Books about Polarized from Amazon.com

A “timely and compelling” analysis of America’s bitterly divisive partisan politics (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

In recent years American politics has seemingly become much more partisan, more zero-sum, more vicious, and less able to confront the real problems our nation faces. What has happened?

In The Second Civil War, respected political commentator Ronald Brownstein diagnoses the electoral, demographic, and institutional forces that have wreaked such change over the American political landscape, pulling politics into the margins and leaving precious little common ground for compromise. The Second Civil War is not a book for Democrats or Republicans but for all Americans who are disturbed by our current political dysfunction and hungry for ways to understand it—and move beyond it..
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Twelve chapters present a wide range of theory and method. Case examples throughout. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or..
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The events of 9/11 and the ensuing conflicts in the Middle East have demonstrated how fundamentalist thinking, by all involved, can cause suffering on a global scale. In this careful study, Stephen Larsen examines the psychological roots of fundamentalism. Fundamentalist thinking occurs, says Larsen, when people read metaphors literally and being certain becomes more important than anything else. Larsen explains how our brains can be hardwired to believe this way. Any one of us can fall prey to inflexible, black-or-white thinking. Larsen provides a guide on how to recognize fundamentalist thinking in ourselves and in others so that we can curb negative tendencies and create a more compassionate and peaceful world, one person at a time..
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Analysts and pundits increasingly perceive a widening gulf between "red states" and "blue states." But, how deep do political divisions actually run in the United States? Are they truly wreaking havoc upon the social fabric? Has America become a house divided? This important new book, "Red and Blue Nation?", gets to the bottom of this perplexing issue..
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This collection of original essays, written by some of the most prominent scholars in the field, addresses how the recent rise in partisan politics within national institutions has affected congressional-presidential relations. In each of the chapters, contributors present original research that will enhance students' understanding of how partisanship affects politics at the national level.

Offering insights into the interaction of the presidential and congressional branches from their respective vantage points, the essays in this volume cover a range of subjects including presidential agenda-setting in Congress, lawmaking in a partisan era, and competition between presidents and their parties to define their public identities. Editors Bond and Fleisher have written introductory and concluding chapters as well as introductory headnotes for all other chapters..
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In 1970, Phillip Griffiths envisioned that points at infinity could be added to the classifying space D of polarized Hodge structures. In this book, Kazuya Kato and Sampei Usui realize this dream by creating a logarithmic Hodge theory. They use the logarithmic structures begun by Fontaine-Illusie to revive nilpotent orbits as a logarithmic Hodge structure.

The book focuses on two principal topics. First, Kato and Usui construct the fine moduli space of polarized logarithmic Hodge structures with additional structures. Even for a Hermitian symmetric domain D, the present theory is a refinement of the toroidal compactifications by Mumford et al. For general D, fine moduli spaces may have slits caused by Griffiths transversality at the boundary and be no longer locally compact. Second, Kato and Usui construct eight enlargements of D and describe their relations by a fundamental diagram, where four of these enlargements live in the Hodge theoretic area and the other four live in the algebra-group theoretic area. These two areas are connected by a continuous map given by the SL(2)-orbit theorem of Cattani-Kaplan-Schmid. This diagram is used for the construction in the first topic.

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America's political parties are sharply polarized these days—and some of this polarization extends well beyond the political class to large segments of the mass electorate. As the 2008 presidential race kicks into gear, the political climate certainly is not becoming less polarized. With important issues to address—such as immigration, health care, and funding of the Iraq war—it is critical that essential policies not be hostage to partisan political battles.

Building on the findings of the first volume of Red and Blue Nation? (Brookings, 2006), which explored the extent of political polarization and its potential causes, this new volume delves into the consequences of the gulf between "red states" and "blue states." The authors examine the impact of these political divisions on voter behavior, congressional lawmaking, judicial selection, and foreign policy formation. They shed light on hotly debated institutional reform proposals-including changes to the electoral system and the congressional rules of engagement-and ultimately present research-supported policies and reforms for alleviating the underlying causes of political polarization.

While most discussion of polarization takes place in separate spheres of journalism and academia, Red and Blue Nation? brings together a unique set of voices with a wide variety of perspectives to enrich our understanding of the issue. Written in a broad, accessible style, it is a resource for anyone concerned about the future of electoral politics in America.

Contributors: Joel D. Aberbach (University of California - Los Angeles), Peter Beinart (Council on Foreign Relations), Sarah A. Binder (Brookings Institution and George Washington University), Deborah Jordan Brooks (Dartmouth College), Andrea L. Campbell (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution), John Ferejohn (Hoover Institution), Christopher H. Foreman Jr. (Brookings Institution and University of Maryland), William A. Galston (Brookings Institution), John G. Geer (Vanderbilt University), Laurel Harbridge (Stanford University), Marc J. Hetherington (Vanderbilt University), Keith Krehbiel (Stanford University), Eric M. Patashnik (University of Virginia), Nelson W. Polsby (University of California - Berkeley), Jonathan Rauch (Brookings Institution and National Journal), Martin Shapiro (University of California - Berkeley), Barbara Sinclair (University of California - Los Angeles), Martin P. Wattenberg (University of California - Irvine), James Q. Wilson (Pepperdine University), and Benjamin Wittes (Brookings Institution).

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Informed and driven by his experience as an upper-middle-class African American who lives and works in a predominately white environment, provocative author Lawrence Otis Graham offers a unique perspective on the subject of race. An uncompromising work that will challenge the mindset of every reader, Member of the Club is a searching book of essays ranging from examining life as a black Princetonian and corporate lawyer to exploring life as a black busboy at an all white country-club. From New York magazine cover stories Invisible Man and Harlem on My Mind to such new essays as "I Never Dated a White Girl" and "My Dinner with Mister Charlie: A Black Man's Undercover Guide to Dining with Dignity at Ten Top New York Restaurants," Graham challenges racial prejudice among White Americans while demanding greater accountability and self-determination from his peers in black America.

"In Member of the Club. [Graham writes of] heartbreaking ironies and contradictions, indignities and betrayals in the life of an upper-class black man." --Philadelphia Inquirer

"Lawrence Graham Surely knows about the pressures of being beholden to two very different groups." --Los Angeles Times

Lawrence Otis Graham is a popular commentator on race and ethnicity. The author of ten other books, his work has appeared in New York magazine, the New York Times and The Best American Essays..
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