Author: Chris Edelson File Type: pdf As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama criticized the George W. Bush administration for its unrestrained actions in matters of national security. Yet President Obama has not fulfilled candidate Obamas promise to restore the rule of law and make a clean break with his predecessor. In Power without Constraint Chris Edelson offers a thorough, extensive comparison of the Bush and Obama administrations national security policies, arguing that both have asserted more executive authority than previous presidents. He examines once-secret Justice Department memos in which President Bushs officials claimed for the executive branch plenary unilateral authority to use military force in response to threats of terrorism, as well as the power to set aside laws made by Congress, even criminal laws prohibiting torture and warrantless surveillance. He acknowledges that President Obama and his officials have not claimed the authority to set aside criminal laws, relying on softer rhetoric and toned-down legal arguments to advance their policies. But, in key areasmilitary action, surveillance, and state secretsthey have simply found new ways to assert power without meaningful constitutional or statutory constraints. Edelson contends that this legacy of the two immediately post-911 presidencies raises crucial questions for future presidents, Congress, the courts, and American citizens. Where is the political will to restore a balance of powers among branches of government and adherence to the rule of law? What are the limits of authority regarding presidential national security power? Have national security concerns created a permanent shift to unconstrained presidential power? **Review A clear and powerfully argued direct comparison of the policies and rhetoric of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, demonstrating that they are more alike than different in their approaches to combating terrorism.Michael A. Genovese, author of The Power of the American Presidency Jameel Jaffer,deputy legal director, American Civil Liberties Union An ambitious, impressive historical and constitutional analysis of national security power in the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Mitchel A. Sollenberger,coauthor of The Presidents Czars Edelson underscores the damage done to constitutional government by presidential initiatives. Scholars often define presidential power broadly without paying attention to basic principles of law and self-government. To his credit, Edelson keeps those fundamental values in clear focus. Louis Fisher,the Constitution Project A comprehensive, accessible study of presidential power in the twenty-first century. Edelson demonstrates why scholars of constitutional development must include all three branches, both political parties, and institutional sources. Rigorous and compelling. Jasmine Farrier,University of Louisville A must-read for lovers of liberty and the rule of law, and for anyone else who is serious about understanding the dire reality the Republic is confronting because of executive prerogative. Congress & the Presidency About the Author Chris Edelson is assistant professor of government in the School of Public Affairs and a fellow with the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, both at American University. He is the author of Emergency Presidential Power From the Drafting of the Constitution to the War on Terror, which was awarded the Crader Family Book Prize in American Values.

Author: Sari Edelstein File Type: pdf While the field of childhood studies has blossomed in recent years, few scholars have taken up the question of age more broadly as a lens for reading American literature. Adulthood and Other Fictions shows how a diverse array of nineteenth-century writers, thinkers, and artists responded to the rise of chronological age in social and political life. Over the course of the century, age was added to the census schools were organized around age groups birthday cards were mass-produced geriatrics became a medical specialty. Adulthood and Other Fictions reads American literature as a rich, critical account of this modern culture of age, and it examines how our most well-known writers registeredand often resistedage expectations, particularly as they applied to women and people of color. More than simply adding age to the list of identity categories that have become de rigeur sites of scholarly attention, Adulthood and Other Fictions argues that these other measures of social location (race, gender, sexuality, class) are largely legible through the seemingly more natural and essential identity defined by age. That is, longstanding cultural ideals about maturity and development anchor ideologies of heterosexuality, race, nationalism, and capitalism, and in this sense, age rhetoric serves as one of our most pervasive disciplinary discourses. Writers including Louisa May Alcott, Frederick Douglass, and Henry James anticipated the ageism of our moment, but they also recognized how age norms both structure and limit the lives of individuals at all points on the age continuum. Ultimately, the volume argues for an intersectional understanding of age that challenges the celebration of independence and autonomy imbricated in US fantasies of adulthood and in American identity itself. **About the Author Sari Edelstein, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston Sari Edelstein teaches in the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the author of Between the Novel and the News The Emergence of American Womens Writing (2014), and her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous academic journals, including American Literature, Legacy, ESQ, and Studies in American Fiction.