A CounterPunch Best Book of the Year A Lone Star Policy Institute Recommended Book “If you care, as I do, about disrupting the perverse politics of criminal justice, there is no better place to start than Prisoners of Politics.” —James Forman, Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The social consequences of this fact—recycling people who commit crimes through an overwhelmed system and creating a growing class of permanently criminalized citizens—are devastating. A leading criminal justice reformer who has successfully rewritten sentencing guidelines, Rachel Barkow argues that we would be safer, and have fewer people in prison, if we relied more on expertise and evidence and worried less about being “tough on crime.” A groundbreaking work that is transforming our national conversation on crime and punishment, Prisoners of Politics shows how problematic it is to base criminal justice policy on the whims of the electorate and argues for an overdue shift that could upend our prison problem and make America a more equitable society. “A critically important exploration of the political dynamics that have made us one of the most punitive societies in human history. A must-read by one of our most thoughtful scholars of crime and punishment.” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy “Barkow’s analysis suggests that it is not enough to slash police budgets if we want to ensure lasting reform. We also need to find ways to insulate the process from political winds.” —David Cole, New York Review of Books “A cogent and provocative argument about how to achieve true institutional reform and fix our broken system.” —Emily Bazelon, author of Charged

The application of the Political Question Doctrine is at a crucial crossroads as the Supreme Court continues to test new 'War on Terrorism' initiatives. Historically, the political question doctrine has held the courts from resolving constitutional issues that are better left to other departments of government, as a way of maintaining the system of checks and balances. However, the doctrine's many ambiguities have allowed a roughly defined juxtaposition of the branches of government during previous years when the Republic was concerned with both international matters and those within its continental confines. The Political Question Doctrine and the Supreme Court of the United States discusses the gradual changes in the parameters of the doctrine, including its current position dealing with increasingly extraterritorial concerns. Nada Mourtada-Sabbah and Bruce E. Cain bring together critical essays that examine the broad issues of judicial involvement in politics and the future of the doctrine. With a wide range of historical and theoretical perspectives, this book will stimulate debate among those interested in political science and legal studies.

The application of the Political Question Doctrine is at a crucial crossroads as the Supreme Court continues to test new "War on Terrorism" initiatives. Historically, the political question doctrine has held the courts from resolving constitutional issues that are better left to other departments of government, as a way of maintaining the system of checks and balances. However, the doctrine's many ambiguities have allowed a roughly defined juxtaposition of the branches of government during previous years when the Republic was concerned with both international matters and those within its continental confines. The Political Question Doctrine and the Supreme Court of the United States discusses the gradual changes in the parameters of the doctrine, including its current position dealing with increasingly extraterritorial concerns. Nada Mourtada-Sabbah and Bruce E. Cain bring together critical essays that examine the broad issues of judicial involvement in politics and the future of the doctrine. With a wide range of historical and theoretical perspectives, this book will stimulate debate among those interested in political science and legal studies.

In this book Tom Crow, the founder of Cobra Golf and former Australian Amateur Golf Champion, shares his insights and views on golf, its growth as a sport and its development as an industry.

America's criminal justice policy reflects irrational fears stoked by politicians seeking to win election. A preeminent legal scholar argues that reform guided by evidence, not politics and emotions, will reduce crime and reverse mass incarceration. The United States has the world's highest rate of incarceration, a form of punishment that ruins lives and makes a return to prison more likely. As awful as that truth is for individuals and their families, its social consequences-recycling offenders through an overwhelmed criminal justice system, ever-mounting costs, unequal treatment before the law, and a growing class of permanently criminalized citizens-are even more devastating. With the authority of a prominent legal scholar and the practical insights gained through on-the-ground work on criminal justice reform, Rachel Barkow explains how dangerous it is to base criminal justice policy on the whims of the electorate, which puts judges, sheriffs, and politicians in office. Instead, she argues for an institutional shift toward data and expertise, following the model used to set food and workplace safety rules. Barkow's prescriptions are rooted in a thorough and refreshingly ideology-free cost-benefit analysis of how to cut mass incarceration while maintaining public safety. She points to specific policies that are deeply problematic on moral grounds and have failed to end the cycle of recidivism. Her concrete proposals draw on the best empirical information available to prevent crime and improve the reentry of former prisoners into society. Prisoners of Politics aims to free criminal justice policy from the political arena, where it has repeatedly fallen prey to irrational fears and personal interest, and demonstrates that a few simple changes could make us all safer.

The first day at school is an enormous step for every child. Sofia is excited and can't wait to go to the big school like her sister. But Tom is worried - will he get lost in the big school, and will he make any friends? Join Tom and Sofia in finding out about the fun and fears of the first day at school.

"The Show gave the game of golf a very attractive exposure--the travelogues alone were worth the price of admission--that went a long way toward promoting, and changing the image of the game into what is now a major sport in this country, and the world."
--Golf Legend Byron Nelson

In The Adapted Mind, Jerome Barkow, along with Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, set out to redefine evolutionary psychology for the social sciences and to create a new agenda for the next generation of social scientists. While biologically oriented psychologists quickly accepted the work, social scientists in psychology and researchers in anthropology and sociology, who deal with the same questions of human behavior, were more resistant. Missing the Revolution is an invitation to researchers from these disciplines who, in Barkow's view, have been missing the great evolution-revolution of our time to engage with Darwinian thought, which is now so large a part of the non-sociological study of human nature and society. Barkow asks the reader to put aside the preconceptions and stereotypes social scientists often have of the "biological" and to take into account a powerful paradigm that is far away from those past generations who would invoke a vocabulary of "genes" and "Darwin" as justification for genocide. The evolutionary perspective, Barkow maintains, provides no particular support for the status quo, no rationalizations for racism or any other form of social inequality. "Cultural" cannot possibly be opposed to "biological" because culture and society are the only means we have of expressing our evolved psychology; social-cultural constructionism is not only compatible with an evolutionary approach but demanded by it. To marshal evidence for his argument, Barkow has gathered together eminent scholars from a variety of disciplines to present applications of evolutionary psychology in a manner intended to illustrate their relevance to current concerns for social scientists. The contributorsinclude, among others, evolutionary psychologist Anne Campbell, a Darwinian feminist who reaches out to feminist social cosntructionists; sociologist Ulica Segarstrale, who analyzes the opposition of the "cultural left" to Darwinism; sociologist Bernd Baldus, who criticizes evolutionists for ignoring agency; criminologist Anthony Walsh, who presents a biosocial criminology; and primatologists Lars Rodseth and Shannon A. Novak, who reveal an unexpected uniqueness to human social organization. Missing the Revolution is a challenge to scholars to think critically about a powerful social and intellectual movement which insists that the theoretical perspective that has been so successful when applied to the behavior of other animal species can be applied to our own.

The transformative wave of Darwinian insight continues to expand throughout the human sciences. While still centered on evolution-focused fields such as evolutionary psychology, ethology, and human behavioral ecology, this insight has also influenced cognitive science, neuroscience, feminist discourse, sociocultural anthropology, media studies, and clinical psychology. This handbook's goal is to amplify the wave by bringing together world-leading experts to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of evolution-oriented and influenced fields. While evolutionary psychology remains at the core of the collection, it also covers the history, current standing, debates, and future directions of the panoply of fields entering the Darwinian fold. As such, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior is a valuable reference not just for evolutionary psychologists but also for scholars and students from many fields who wish to see how the evolutionary perspective is relevant to their own work.