In The Post-Liberal Imagination , Bruce Baum approaches American liberalism 'in a critical spirit' by examining the relationship between popular culture and politics. The book analyzes movies, television, and popular music to rethink the liberal views of democracy, equality, racism, dissent, and animal rights in the Bush-Obama era.

Since his death in 1997, Isaiah Berlin's writings have generated continual interest among scholars and educated readers, especially in regard to his ideas about liberalism, value pluralism, and "positive" and "negative" liberty. Most books on Berlin have examined his general political theory, but this volume uses a contemporary perspective to focus specifically on his ideas about freedom and liberty. Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom brings together an integrated collection of essays by noted and emerging political theorists that commemorate in a critical spirit the recent 50th anniversary of Isaiah Berlin's famous lecture and essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty." The contributors use Berlin's essay as an occasion to rethink the larger politics of freedom from a twenty-first century standpoint, bringing Berlin's ideas into conversation with current political problems and perspectives rooted in postcolonial theory, feminist theory, democratic theory, and critical social theory. The editors begin by surveying the influence of Berlin's essay and the range of debates about freedom that it has inspired. Contributors' chapters then offer various analyses such as competing ways to contextualize Berlin's essay, how to reconsider Berlin's ideas in light of struggles over national self-determination, European colonialism, and racism, and how to view Berlin's controversial distinction between so-called "negative liberty" and "positive liberty." By relating Berlin's thinking about freedom to competing contemporary views of the politics of freedom, this book will be significant for both scholars of Berlin as well as people who are interested in larger debates about the meaning and conditions of freedom.

Since his death in 1997, Isaiah Berlin's writings have generated continual interest among scholars and educated readers, especially in regard to his ideas about liberalism, value pluralism, and "positive" and "negative" liberty. Most books on Berlin have examined his general political theory, but this volume uses a contemporary perspective to focus specifically on his ideas about freedom and liberty. Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom brings together an integrated collection of essays by noted and emerging political theorists that commemorate in a critical spirit the recent 50th anniversary of Isaiah Berlin's famous lecture and essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty." The contributors use Berlin's essay as an occasion to rethink the larger politics of freedom from a twenty-first century standpoint, bringing Berlin's ideas into conversation with current political problems and perspectives rooted in postcolonial theory, feminist theory, democratic theory, and critical social theory. The editors begin by surveying the influence of Berlin's essay and the range of debates about freedom that it has inspired. Contributors' chapters then offer various analyses such as competing ways to contextualize Berlin's essay, how to reconsider Berlin's ideas in light of struggles over national self-determination, European colonialism, and racism, and how to view Berlin's controversial distinction between so-called "negative liberty" and "positive liberty." By relating Berlin's thinking about freedom to competing contemporary views of the politics of freedom, this book will be significant for both scholars of Berlin as well as people who are interested in larger debates about the meaning and conditions of freedom.

The term "Caucasian" is a curious invention of the modern age. Originating in 1795, the word identifies both the peoples of the Caucasus Mountains region as well as those thought to be "Caucasian." Bruce Baum explores the history of the term and the category of the "Caucasian race" more broadly in the light of the changing politics of racial theory and notions of racial identity. With a comprehensive sweep that encompasses the understanding of "race" even before the use of the term "Caucasian," Baum traces the major trends in scientific and intellectual understandings of "race" from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Baum's conclusions make an unprecedented attempt to separate modern science and politics from a long history of racial classification. He offers significant insights into our understanding of race and how the "Caucasian race" has been authoritatively invented, embraced, displaced, and recovered throughout our history.

I want my ears back What's next, my nose? When you call someone and they put you "on hold," they are in control of you. Maybe it's because I was raised in "the land of the free" that this irks everything irkable in me. Would you allow a clerk in a store to grab you by the ears as soon as you walked in and hold you in place until they were ready to talk to you? While they talked to someone else? At the very least, that might be temporary involuntary imprisonment, or some kind of mild kidnapping. I think you could almost go to jail for that. Why then, do we allow, indeed, make it legal, on the phone? As angry as I got, I couldn't continue yelling at innocent furniture while I was "on hold." I'm sure it's bad for me, and it can't be good for my furniture. In an effort to turn my aggravating conundrum into something possibly positive, I conducted, and funded with loose change, an independent experimental stress- release study. When I was put "on hold," I would write. Whatever came to mind. Just let my head roam range-free. Short stories that I might come back to, quick thoughts, poems, blurps, ideas, frustrations -- whatever popped into my head was in-bounds. My phone and my computer would become my laboratory. My pants would remain my pants. Therefore, this book is a diary, if you will, of my time spent "on hold" during Phase One of my amateur mental-health experiment, designed to turn frustrating hostility into an unfettered, rumpled voice. A little taste of ON HOLD: It was 892 and everyone was playing "Smack The Lout" invented by Dylan Puddler. "Tag, Your It" was his. So was "Ring Around The Rosey." His unsuccessful efforts include "Lick the Oaf and Make Him Cry," Hide The Fish" and "No, You Kiss It."

The term "Caucasian" is a curious invention of the modern age. Originating in 1795, the word identifies both the peoples of the Caucasus Mountains region as well as those thought to be "Caucasian." Bruce Baum explores the history of the term and the category of the "Caucasian race" more broadly in the light of the changing politics of racial theory and notions of racial identity. With a comprehensive sweep that encompasses the understanding of "race" even before the use of the term "Caucasian," Baum traces the major trends in scientific and intellectual understandings of "race" from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Baum's conclusions make an unprecedented attempt to separate modern science and politics from a long history of racial classification. He offers significant insights into our understanding of race and how the "Caucasian race" has been authoritatively invented, embraced, displaced, and recovered throughout our history.

"Racially Writing the Republic "investigates the central role of race in the construction and transformation of American national identity from the Revolutionary War era to the height of the civil rights movement. Drawing on political theory, American studies, critical race theory, and gender studies, the contributors to this collection highlight the assumptions of white (and often male) supremacy underlying the thought and actions of major U.S. political and social leaders. At the same time, they examine how nonwhite writers and activists have struggled against racism and for the full realization of America's political ideals. The essays are arranged chronologically by subject, and, with one exception, each essay is focused on a single figure, from George Washington to James Baldwin.

The contributors analyze Thomas Jefferson's legacy in light of his sexual relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings; the way that Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, rallied his organization against Chinese immigrant workers; and the eugenicist origins of the early-twentieth-century birth-control movement led by Margaret Sanger. They draw attention to the writing of Sarah Winnemucca, a Northern Piute and one of the first published Native American authors; the anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett; the Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan; and the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who linked civil rights struggles in the United States to anticolonial efforts abroad. Other figures considered include Alexis de Tocqueville and his traveling companion Gustave de Beaumont, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina (who fought against Anglo American expansion in what is now Texas), Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and W. E. B. Du Bois. In the afterword, George Lipsitz reflects on U.S. racial politics since 1965.

"Contributors." Bruce Baum, Cari M. Carpenter, Gary Gerstle, Duchess Harris, Catherine A. Holland, Allan Punzalan Isaac, Laura Janara, Ben Keppel, George Lipsitz, Gwendolyn Mink, Joel Olson, Dorothy Roberts, Patricia A. Schechter, John Kuo Wei Tchen, Jerry Thompson