The year 1964 produced a watershed in American race relations. In one of the civil rights movement's most dramatic initiatives, thousands of Northern white college students were recruited to come south that summer in an effort to "break" Mississippi and secure voting rights for its black citizens. Nicolaus Mills traces the history of this Summer Project, including its origins and aftermath, and shows in detail how its consequences involved not only great victories but also violence (the murders of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, among other events) and disillusion. His persuasive argument is that the noble quest for racial solidarity turned bitter and divisive in practice, climaxed by the Democratic party's rejection of the Mississippi Freedom Democrats at the 1964 national convention. In the rush of black anger that followed, the gains of the summer were forgotten and Black Power was born-and blacks went their separate way in trying to achieve equality in America. Relations between whites and blacks took a crucial turning which continues powerfully to influence our politics and social well-being today.

As the Reagan administration began, Nancy Reagan chose new china for the White House-at a cost of $209,508. The pattern for the decade was struck. As the Reagans made wealth seem glamorous, what followed was a culture dominated by a belief in the "magic of the marketplace." Money words became the key language for the eighties, and they signaled a culture with an insatiable need to proclaim its triumphs. In the wake of the Reagan years, fifteen brilliant essayists survey the kind of culture created by Reagan politics and Reagan ideology. From architecture to the yuppie ascendancy, including politics, film, art, literature, finance, fashion, religion, and civil rights, eighties' culture is explored with telling analysis and penetrating wit. When most of these essays first appeared in Dissent magazine, the Village Voice called them a "must read." We are not likely to get a sharper appraisal of our contemporary culture than this. The contributors are William Adams, Laura Bergheim, Mark Caldwell, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Todd Gitlin, Josephine Hendin, Hendrik Hertzberg, Irving Howe, Ross Miller, Nicolaus Mills, Robert Reich, Herman Schwartz, Debora Silverman, Alessandra Stanley, and Sean Wilentz.

Praise for "Winning The Peace"

"Nicolaus Mills's fascinating book at once challenges the conventional wisdom about the success of the Marshall Plan and argues that the plan succeeded anyway. I can't imagine a more timely reflection on how the United States once reinforced democracy abroad without losing the world's respect--and its own political soul."
--Sean Wilentz, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University and author of "The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln"

"By illuminating the past, Nicolaus Mills's eloquent history of the Marshall Plan also informs thepresent. Marshall's genius was to understand that the power of America's example is as important as the example of its power. As we grapple with new global challenges--from radical fundamentalists to the spread of lethal weapons and from economic dislocation to environmental degradation--Mills's study of Marshall reminds us how urgent it is that we recapture the totality of America's strength."
--Senator Joseph Biden, Chairman, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee

"Nicolaus Mills has a double purpose in this splendid book. First, he gives us a lively and accessible account of the conception and implementation of the Marshall Plan and a probing analysis of its effectiveness.That is his historical project; he also has a political project of great importance--to remind us of what America can do in the world when its leaders are committed to speak honestly to their own people, to consult with allies abroad (and listen to what they say), and to adapt policy to the circumstances of the 'real world.' "
--Michael Walzer, author of "Just and Unjust Wars"

""In Winning the Peace,"Nicolaus Mills has not only given the reader a clear account of the Marshall Plan--and why it worked--but also a moving and timely reminder of just what a great and selfless American George C. Marshall was. It is an important and very readable work of history."
--Michael Korda, author of "Ulysses S. Grant and Ike"

"Of all the ambitious undertakings in American foreign policy, the Marshall Plan particularly merits a fresh look, with an eye both to its historical significance and to its lessons for today's world--and tomorrow's U.S. leaders. Nicolaus Mills has given the plan and the man for whom it is named just that. He has done so with admirable clarity, concision, and persuasiveness."
--Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution and author of "The Great Experiment"

"Popularly perceived by Americans, the 'Marshall Plan' was simply a welfare program. In reality, it was a nation-building effort aimed at nothing less than the reorganization of European capitalism. Nick Mills's masterful synthesis has captured, in an amazingly brief and accessible treatment, the extreme complexity of the interaction of the seventeen sovereign and competitive nations formally linked by the European Recovery Program."
--Dr. Larry I. Bland, Senior Director, George C. Marshall Foundation

Eventually every conqueror, every imperial power, every occupying army gets out. Why do they decide to leave? And how do political and military leaders manage withdrawal? Do they take with them those who might be at risk if left behind? What are the immediate consequences of departure? For Michael Walzer and Nicolaus Mills, now is the time to ask those questions about exiting--and to worry specifically about the difficulties certain to arise as we leave--Iraq."Getting Out" approaches these issues in two sections. The first, entitled "Lessons Learned," examines seven historical cases of how and how not to withdraw: Britain's departure from the American colonies and from India, the French withdrawal from Algeria, Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, and the U.S. decision to leave (or not leave) the Philippines, Korea, and Vietnam. These cases offer a comparative perspective and an opportunity to learn from the history of political and military retreats.The second section, "Exiting Iraq," begins with an introduction to just how the United States got into Iraq and continues with an examination of how the U.S. might leave from a diversity of voices, ranging from those who believe that the Iraq war has produced no real good to those who hope for a decent ending. In addition to essays by volume editors Walzer and Mills, "Getting Out" features contributions by Shlomo Avineri, Rajeev Bhargava, David Bromwich, Frances FitzGerald, Stanley Karnow, Brendan O'Leary, George Packer, Todd Shepard, Fred Smoler, and Stanley Weintraub.

The question of the responsibility inherent in the unrivaled might of the U.S. military is one that continues to take up headlines across the globe. This award-winning group of reporters and scholars, including, among others, David Rieff, Peter Maass, Philip Gourevitch, William Shawcross, George Packer, Bill Berkeley and Samantha Power revisit four of the worst instances of state-sponsored killing--Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and East Timor--in the last half of the twentieth century in order to reconsider the success and failure of U.S. and U.N. military and humanitarian intervention.Featuring original essays and reporting, "The New Killing Fields" poses vital questions about the future of peacekeeping in the next century. In addition, theoretical essays by Michael Walzer and Michael Ignatieff frame the issue of intervention in terms of today's post-cold war reality and the future of human rights.

This remarkakble collection of writings provides a wide diversity of answers to one of today's most emotionally charged questions. Spanning the whole political spectrum and covering issues from jobs and the economy to race and culture, it includes the strong opinions of writers and critics from Toni Morrison to Francis Fukuyama.

Dissent was founded in 1954 by intellectuals angered by the rightward drift of the country but uneasy with the dogmatism they saw on the American left, and it has provoked debates about political ideas and about American and global issues ever since.
This provocative book--a collection of articles published in Dissent over the past fifty years--presents essays from each decade of Dissent's life that reveal how the magazine viewed that era, along with a new foreword to each section written by a contemporary Dissenter that provides perspective on the period.
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"I find these essays impressive not only in their quality but also in their surprising relevance to political life today."--Robert Dahl, author of "How Democratic Is the American Constitution?