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American National Identity, Policy Paradigms, and Higher Education: A History of the Relationship between Higher Education and the United States, 1862–2015
by Allison L. PalmadessaThis volume examines the role of higher education in producing and reproducing American cultural identity from 1862 to 2015 and considers whether changes in federal policy regarding higher education result in paradigm shifts that directly impact the purpose of higher education. American institutions of higher education have served as a beacon of American idealism and identity since the foundation of the earliest universities. As the nation developed, higher education matured and maintained a position of importance in the future of the nation. While the university has perpetuated American national cultural identity, the nation-state has resourced and legitimated the university, inextricably linking national identity and higher education. In this historical analysis, the relationship between national identity, federal legislation, and higher education is established, and an identity of superiority, defined in economic terms, reinforced by higher education, is revealed.
American National Identity: Language Patterns and Myths Across the Centuries
by Anna Islentyeva Igor TolochinThis book offers an analytical tool for identifying and analysing the linguistic mechanisms that shape American national identity in public discourses. Drawing on methods from (critical) discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, the authors provide insights into various levels of discourse structures, consider the social and political climate of the US at different stages of its history, trace the diachronic development of the linguistic patterns that shape the American national identity, and conduct a thorough discursive analysis of seminal texts such as The Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the US Constitution. This book defines the key linguistic markers of the American national identity and provides an insight into how these markers are used to promote various ideologies in the pluralistic world of the contemporary USA. This monograph will be of interest to students and scholars working in fields such as Applied Linguistics, (Critical) Discourse Studies, Cultural Studies, US History and Politics.
American National Security
by Michael J. Meese Suzanne C. Nielsen Rachel M. SondheimerThis classic text provides a rich and nuanced discussion of American national security policymaking.American National Security remains the ideal foundational text for courses in national security, foreign policy, and security studies. Every chapter in this edition has been extensively revised, and the book includes discussion of recent security policy changes in the Trump administration. Highlights include:• An updated look at national security threats, military operations, and homeland security challenges • An analysis of the evolving roles of the president, Congress, the intelligence community, the military, and other institutions involved in national security• A revised consideration of the strengths, limitations, and employment of instruments of national power, including diplomacy, information, economic tools, and armed forces• An exploration of the economic and national security implications of globalization• An enhanced examination of the proliferation of transnational threats, including security challenges in space and in cyberspace• A new assessment of how international, political, and economic trends may change US leadership of the post–World War II international order• A comprehensive update on changing dynamics in key states and regions, including Russia, China, East Asia, the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin AmericaAn authoritative book that explains US national security policy, actors, and processes in a wide-ranging yet understandable way, American National Security addresses key issues, including challenges to the free and open international order, the reemergence of strategic competition among great powers, terrorism, economic and fiscal constraints, and rapid advances in information and technology.
American Nationalisms
by Benjamin E. ParkAmerica was born in an age of political revolution throughout the Atlantic world, a period when the very definition of 'nation' was transforming. Benjamin E. Park traces how Americans imagined novel forms of nationality during the country's first five decades within the context of European discussions taking place at the same time. Focusing on three case studies - Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina - Park examines the developing practices of nationalism in three specific contexts. He argues for a more elastic connection between nationalism and the nation-state by demonstrating that ideas concerning political and cultural allegiance to a federal body developed in different ways and at different rates throughout the nation. American Nationalisms explores how ideas of nationality permeated political disputes, religious revivals, patriotic festivals, slavery debates, and even literature.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
by Colin WoodardAn illuminating history of North America's eleven rival cultural regions that explodes the red state-blue state myth.North America was settled by people with distinct religious, political, and ethnographic characteristics, creating regional cultures that have been at odds with one another ever since. Subsequent immigrants didn't confront or assimilate into an "American" or "Canadian" culture, but rather into one of the eleven distinct regional ones that spread over the continent each staking out mutually exclusive territory.In American Nations, Colin Woodard leads us on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, and the rivalries and alliances between its component nations, which conform to neither state nor international boundaries. He illustrates and explains why "American" values vary sharply from one region to another. Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how intranational differences have played a pivotal role at every point in the continent's history, from the American Revolution and the Civil War to the tumultuous sixties and the "blue county/red county" maps of recent presidential elections. American Nations is a revolutionary and revelatory take on America's myriad identities and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and are molding our future.From the Hardcover edition.
American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850 to the Present
by Frederick E. HoxieThis volume brings together an impressive collection of important works covering nearly every aspect of early Native American history, from contact and exchange to diplomacy, religion, warfare, and disease.
American Naturalism and the Jews: Garland, Norris, Dreiser, Wharton, and Cather
by Donald PizerAmerican Naturalism and the Jews examines the unabashed anti-Semitism of five notable American naturalist novelists otherwise known for their progressive social values. Hamlin Garland, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser all pushed for social improvements for the poor and oppressed, while Edith Wharton and Willa Cather both advanced the public status of women. But they all also expressed strong prejudices against the Jewish race and faith throughout their fiction, essays, letters, and other writings, producing a contradiction in American literary history that has stymied scholars and, until now, gone largely unexamined. In this breakthrough study, Donald Pizer confronts this disconcerting strain of anti-Semitism pervading American letters and culture, illustrating how easily prejudice can coexist with even the most progressive ideals. Pizer shows how these writers' racist impulses represented more than just personal biases, but resonated with larger social and ideological movements within American culture. Anti-Semitic sentiment motivated such various movements as the western farmers' populist revolt and the East Coast patricians' revulsion against immigration, both of which Pizer discusses here. This antagonism toward Jews and other non-Anglo-Saxon ethnicities intersected not only with these authors' social reform agendas but also with their literary method of representing the overpowering forces of heredity, social or natural environment, and savage instinct.
American Negotiating Behavior: Wheeler-Dealers, Legal Eagles, Bullies, and Preachers
by Madeleine Albright Condoleezza Rice Richard H. Solomon Nigel QuinneyThis landmark study offers a rich and detailed portrait of the negotiating practices of American officials. It assesses the multiple influences cultural, institutional, historical, and political that shape how American policymakers and diplomats approach negotiations with foreign counterparts and highlights behavioral patterns that transcend the actions of individual negotiators and administrations. <P><P>Informed by discussions and interviews with more than fifty seasoned foreign and American negotiators, Richard H. Solomon and Nigel Quinney argue that four distinctive mind-sets have combined to shape U.S. negotiating practice: a businessperson s pragmatic quest for concrete results, a lawyer s attention to detail, a superpower s inclination to dictate terms, and a moralizer s sense of mission. The authors examine how Americans employ time, language, enticements, and pressure tactics at the negotiating table, and how they use (or neglect) the media, back channel communications, and hospitality outside the formal negotiating arena. They also explore the intense interagency rivalries and congressional second-guessing that limit U.S. negotiators freedom to maneuver.A chapter by the eminent historian Robert Schulzinger charts the evolving relationship between U.S. presidents and their negotiators, and the volume presents a set of eight remarkably candid foreign perspectives on particular aspects of American negotiating behavior. These chapters are written by a distinguished cast of ambassadors and foreign ministers, some from countries allied to the United States, others from rivals or adversaries and all with illuminating stories to tell.In the concluding chapter, Solomon and Quinney propose a variety of measures to enhance America s negotiating capacities to deal with the new and emerging challenges to effective diplomacy in the 21st century. <P><P>Contributors: Gilles Andreani Chan Heng Chee David Hannay Faruk Logoglu Lalit Mansingh Yuri Nazarkin Robert Schulzinger Koji Watanabe John Wood"
American Negra: A Memoir
by Natasha S. AlfordAward-winning journalist Natasha S. Alford grew up between two worlds as the daughter of an African American father and Puerto Rican mother. In American Negra, a narrative that is part memoir, part cultural analysis, Alford reflects on growing up in a working-class family from the city of Syracuse, NY.In smart, vivid prose, Alford illustrates the complexity of being multiethnic in Upstate New York and society’s flawed teachings about matters of identity. When she travels to Puerto Rico for the first time, she is the darkest in her family, and navigates shame for not speaking Spanish fluently. She visits African-American hair salons where she’s told that she has “good” hair, while internalizing images that as a Latina she has "bad” hair or pelo malo.When Alford goes from an underfunded public school system to Harvard University surrounded by privilege and pedigree, she wrestles with more than her own ethnic identity, as she is faced with imposter syndrome, a shocking medical diagnosis, and a struggle to define success on her own terms. A study abroad trip to the Dominican Republic changes her perspective on Afro-Latinidad and sets her on a path to better understand her own Latin roots.Alford then embarks on a whirlwind journey to find her authentic voice, taking her across the United States from a hedge fund boardroom to a classroom and ultimately a newsroom, as a journalist. A coming-of-age story about what it's like to live at the intersections of race, culture, gender, and class, all while staying true to yourself, American Negra is a captivating look at one woman’s experience being Negra in the United States. As the movement to highlight Afro-Latin identity and overlooked histories of the African diaspora grows, American Negra illustrates the diversity of the Black experience in the larger fabric of American society.
American Negro Folktales
by Richard M. DorsonA preacher battles a bear, a mother returns from the dead, and a clever servant conducts a Big Feet Contest in this rich anthology of African-American folklore. Scores of humorous and harrowing stories, collected during the mid-twentieth century, tell of talking animals, ghosts, devils, and saints.The first part of the book provides a setting for the fables, in which folklorist Richard M. Dorson discusses their origins and the artistry of storytellers. The second part consists of the tales, which include the adventures of Old Marster and John, supernatural episodes, and comical and satirical anecdotes as well as more realistic accounts of racial injustice. Recounted in the actual words of the narrators, the folktales abound in bold language, memorable imagery, and bittersweet humor that reflect the essence of African-American storytelling traditions.
American Negro Slave Revolts
by Herbert ApthekerYears ago, the controlling view held that the response of the slaves in the United States to their bondage "was one of passivity and docility". That opinion, so decisive a part of the chauvinism afflicting the nation, is shown to be false in this book and in the material accumulated since its initial appearance has further substantiated this thesis; namely, that the African-American people, in slavery, forged a record of discontent and of resistance comparable to that marking the history of any other oppressed people.
American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime
by Ulrich Bonnell PhillipsOriginally published in 1918, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips?s American Negro Slavery was widely hailed upon publication as the most comprehensive and accurate examination of enslaved Africans in the South by an academic historian. In the 1950s, however, a new generation of historians?led by Kenneth Stamp?challenged many of Phillips?s inaccurate and racist views about slavery. While many historians today acknowledge that American Negro Slavery is a pioneering work, most agree that Phillips?s misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and overt racism profoundly diminish his conclusions. This 1966 edition includes a foreword by Eugene D. Genovese, author of numerous academic works on slavery, including the Bancroft Prize-winning Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974).
American Negro Songs: 230 Folk Songs and Spirituals, Religious and Secular
by John W. WorkFrom joyous gospel to deeply felt blues, this wonderful collection contains vintage songs sung and played through the years by black Americans — at work, in church, and for pure entertainment. Included are spirituals, blues, work songs, and a variety of social and dance songs.This important volume was originally compiled in 1940 by Dr. John W. Work, the noted musicologist affiliated with Fisk University and the celebrated Fisk Jubilee Singers. In it, he discusses the origins and history of black American folk music, the influence of slavery and African cultures, and the lyric significance of such much-loved songs as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," Steal Away to Jesus," "Lord, I Want to Be a Christian," and "John Henry." These informative notes lead up to the heart of the book: the complete words and music for 230 religious and secular songs, including "Study War No More," "Keep Me from Sinking Down," "You May Bury Me in the East," "Rock of Ages," "Go Tell It on the Mountain," and many others.This is an indispensable treasury of music for singers, musicians and all readers seeking a comprehensive sourcebook of black American folk music. It will be equally welcomed at parties, family get-togethers, sing-alongs, church events, and other gatherings where people want to play and sing these classic folk songs that are an integral part of American musical history.
American Nerd: The Story of My People
by Benjamin NugentMost people know a nerd when they see one but can't define just what a nerd is. American Nerd: The Story of My People gives us the history of the concept of nerdiness and of the subcultures we consider nerdy. What makes Dr. Frankenstein the archetypal nerd? Where did the modern jock come from? When and how did being a self-described nerd become trendy? As the nerd emerged, vaguely formed, in the nineteenth century, and popped up again and again in college humor journals and sketch comedy, our culture obsessed over the designation. Mixing research and reportage with autobiography, critically acclaimed writer Benjamin Nugent embarks on a fact-finding mission of the most entertaining variety. He seeks the best definition of nerd and illuminates the common ground between nerd subcultures that might seem unrelated: high-school debate team kids and ham radio enthusiasts, medieval reenactors and pro-circuit Halo players. Why do the same people who like to work with computers also enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons? How are those activities similar? This clever, enlightening book will appeal to the nerd (and antinerd) that lives inside all of us.
American Nero: The History of the Destruction of the Rule of Law, and Why Trump Is the Worst Offender
by Peter Golenbock Richard PainterDonald Trump is eroding the rule of law! We've heard it said many times, and we can feel it in our guts. But what does "rule of law" really mean? And what happens when it breaks down? From Richard Painter, a senate candidate and law professor who served as White House chief ethics counsel under President George W. Bush, and New York Times bestselling author Peter Golenbock, American Nero is an in-depth exploration the rule of law—the legal bedrock on which this country was founded. Painter and Golenbock present a clear description of rule of law—arguably the single most important principle underlying our civilization. They also describe the abuses of power that have occurred throughout our nation's history. Beginning in Puritan New England with the infamous Salem Witch Trials, American Nero makes vivid stops at The Red Scare of the 1920s, Japanese-American internment, the McCarthy Era, and, much more recently, President Trump's attempt to violate the First Amendment by banning Muslims from entering the US. While Trump is not the first offender, he is arguably the most blatant, and this unflinchingly honest and insightful work presents in devastating detail the ways in which our current president has trampled the rule of law with his attacks on the freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, and the autonomy of the justice department. This is not a book about right vs. left —instead, it is about the rule of law, a principle that transcends partisan politics, and how vital it is to the survival of our country. This book serves as a call-to-action, looking ahead to a brighter future for our country, one where citizens and officials alike protect our rights and honor their responsibilities. Timely and revealing, American Nero shares the lessons of history and lays the framework for returning to a society that respects the rule of law—an America that is consistent with our Founding Fathers' vision of a genuinely free nation.
American Newsfilm 1914-1919: The Underexposed War (Routledge Library Editions: The First World War)
by David H. MouldThe First World War was the first conflict in which film became a significant instrument of propaganda. For the United States, the war had two distinct phases: from August 1914 to April 1917, America was officially a neutral country; after April 1917 the United States was in the war, providing men, money and munitions for the Allies. These two phases are mirrored in the newsreels and documentary films shown in the United States. This volume starts by examining the background to the war for the movie industry – the coverage of previous conflicts and the growth of the newsreel. It examines the experiences of American cameramen who worked in the war zone: their efforts to gain access to the front, to overcome problems ranging from unreliable equipment to poor lighting conditions to evading censorship and how this shaped the coverage of the war.
American Niceness: A Cultural History
by Carrie Tirado BramenThe cliché of the Ugly American—loud, vulgar, materialistic, chauvinistic—still expresses what people around the world dislike about their Yankee counterparts. Carrie Tirado Bramen recovers the history of a different national archetype—the nice American—which has been central to ideas of American identity since the nineteenth century.
American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas
by Jennifer Ratner-RosenhagenIf you were looking for a philosopher likely to appeal to Americans, Friedrich Nietzsche would be far from your first choice. After all, in his blazing career, Nietzsche took aim at nearly all the foundations of modern American life: Christian morality, the Enlightenment faith in reason, and the idea of human equality. Despite that, for more than a century Nietzsche has been a hugely popular—and surprisingly influential—figure in American thought and culture. In American Nietzsche, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen delves deeply into Nietzsche's philosophy, and America’s reception of it, to tell the story of his curious appeal. Beginning her account with Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom the seventeen-year-old Nietzsche read fervently, she shows how Nietzsche’s ideas first burst on American shores at the turn of the twentieth century, and how they continued alternately to invigorate and to shock Americans for the century to come. She also delineates the broader intellectual and cultural contexts within which a wide array of commentators—academic and armchair philosophers, theologians and atheists, romantic poets and hard-nosed empiricists, and political ideologues and apostates from the Left and the Right—drew insight and inspiration from Nietzsche’s claims for the death of God, his challenge to universal truth, and his insistence on the interpretive nature of all human thought and beliefs. At the same time, she explores how his image as an iconoclastic immoralist was put to work in American popular culture, making Nietzsche an unlikely posthumous celebrity capable of inspiring both teenagers and scholars alike. A penetrating examination of a powerful but little-explored undercurrent of twentieth-century American thought and culture, American Nietzsche dramatically recasts our understanding of American intellectual life—and puts Nietzsche squarely at its heart.
American Night
by Alan M. WaldAmerican Night, the final volume of an unprecedented trilogy, brings Alan Wald's multigenerational history of Communist writers to a poignant climax. Using new research to explore the intimate lives of novelists, poets, and critics during the Cold War, Wald reveals a radical community longing for the rebirth of the social vision of the 1930s and struggling with a loss of moral certainty as the Communist worldview was being called into question. The resulting literature, Wald shows, is a haunting record of fracture and struggle linked by common structures of feeling, ones more suggestive of the "negative dialectics" of Theodor Adorno than the traditional social realism of the Left. Establishing new points of contact among Kenneth Fearing, Ann Petry, Alexander Saxton, Richard Wright, Jo Sinclair, Thomas McGrath, and Carlos Bulosan, Wald argues that these writers were in dialogue with psychoanalysis, existentialism, and postwar modernism, often generating moods of piercing emotional acuity and cosmic dissent. He also recounts the contributions of lesser known cultural workers, with a unique accent on gays and lesbians, secular Jews, and people of color. The vexing ambiguities of an era Wald labels "late antifascism" serve to frame an impressive collective biography.
American Nightfighter Aces of World War 2
by Chris Davey Warren ThompsonThe Americans lagged behind their European contemporaries in military aviation in the late 1930s, and it took the Battle of Britain to awaken an isolated America to the necessity of having aircraft that could defend targets against nighttime attack by bomber aircraft. With the help of the RAF, the importance of creating such a specialized fighter force was given top priority. This book examines the numerous aircraft types that were used by the US in this role, beginning with the early 'stop-gap' conversions like the TBM Avenger, Lockheed Ventura and the A-20 Havoc (P-70). It goes on to detail the combat history of the newer and radar equipped Hellcats, Corsairs and Black Widows that were designed to seek out enemy aircraft (both German and Japanese) in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Pacific. It was these aircraft that registered most of the kills made by the Navy, Marine Corps and USAAF in 1944-45. Finally there are additional accounts from the American pilots who spent time on the frontline on exchange tours with the RAF in the ETO/MTO, learning the intricacies of flying radar-equipped fighters like the Mosquito and Beaufighter at night, prior to the USAAF taking receipt of the much-delayed P-61. With full color profiles and rare photographs, this is an absorbing account of an often underestimated flying force: the American Nightfighters.
American Nightingale: The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy
by Bob WelchOf the 350,000 American women in uniform during World War II, none instilled more hope in American GIs than Frances Slanger. In Army fatigues and helmet she splashed ashore with the first nurses to hit the Normandy beach in June 1944. Later, from a storm-whipped tent amid the thud of artillery shells, she wrote a letter to Stars and Stripes newspaper that would stir the souls of thousands of weary soldiers. Hundreds wrote heartfelt responses, praising Slanger and her fellow nurses and honoring her humility and patriotism. But Frances Slanger never got to read such praise. She was dead, killed the very next day when German troops shelled her field hospital, the first American nurse to die in Europe after the landing at Normandy. Frances Slanger was a Jewish fruit-peddler's daughter who survived a chilling childhood in World War I-torn Poland and immigrated to America at age seven. Inspired by memories of her bitter past and a Nazi-threatened future, she defied her parents' wishes by becoming a nurse and joining the military. A woman of great integrity and courage, she was also a passionate writer and keeper of chapbooks. This is the story of her too brief life.
American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow
by Jerrold M. Packard“A very powerful and unsettling story of our nation’s century-long ‘pogrom’ by vengeful white Southerners against their black neighbors.” —The Washington TimesFor a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, a quarter of all Americans lived under a system of legalized segregation called Jim Crow. Together with its rigidly enforced canon of racial “etiquette,” these rules governed nearly every aspect of life—and outlined draconian punishments for infractions.The purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African Americans subjugated at a level as close as possible to their former slave status. Exceeding even South Africa’s notorious apartheid in the humiliation, degradation, and suffering it brought, Jim Crow left scars on the American psyche that are still felt today. American Nightmare examines and explains Jim Crow from its beginnings to its end: how it came into being, how it was lived, how it was justified, and how, at long last, it was overcome only a few short decades ago. Most importantly, this book reveals how a nation founded on principles of equality and freedom came to enact as law a pervasive system of inequality and virtual slavery.Although America has finally consigned Jim Crow to the historical graveyard, Jerrold Packard shows why it is important that this scourge—and an understanding of how it happened—remain alive in the nation’s collective memory.“Sweeping history . . . Packard compels us to remember that one cannot effectively confront the challenges posed by contemporary race relations without recognizing the agonies of the American past.” —The Christian Science Monitor
American Nightmares: Social Problems in an Anxious World
by Joel BestIn an accessible and droll style, well-known sociologist Joel Best shines a light on how we navigate these anxious, insecure social times. While most of us still strive for the American Dream—to graduate from college, own a home, work toward early retirement—recent generations have been told that the next generation will not be able to achieve these goals, that things are getting—or are on the verge of getting—worse. In American Nightmares, Best addresses the apprehension that we face every day as we are bombarded with threats that the social institutions we count on are imperiled. Our schools are failing to teach our kids. Healthcare may soon be harder to obtain. We can’t bank on our retirement plans. And our homes—still the largest chunk of most people’s net worth—may lose much of their value. Our very way of life is being threatened! Or is it? With a steady voice and keen focus, Best examines how a culture develops fears and fantasies and how these visions are created and recreated in every generation. By dismantling current ideas about the future, collective memory, and sociology’s marginalization in the public square, Best sheds light on how social problems—and our anxiety about them—are socially constructed.
American Nonpublic Schools: Patterns of Diversity
by Otto F. KraushaarThis book is about the nonpublic or private schools of America--their history, goals, significance, problems, and prospects. It was undertaken in the belief that these schools, which at their crest educated approximately 6.5 million children in about 19 thousand elementary and secondary schools, constitute an important resource in America's dual system of public and private schooling, a resource which is currently in serious jeopardy.
American Notebook: A Personal and Political Journey
by Michael GawendaOne of the rewards extended to former editors—if they are lucky and get to plan their departure—is that they can choose their next assignment. I had no doubt about what I wanted: to be Washington correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. There was no more important and interesting international story to cover than the United States at the beginning of George W. Bush's second term. The war in Iraq was going badly, and it was not at all clear that the war on terror was being won—or even if there was any agreement that it was, in fact, a war. When veteran journalist Michael Gawenda was posted to the USA as a Washington correspondent in 2005, George W. Bush was beginning his second term, and the war in Iraq was showing signs of becoming a quagmire. Two years later, Bush is a lame duck president and most Americans want their troops out of Iraq. American Notebook is Gawenda's absorbing and insightful account of his American posting. Weaving the personal into the political, Gawenda takes the reader on his journey into a country he has always loved. Beyond daily life in Washington, he visits hurricane-ravaged New Orleans and the God-fearing states of the Midwest. His engaging analysis of politics and current events is interwoven with his reflections on his childhood as a post-war Jewish refugee, growing up in the sixties in a Melbourne steeped in American culture. In light of the increasingly evident failure of efforts in Iraq, he revisits his own controversial decision while editor of The Age newspaper to support the Howard Government's decision in 2003 to join the coalition of the willing. American Notebook is a fascinating discussion of the role of journalism and the nature of public debate about war, politics and current events.