Author: B. Dan Wood File Type: pdf This book develops a general explanation for party polarization in America from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Prior polarization studies focused exclusively on the modern era, but this work traces party polarization from the constitutional convention of 1787 to the present. Using such a broad historical perspective shows that what was unusual in American history was the period of low polarization from the Great Depression through 1980, rather than the period of high polarization of the modern era. Polarization is the norm of the American system, not the exception, and is likely to persist in the future. More theoretically, party polarization in America has been due to class-based conflict and rent-seeking by the patrician and plebian classes in various historical eras, rather than conflict over cultural values. As in earlier historical eras, modern party polarization has largely been elite-driven, with party entrepreneurs cunningly and strategically using polarization to their advantage. **Book Description This book is for students of party polarization in America. Prior studies focused exclusively on the present, but this study traces party polarization through historical analysis from 1787 to the present. It shows polarization is the norm, not the exception, and is rooted in class-based conflict characterizing all of American history. About the Author B. Dan Woods other books include Presidential Saber Rattling (Cambridge, 2012), The Myth of Presidential Representation (Cambridge, 2009, and recipient of the 2010 Richard Neustadt Award), The Politics of Economic Leadership (2007), and Bureaucratic Dynamics The Role of Bureaucracy in a Democracy (1994). He is a widely cited author of many articles in leading political science journals. Wood has also taught statistical methods at the Essex Summer School, Colchester, the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan, and the European Consortium for Political Research, Vienna, Austria. Soren Jordan is an Assistant Professor at Auburn University. His research focuses on lawmaking in Congress, especially how lawmaking strategies have evolved over time as a result of the polarization between the two political parties. His work has appeared in Social Science Quarterly, Research and Politics, and The Forum. He is also the author (with Kim Quaile Hill and Patricia A. Hurley) of Representation in Congress A Unified Theory (Cambridge, 2015). Prior to coming to Auburn in 2016, he was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University after earning his Ph.D. there in 2015.

Author: Adam Phillips File Type: epub Kindness is the foundation of the worlds great religions and most-enduring philosophies. Why, then, does being kind feel so dangerous? If we crave kindness with such intensity, why is it a pleasure we often deny ourselves? And whydespite our longingare we often suspicious when we are on the receiving end of it?In this brilliant book, the eminent psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and the historian Barbara Taylor examine the pleasures and perils of kindness. Modern people have been taught to perceive ourselves as fundamentally antagonistic to one another, our motives self-seeking. Drawing on intellectual history, literature, psychoanalysis, and contemporary social theory, this book explains how and why we have chosen loneliness over connection. On Kindness argues that a life lived in instinctive, sympathetic identification with others is the one we should allow ourselves to live.Bursting with often shocking insight, this brief and essential book will return to its readers what Marcus Aurelius declared was mankinds greatest delight the intense satisfactions of generosity and compassion.