular discontent with his predecessor, a fresh and compelling political persona, the appeal of his "Hope and Change" campaign, and the pre-election financial crisis. The nation's first African-American president stirred unusually high expectations. Comparisons to Lincoln and FDR were common.
Obama's first term saw the passage of a substantial economic stimulus package, a large-scale expansion of financial regulation, a drawdown in Iraq, and his signature health care reform. But a stagnant economy persisted. Much of his program (though not Obama himself) was not popular. The Democrats suffered a severe electoral setback in the 2010 Congressional election. But Obama's exceptional campaign organization, his strong personal appeal, and a weak Republican opponent won him a second term in 2012.
Now his presidency is in its final stage. In Obama's Time, eminent historian Morton Keller has written the first historical assessment of Barack Obama's presidency. Drawing on a lifetime of scholarship on American history and politics, Keller examines Obama's presidential persona and governing style, his domestic and foreign policies, and his place in the broader history of American politics. He does so in a style that should strongly appeal to the general reader.
Obama is deeply committed to active federal government, in the tradition of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. But his ambitions have been tempered by the heavy weight of existing institutions and past precedents, strong Republican opposition, and unforeseen events. Keller concludes that this is a time when the centralized bureaucratic state faces a deep crisis of legitimacy. He ascribes the intense party polarization to a political culture in which the media, advocacy groups, and ideologically-driven donors have outsize influence.
Historians will continue to debate the Obama presidency for decades to come. Keller's account of how Obama governed, the larger political context in which he functioned, and why he was unable to close the gap between expectations and reality, will be invaluable to that debate.

Brennan's book surveys the history of the Roman praetorship, which was one of the most enduring Roman political institutions, occupying the practical center of Roman Republican administrative life for over three centuries. The study addresses political, social, military and legal history, as well as Roman religion. Volume I begins with a survey of Roman (and modern) views on the development of legitimate power--from the kings, through the early chief magistrates, and down through the creation and early years of the praetorship. Volume II discusses how the introduction in 122 of C. Gracchus' provincia repetundarum pushed the old city-state system to its functional limits.

Xuezhi Guo examines traditional Chinese political theory that fuses idealistic altruist pursuit with functional practicability. He investigates the ideal personality criteria of political leaders for both ideal and real politics--a combination of the values and ethics of Confucian, Daoist, and Legalist traditions.

While addressing complementary roles of Chinese schools of thought in which ideal personality is grounded, Guo identifies five characteristics of an ideal political leader, traces their evolution, and then analyzes these characteristics as they influence ideal personality of political leaders. As modeled by a paragon of combining the Confucian noble man, the Daoist sage or authentic person, and the Legalist enlightened leader, Chinese political leaders pursue humaneness, ritualism, moralism, and follow naturalism in order to seek political survival and advancement against the radical development of Confucian political zealousness. He emphasizes the philosophical and historical conditions that facilitate the production of agency in an effort to understand how the legacy continues. A provocative analysis that will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with Chinese politics, history, and philosophy.

"This book explores the effect of semi-presidentialism on newly-democratising countries. In recent years semi-presidentialism -- the situation where a constitution makes provision for both a directly elected president and a prime minister who is responsible to the legislature -- has become the regime type of choice for many countries"--

Few people have made decisions as momentous as Eisenhower, nor has one person had to make such a varied range of them. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, he was able to give our country eight years of peace and prosperity by relying on a core set of principles. These were informed by his heritage and upbringing, his strong character and his personal discipline, but he also avoided making himself the centre of things. He tried to be the calmest man in the room, not the loudest, so instead of seeking to fulfill his personal desires and political needs, he pursued a course he called the 'Middle Way' that tried to make winners on both sides of a situation. In addition, Ike maintained a big picture view on any situation; he was a strategic, not an operational leader. He also ensured that he had all the information he needed to make a decision. His talent for envisioning a whole, especially in the context of the long game, and his ability to sees causes and various consequences, explains his success as Allied Commander President. Then, after making a decision, he made himself accountable for it, prizing responsibility most of all his principles. How Ike Led shows us not just what a great American did, but why - and what we can learn from him today.

My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. It tells the story of his coming of age in the nuclear era, his role in trying to shape and contain it, and how his thinking has changed about the threat these weapons pose. In a remarkable career, Perry has dealt firsthand with the changing nuclear threat. Decades of experience and special access to top-secret knowledge of strategic nuclear options have given Perry a unique, and chilling, vantage point from which to conclude that nuclear weapons endanger our security rather than securing it. This book traces his thought process as he journeys from the Cuban Missile Crisis, to crafting a defense strategy in the Carter Administration to offset the Soviets' numeric superiority in conventional forces, to presiding over the dismantling of more than 8,000 nuclear weapons in the Clinton Administration, and to his creation in 2007, with George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger, of the Nuclear Security Project to articulate their vision of a world free from nuclear weapons and to lay out the urgent steps needed to reduce nuclear dangers.

"The leader of the free world needs a woman head of state-but a particular woman-with the intellect and presence of mind to ponder action with an eye on the future; a human-centeredness capable of respecting difference and envisioning peaceful cooperation and coexistence with and among nations; a woman unconcerned with showing how tough she is, or how religious she is, or how fashion-setting her wardrobe."

Many of the names and the stories you'll read in "Women's Work and Words" will be "un"familiar-Rachel Corrie, Anna Politkovskaya, Claudette Colvin, and Wangari Maathai. Others-such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Alice Walker, Shirley Chisholm, and Madonna-have reached deep into the human consciousness.

All of these women share a spiritual bond. They struggle. They struggle for peace, justice, and a better world. Each has had the courage to challenge the politics of spin and the inhumanity of men and to work for change. Through this stunning medley of profiles, author Carolyn LaDelle Bennett argues that war and conflicts worldwide will end only when human-centered, independent voices-unbought and unbossed-take the helm of governments and political decision-making.

Adapted from Bennett's news and current affairs columns, this book illuminates true and deeply thoughtful voices on the critical issues of our time.