More than any other public figure, VOclav Havel has reflected on the opportunities and dilemmas facing humankind as a result of the Communism's collapse. His life serves as an example of responsible and moral action, even at the cost of much personal suffering. In the first book to bring together Havel's life and work, James Pontuso examines the Czech president's political philosophy. Pontuso argues that Havel's life as a dissident and political leader, his political writings, and his plays are part of a whole and must be understood as intimately connected to one another. In this engaging work, Pontuso skillfully explores these connections and explains Havel's prescriptions for political life.

Casablanca is a movie about love and loss, virtue and vice, good and evil, duty and treachery, courage and weakness, friendship and hate. It is a story that ends well, but only because the main characters make a heartbreaking choice. Casablanca is perhaps the most widely viewed motion picture ever made, often finishing on critics' lists second only to Citizen Kane. What accounts for its continuing popularity? What chord does it strike with audiences? What lesson does Casablanca teach Americans about themselves? What influence does popular culture have on public mores? The contributors to Political Philosophy Comes to Rick's take up these questions, finding that Casablanca raises many of the most important issues of political philosophy. Perhaps Casablanca has an enduring quality because it, like political philosophy, raises questions of human life - the nature of love, friendship, courage, honor, responsibility, and justice.

Casablanca is a movie about love and loss, virtue and vice, good and evil, duty and treachery, courage and weakness, friendship and hate. It is a story that ends well, but only because the main characters make a heartbreaking choice. Casablanca is perhaps the most widely viewed motion picture ever made, often finishing on critics' lists second only to Citizen Kane. What accounts for its continuing popularity? What chord does it strike with audiences? What lesson does Casablanca teach Americans about themselves? What influence does popular culture have on public mores? The contributors to Political Philosophy Comes to Rick's take up these questions, finding that Casablanca raises many of the most important issues of political philosophy. Perhaps Casablanca has an enduring quality because it, like political philosophy, raises questions of human life - the nature of love, friendship, courage, honor, responsibility, and justice.

In The Deconstitutionalization of America: The Forgotten Frailties of Democratic Rule, Roger M. Barrus and his coauthors embark on a discussion of American democracy from the nineteenth century to the present day. The present paradox democracy finds itself in can be summed up as "the best of times and the worst of times." Democracy, at its best, has triumphed throughout the world. It is the authors contention that this same success represents the potential for its undoing: with all governments claiming to be democratic, modern democrats-and this includes just about everyone-find it difficult if not impossible to understand the nature and problems of democracy. Since most everyone lives within a democratic horizon, they have nothing to compare democracy to and no one to point out its faults. In this way, they are hampered in dealing with their social and political problems, some of which may be the result of contradictions inherent in the democratic principle itself. The solution to democracy's ills might not be, after all, more democracy.

In The Deconstitutionalization of America: The Forgotten Frailties of Democratic Rule, Roger M. Barrus and his coauthors embark on a discussion of American democracy from the nineteenth century to the present day. The present paradox democracy finds itself in can be summed up as 'the best of times and the worst of times.' Democracy, at its best, has triumphed throughout the world. It is the authors contention that this same success represents the potential for its undoing: with all governments claiming to be democratic, modern democrats-and this includes just about everyone-find it difficult if not impossible to understand the nature and problems of democracy. Since most everyone lives within a democratic horizon, they have nothing to compare democracy to and no one to point out its faults. In this way, they are hampered in dealing with their social and political problems, some of which may be the result of contradictions inherent in the democratic principle itself. The solution to democracy's ills might not be, after all, more democracy.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is almost a forgotten man, a relic of the Cold War, like some broken and discarded bit of the Berlin Wall. He is also one of the most important writers of the 20th century, and has had more direct influence on politics than any author since Jean Jacques Rousseau. At a critical time after America's loss in Vietnam, Solzhenitsyn stood as a towering moral force against a policy of appeasement towards an evil adversary. In this new edition of Assault on Ideology: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Political Thought author James F. Pontuso showcases the titanic thought that understood Marxism to be a vain and ultimately merciless effort to fulfill the Enlightenment dream of fully conquering and exploiting nature in order to establish a perfect and just society on earth. Solzhenitsyn's claim was that Lenin, Stalin, and the Russian people applied Marx's principles to the letter yielding horrific results. Pontuso traces the causes of the horrific events of the Great Terror beginning with Stalin's megalomania, back through the cruel precedents laid down by Lenin, to the ideology established by Marx, and ultimately to the philosophy begun in the Enlightenment.