The compelling essays brought together in this collection provide newassessments of the course of British foreign policy from the Glorious Revolution to the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991, its underlying principles as well as Britain's standing in international politics. The essays examine these issues through the prism of the personalities of those Foreign Secretaries and Prime Ministers who had a major impact on the course and conduct of British foreign policy, from the elder Pitt in the eighteenth century to Margaret Thatcher at the end of the twentieth.

Memorialised as a US heroine and an iconoclastic humanitarian who sought to protect society's marginalised, Eleanor Roosevelt also, at times, disappointed contemporaries and biographers with some of her stances. Examining a period of her life that has not been extensively explored, this book challenges the previously held universality of Eleanor Roosevelt's humanitarianism. The Palestinian question is used as a case study to explore the practical application of her commitment to social justice, and the author argues that, at times, Roosevelt's humanitarianism was illogical, limited and flawed by pragmatism. New insights are provided into Eleanor Roosevelt's human rights activism - its dichotomies, its inspiration, and the effect it had on US relations with the Middle East. This book will appeal to academics working across a range of disciplines including history, diplomatic history, American studies, Middle Eastern studies, US foreign policy, human rights and women's studies.

Although Canada is regarded as one of the least corrupt countries, this volume draws on wide ranging evidence and innovative research from scholars around the world to challenge this assumption. Corruption, defined as the "abuse of entrusted power for private gain," is often understood as being caused by internally motivated greed leading to prohibited acts in contravention of laws, rules and regulations. It can also be defined as "dishonest action that destroys people's trust." These traditional forms of corruption pose problems for Canada in a variety of policy domains, as well as "institutional corruption" evidenced by deception and financial inconsistency that undermine the effectiveness and transparency of policy objectives. This volume contains chapters that investigate various areas of corruption in Canada, ranging from corruption amongst the First Nations, to the armed forces, to the delivery of foreign assistance. It also offers suggestions to reduce future outbreaks of corruption. Each chapter provides detailed empirical analysis evidenced through real world examples that highlight key lessons amidst the numerous challenges posed by corruption. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal.

In this book, a stellar collection of contributors consider each British post-war Prime Minister and examine how they have dealt with Britains changing role, domestic and overseas, since the end of WWII. Even at the start of the 21st century, Britain remains in a state of transition, between a world which is dead and one still struggling to be born.

Turkmenistan is a country which is almost sealed off from the rest of the world but it has attracted foreign attention due to the eccentricities of its late president Saparmurat Niyazov Turkmenbasy, whose ideological construction and dynamics of power have remained in place after his death. This book offers a thorough analysis of why this personality cult developed in Turkmenistan in a way that has not been seen in other newly developed Central Asian countries. In assessing the Turkmenbasy phenomenon, this book explains the causes and origins of the personality cult by drawing a comparison with Qadhdhafi's Libya. The author understands the Niyazov cult not as a discrete phenomenon but as a system deriving from specific historical functions and functioning in a determined social and historical context. Using accounts of the Turkmenbasy and Qadhdhafi cults and the speeches and books written by these personalities, this book focuses on the institutional side of the personality cult. A fascinating analysis of the political situation in Turkmenistan under Saparmurat Niyazov, this book will be of interest to scholars of Political Science, Comparative Politics and, in particular, Central Asian Studies.

Esteemed journalism historian James Startt has crafted an intriguing case study of the relationship between political leadership and the mass media during its early days, using the political ascendancy of Woodrow Wilson as its focus. Wilson's emergence as a major political figure coincided with the arrival of a real mass media and a more independent, less partisan style of political coverage. While most nineteenth-century presidents remained aloof from the press, Wilson understood it could no longer be ignored: "The public man who fights the daily press won't be a public man very long."

This groundbreaking book offers a solution to one of the most enduring mysteries in American history: What made Abraham Lincoln so tall, thin, and less than attractive? What gave him his long limbs, large feet, high voice, odd lips, sluggish bowels, and astonishing joint flexibility? Why, in his last months, was he so haggard that editorials in major newspapers implored him to take a vacation? The never-before-proposed solution points to Lincoln's DNA and the rare genetic disorder called MEN2B. In addition to producing Lincoln's remarkable body shape, MEN2B gave him a sad-looking face that, for more than 150 years, has been consistently misinterpreted as depression. It tragically took his mother and three of his sons at early ages (Eddie, Willie, and Tad), and it was killing Lincoln in his last years. "The Physical Lincoln" upends the myth of a physically vibrant President, showing that, had he not been shot, Lincoln would have died from advanced cancer in less than a year, the result of MEN2B. Written in clear, non-technical language for the general reader, and using more than 180 illustrations, "The Physical Lincoln" offers fundamental new insights into Lincoln, and is the perfect book to stimulate a young person's interest in science and medicine. See www.physical-lincoln.com for more information.

"Masterful . . . The collaboration completes the Churchill portrait in a seamless manner, combining the detailed research, sharp analysis and sparkling prose that readers of the first two volumes have come to expect." - Associated Press Spanning the years 1940 to 1965, The Last Lion: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 begins shortly after Winston Churchill became prime minister-when Great Britain stood alone against the overwhelming might of Nazi Germany. In brilliant prose and informed by decades of research, William Manchester and Paul Reid recount how Churchill organized his nation's military response and defence, convinced FDR to support the cause, and personified the "never surrender" ethos that helped win the war. We witness Churchill, driven from office, warning the world of the coming Soviet menace. And after his triumphant return to 10 Downing Street, we follow him as he pursues his final policy goal: a summit with President Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet leaders. In conclusion, we experience Churchill's last years, when he faces the end of his life with the same courage he brought to every battle he ever fought.

Throughout history, strong-willed Russian autocrats have rescued their country from foreign domination, disorder, and possible chaos, often using the cruelest means to achieve their ends. Gorbachev tried to implement socialism with a human face in the Soviet Union, but failed. In the early 1990s, once again, Russia needed a strong hand to pull it out of chaos. In August 1991 Boris Yeltin emerged as such a leader, but unlike earlier strong leaders, he was determined to pull Russia out of the Communist morass and affect his country's integration with Western democracies through democratic means.

Felkay carefully analyzes the impact of Yeltsin on the newly evolving relationship between Russia and the Western democracies. But separating the process of formulating foreign and domestic policies would be impossible. From the onset, Yeltsin kept both reins of decision-making firmly in hand. Accordingly, Felkay assesses Yeltsin's effectiveness in moving his country toward democracy and a market economy, and he shows the ups and downs of his pro-Western foreign policies. This book provides an important analysis for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with Russian studies, international relations, and comparative politics.

Timothy Heppell brings together a renowned group of contributors to consider the role of the Leader of the Opposition in British Politics. The book argues that the neglect of opposition studies needs to be addressed, especially given the increasing importance attached to the performance the Leader of the Opposition in the British political system.

What comes next for a former leader in a democracy - a Prime Minister or President obliged to leave office because they have lost an election, come to the end of their constitutionally-fixed term, lost the backing of their party, or chosen to leave? This book analyses the role and political influence of former leaders in Western democratic states.

When Bill Clinton left office there was little consensus even among Democrats as to the significance of his political legacy. He was eager to stress that enduring changes had been made to American society. Critics, however, were less convinced that Clintonism had developed an integrated vision of governance. This book examines whether or not the Clinton experience illustrates the value of the New Democrat and Third Way agenda.

The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Vol 2., by U. S. Grant - This is the celebrated memoir of one of the most prominent figures of the American Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant was the general President Abraham Lincoln turned to when the Civil War had reached a stalemate, the general who ultimately led the North to victory. Grant went on to serve two terms as President himself, and in 1885 wrote his autobiography as he was dying of cancer. Focused primarily on his military campaigns, this account has been praised by many - including the original publisher, Mark Twain - for its clear style and gripping storytelling. Don't miss the opportunity to experience one of the most dramatic moments in American history, as told by one of the people who helped create it.

The second edition of this introductory textbook on foreign policy analysis focuses on the key explanatory factors that underlie the foreign policies of states and other actors to show how theory can illuminate practice. Genuinely international in scope and drawing on a wide range of examples, it provides an accessible introduction to the key elements of foreign policy analysis to explain, predict and evaluate what states and other collective actors want, how they make decisions, and key determinants of state security, diplomatic, and economic foreign policies. Providing a broad set of theoretical tools for analysing foreign policy, and including increased coverage of methodology, this new edition provides students with the skills to undertake their own foreign policy analysis.

In this "crisp, engaging, and very smart" (The New York Times Book Review) work, The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic digs into books of the Trump era and finds that our response to this presidency often reflects the same polarization, contradictions, and resentments that made it possible. It is an irony of our age that a man who rarely reads has unleashed an onslaught of books about his tenure and his time. Dissections of the white working class. Manifestos of political resistance. Works on identity, gender, and migration. Memoirs on race and protest. Revelations of White House mayhem. Warnings over the future of conservatism, progressivism, and of American democracy itself. As a book critic for The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada has read just about all of them. In What Were We Thinking, he draws on some 150 recent volumes to explore how we understand ourselves in the Trump era. Lozada's characters are not the president, his advisers, or his antagonists but the political and cultural ideas at play--and at stake--in America. Just as Trump's election upended the country's political establishment, it shocked its intellectual class. Though some of the books of the Trump era skillfully illuminate the challenges and transformations the nation faces, too many works are more defensive than incisive, more righteous than right. Lozada offers a provocative argument: Whether written by liberals or conservatives, activists or academics, true believers or harsh critics, the books of Trump's America are vulnerable to the same failures of imagination that gave us this presidency in the first place. In What Were We Thinking, Lozada's selections range from bestselling titles to little-known works, from thoroughly reported accounts of the administration to partisan polemics, from meditations on the fate of truth to memoirs about enduring--or enabling--the Trump presidency. He also identifies books that challenge entrenched assumptions and shift our vantage points, the books that best help us make sense of this era. The result is an "elegant yet lacerating" (The Guardian) intellectual history of our time, a work that transcends daily headlines to discern how we got here and how we thought here. What Were We Thinking will help today's readers understand America, and will help tomorrow's readers look back and understand us.

The tragic events of September 11, 2001 provided President George W. Bush with unprecedented levels of public support. The Bush administration used this support to push forward many aspects of its policy agenda. Anecdotal evidence in the popular press provided many examples of the administration pushing the envelope on the politicization of federal agencies and policies. But, no comprehensive study has yet been prepared to examine how and whether the Bush administration was really able to substantially re-shape bureaucratic policy and outputs, especially in the domains of domestic policy. In this book, leading scholars of presidential influence over policy examine a wide range of agencies and policies to address this question. While the findings vary somewhat by policy area, the results suggest that the Bush administration was not able to achieve many of its goals, as agency processes are difficult to change.

In this collection of essays, leading scholars analyze the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic Church in America. With the nation mired in economic depression and the threat of war looming across the Atlantic, in 1932 Catholics had to weigh political allegiance versus religious affiliation. Many chose party over religion, electing FDR, a Protestant. This book, a complex blend of religion and politics with the added ingredients of economics and war, grew out of an international conference in 1998 held at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York. From the multiplicity of Catholic responses to the New Deal, through FDR’s diplomatic relationship with the Vatican during World War II, and on to the response of the US and the Vatican to the Holocaust, this book expands our understanding of a fascinating and largely unexplored aspect of FDR’s presidency.

Benjamin Disraeli and William Ewart Gladstone are without doubt the two most iconic figures of Victorian politics. Their distinctly different personalities and policies led to 28 years of bitter political rivalry. For the first time, this book provides the full story of their rivalry and its origins, comparing the upbringing, education and personalities of the two leaders, as well as their political careers. Dick Leonard considers the impact of religion on the two men, their contrasting oratorical skills, their attitudes to political and social reform, foreign affairs and imperialism as well as their relations with Queen Victoria. In their private lives he sheds new light on Gladstone's guilt-ridden obsession with 'reforming' prostitutes, and Disraeli's almost completely successful efforts to conceal the existence of two illegitimate children. Providing important new perspectives on the two towering political characters of the Victorian Age, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in nineteenth century British history and politics.

The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Vol 1., by U. S. Grant - This is the celebrated memoir of one of the most prominent figures of the American Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant was the general President Abraham Lincoln turned to when the Civil War had reached a stalemate, the general who ultimately led the North to victory. Grant went on to serve two terms as President himself, and in 1885 wrote his autobiography as he was dying of cancer. Focused primarily on his military campaigns, this account has been praised by many - including the original publisher, Mark Twain - for its clear style and gripping storytelling. Don't miss the opportunity to experience one of the most dramatic moments in American history, as told by one of the people who helped create it.

Valenty, Feldman, and their contributors challenge the current state of political leadership studies by offering a variety of analytical methods from scholars around the world. While focused on American political leadership, the different approaches and vantage points offer fresh insights of the roles of cultural and political context, including the historical circumstance, environmental factors, and socialization agents that affect and shape American political leadership and performance.

The highly unusual and valuable approach includes multidisciplinary perspectives with contributors from the fields of political science, political psychology, philosophy, sociology, and economics. Scholars, students, and researchers from a variety of disciplines will find the evaluations of the interaction between personality, leadership, decision making, and context invaluable.

Co-authored by Churchill's great-grandson - an international public speaker on the life and times of Sir Winston and the impact he still has on the world today.

Abraham Lincoln: the Great Emancipator, savior of the Union, and revered national hero. Jefferson Davis: defender of slavery, leader of a lost cause, and forlorn object of scorn. Both Lincoln and Davis remain locked in the American psyche as iconic symbols of victory and defeat. They presided over a terrible war that decided the fate of slavery and severely tested each man's resolve and potential for greatness. But, as Brian Dirck shows, such images tend to obscure the larger visions that compelled both men to pursue policies and actions that resulted in such a devastating national tragedy.

Going well beyond most conventional accounts, Dirck examines Lincoln's and Davis's respective ideas concerning national identity, highlighting the strengths and shortcomings of each leader's worldview. By focusing on issues that have often been overlooked in previous studies of Lincoln and Davis -- and of the war in general -- he reveals the ways in which these two leaders viewed that imagined community called the American nation.

The first comprehensive and detailed study to compare the two men's national imaginations, Dirck's study provides a provocative analysis of how their everyday lives -- the influence of fathers and friends, jobs and homes -- worked in complex ways to shape Lincoln's and Davis's perceptions of what the American nation was supposed to be and could become and how those images could reject or accommodate the institution of slavery.

Dirck contends that Lincoln subscribed to the notion of a "nation of strangers" in which people never really knew one another's hearts, reflecting his wariness of sentimental attachment, while Davis held to a "community of sentiment" based onhonor and comradeship that depended a great deal on emotional bonding. As Dirck shows, these two ideals are very much a part of the current national conversation -- among citizens, scholars, and politicians -- that has brought Davis back into the fold of great Americans while challenging many of the cliches that surround the Lincoln myth.

Ultimately, Dirck argues, the imagined communities of these two remarkable men transcend the experience of war to illuminate the ongoing debates over what it means to be an American. Through this engaging and original work, he urges a restoration of balance to our understanding -- not only of Lincoln and Davis, but also of the contributions made by North and South alike to those debates.

"Barack Obama and the African-American Empowerment" examines the evolution of black leadership and politics since the Civil Rights Movement. It looks at the phenomenon of Barack Obama, from his striking emergence as a successful candidate for the Illinois State Senate to President of the United States, as part of the continuum of African American political leaders. The reader also examines the evolving ideals about the roles of government and the economy in addressing the historic disadvantages experienced by many African Americans. Here, some of the nation's most influential intellectuals bring together original scholarship to look at the future of national politics and American race relations.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Republican Party stood at the brink of an internal civil war. After a devastating financial crisis, furious voters sent a new breed of politician to Washington. These young Republican firebrands, led by "Fighting Bob" La Follette of Wisconsin, vowed to overthrow the party leaders and purge Wall Street's corrupting influence from Washington. Their opponents called them "radicals," and "fanatics." They called themselves "Progressives."

President Theodore Roosevelt disapproved of La Follette's confrontational methods. Fearful of splitting the party, he compromised with the conservative House Speaker, "Uncle Joe" Cannon, to pass modest reforms. But as La Follette's crusade gathered momentum, the country polarized, and the middle ground melted away. Three years after the end of his presidency, Roosevelt embraced La Follette's militant tactics and went to war against the Republican establishment, bringing him face to face with his handpicked successor, William Taft. Their epic battle shattered the Republican Party and permanently realigned the electorate, dividing the country into two camps: Progressive and Conservative.

"Unreasonable Men" takes us into the heart of the epic power struggle that created the progressive movement and defined modern American politics. Recounting the fateful clash between the pragmatic Roosevelt and the radical La Follette, Wolraich's riveting narrative reveals how a few Republican insurgents broke the conservative chokehold on Congress and initiated the greatest period of political change in America's history.