Featured on CNN, C-SPAN, FOX News, NBC's Today Show, Democracy NOW , News Hour with Jim Lehrer and other leading talk shows. In the late 1960s, the bipartisan Eisenhower Violence Commission, formed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson and extended by President Richard Nixon, warned that most civilizations have fallen less from external assault than from internal decay. Over recent years, the internal decay prophesied by the Violence Commission, but also by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his military-industrial complex farewell speech, has been reflected in American public policies. The fault lies on both sides of the political aisle. After Pearl Harbor, "Mr. Republican," Senator Robert A. Taft, said criticism is patriotic. Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense assembles more than three dozen patriots. They range from Kevin Phillips, chief political strategist for Richard Nixon's victory in 1968, and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, called a "true American hero" by President George H. W. Bush in 1991, to Jessica Tuchman Mathews, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and former Oklahoma Senator Fred R. Harris, who advocated grassroots, populist policies when he ran for president in the 1970s. Why have American policies failed? What alternative policies can return America to its promise, internally and in the eyes of a global community shaken by, among other things, American torture and sexual humiliation of prisoners in Iraq? Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense answers these questions in a preposterous way. It asks citizens and policy makers to actually connect the dots-to move America forward by developing mutually supportive and complementary foreign, national security, Middle East, economic, domestic, inner city, media, campaign finance and voting reform policies. Too much to expect of our civilization? This important and timely effort is published in cooperation with The Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation. From Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Se

New essays by noted authorities on music and related arts in early modern Italy, giving special attention to musical sources, poetry, performance, and visual arts. The rich cultural environment of early modern Italy inspired a vast array of musical innovations: this was the first age of the virtuoso performer, the era that witnessed the beginnings of opera, and a moment that saw the intersection and cross-fertilization of madrigals and songs of all sorts. Word, Image, and Song: Essays on Early Modern Italy presents a broad range of approaches to the study of music and related arts in that era. Topics include musical source studies, issues of performance, poetry and linguistics, influences on music from the classical tradition, and the interconnectedness of music and visual art. Their points of departure include well-known musical workssuch as Monteverdi's madrigals, librettos of seventeenth-century operas, the poetry of Giambattista Marino, and the paintings of Titian and his contemporaries. Contributors: Jennifer Williams Brown, Mauro Calcagno, Alan Curtis, Suzanne G. Cusick, Ruth I. DeFord, Dinko Fabris, Beth L. Glixon, Jonathan E. Glixon, Barbara Russano Hanning, Wendy Heller, Robert R. Holzer, Deborah Howard, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Margaret Murata, David Rosand, Susan ParkerShimp, Gary Tomlinson, Alvaro Torrente, Andrew H. Weaver. Rebecca Cypess is Assistant Professor of Music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Beth L. Glixon is Instructor in Musicology at the University of Kentucky School of Music. Nathan Link is NEH Associate Professor of Music at Centre College.

Though the world's population continues to grow, total fertility rates are dropping below replacement level in many parts of the world. The Baby Bust, a landmark book of essays by demographic, economic, and political science experts, examines the global 'birth dearth' and its causes, implications, and policy options. Focusing in large part on the United States, this book also includes data from Europe and Japan and makes important comparisons between the three regions. It concludes with suggestions for making America's future sound and prosperous, through the regularization and legalization of appropriate levels of immigration; enhancing governmental efforts to increase productivity; and finally, ending the present waste of so many underutilized members of the workforce, particularly minorities and the poor.

With the break up of the Spanish empire in South America, the continent split into nine independent states with often ill-defined boundaries. One of these was that between Bolivia and Chile, which were separated by the Atacama Desert, tone of the driest regions in the world. When it was realised that the area contained nitrates that the world needed for explosives and fertiliser the scene was set for the inevitable clash. When war broke out in February 1879, both sides found themselves unprepared for war. Rapid armament followed as the Peruvians were dragged into the conflict in support of their Bolivian allies. Initially there was a tiresome naval war of blockade and guerre de course. Two naval actions decided the naval campaign in favour of the Chileans who then proceeded to use their naval power to attack the Allies' isolated armies and capture Lima two years after war had broken out. Fighting then developed into a cruel and ruthless guerrilla war in the Andes, sometimes even pitting Peruvian against Peruvian, before the Peruvians finally concede defeat. The war was notable in the West for fights involving ironclads, particularly the Battle of Angamos, which saw the only time ironclads were pitted against each other between the Battle of Lissa and the Battle of the Yalu River. The war helped formulate Captain Mahan's thoughts in "The Influence of Sea Power upon History". The land war was more or less ignored abroad, although it included some of the biggest battles ever fought on the continent, using all the latest technology, including breech loading rifles and cannons and machine guns. The armies on both sides initially lacked experience and training as well as modern equipment. The Bolivian Army started the war with 806 officers and only 1369 other ranks! In the end the Chileans won because of their more stable government, better financial situation and their control of the sea, due to their two superior ironclads. "From the Atacama to the Andes" tells the brutal struggle between two sides to control the wealth of the Atacama and for retention of Bolivia's coast. The result was that Chile gained the mineral resources of the "New North" and Bolivia became the second landlocked country on the continent, paving the way for the even more catastrophic Chaco War 50 years later.

In 1968, the Kerner Commission concluded that America was heading toward "two societies, one black, one white-separate and unequal." Today, America's communities are experiencing increasing racial tensions and inequality, working-class resentment over the unfulfilled American Dream, white supremacy violence, toxic inaction in Washington, and the decline of the nation's example around the world. In Healing Our Divided Society, Fred Harris, the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission, along with Eisenhower Foundation CEO Alan Curtis, re-examine fifty years later the work still necessary towards the goals set forth in The Kerner Report. This timely volume unites the interests of minorities and white working- and middle-class Americans to propose a strategy to reduce poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. Reflecting on America's urban climate today, this new report sets forth evidence-based policies concerning employment, education, housing, neighborhood development, and criminal justice based on what has been proven to work-and not work. Contributors include: Oscar Perry Abello, Elijah Anderson, Anil N.F. Aranha, Jared Bernstein, Henry G. Cisneros, Elliott Currie, Linda Darling-Hammond, Martha F. Davis, E. J. Dionne, Jr., Marian Wright Edelman, Delbert S. Elliott, Carol Emig, Jeff Faux, Ron Grzywinski, Michael P. Jeffries, Lamar K. Johnson, Celinda Lake, Marilyn Melkonian, Gary Orfield, Diane Ravitch, Laurie Robinson, Herbert C. Smitherman, Jr., Joseph Stiglitz, Dorothy Stoneman, Kevin Washburn, Valerie Wilson, Gary Younge, Julian E. Zelizer, and the editors