University of Michigan Press Blog

Daily Show With John Stewart: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Co-Author of "The Strategy of Campaigning," Predicts the Future of Iran's Nuclear Program

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is the co-author (with Kiron K. Skinner, Serhiy Kudelia, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and Condoleezza Rice) of University of Michigan Press release The Strategy of Campaigning (2007), which explores the political careers of Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin, two of the most galvanizing and often controversial political figures of our time. Both men overcame defeat early in their political careers and rose to the highest elected offices in their respective countries.

What We Can Learn from the Balloon Boy

by Orville Gilbert Brim, author of new release LOOK AT ME! The Fame Motive from Childhood to Death, available now

    "It has become sadly and abundantly clear that the story of the boy in the balloon that captured the world’s attention last week was simply an elaborate hoax, carried out by the boy’s father.  At one level it looks like it was an attempt to get on reality TV.  But there is a very good chance that something else was involved, a little-studied aspect of human development I call the fame motive.
    Has our completely wired world caused more people than ever before to seek fame?  Or has it just caused those driven by the need for fame to surface more easily?

Getting to Grassroots: Author Clarence Lang

by Clarence Lang, author of new release GRASSROOTS AT THE GATEWAY: CLASS POLITICS AND BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE IN ST. LOUIS, 1936-1975

"All scholarship is autobiographical.  I often wonder, then, whether my scholarly interest in the dynamics of class among African Americans stems from a desire to grapple with my own contradictions as someone from a working-class background who grabbed certain opportunities, squandered others, and in the process became a black middle-class professional who lives and works very differently from most African Americans.       

When I think of the experiences that may have contributed to my research, I can pull from the fragments of my memory moments from my childhood when I gazed at manifestations of race and class, long before I developed the language to interpret what I was seeing.  It is significant that I grew up in an apartment building in a declining commercial district of Chicago’s South Loop, in a transition point between downtown and the South Side.  I remember that many of the people who constituted the high rise’s community were, like my mother, strivers who worked downtown and considered the building a stepping-stone to greater respectability. 

Q&A with John Kenneth White, author of Barack Obama's America

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency marks a conclusive end to the Reagan era, writes John Kenneth White in Barack Obama's America: How New Conceptions of Race, Family, and Religion Ended the Reagan Era. Reagan symbolized a 1950s and 1960s America, largely white and suburban, with married couples and kids at home, who attended church more often than not.  The demographics, however, have shifted: Marriage is at an all-time low. Cohabitation has increased from a half-million couples in 1960 to more than 5 million in 2000 to even more this year. Gay marriages and civil unions are redefining what it means to be a family. And organized religions are suffering, even as Americans continue to think of themselves as a religious people.

John Kenneth White is Professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

  Listen to the podcast

Reading Hurts: Austin Sarat and Paul Kahn Question the Sacrifice of Life for the State

(originally published July 8, 2009 on CUNY Radio Podcasts)

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Austin Sarat, author of Pain, Death, and the Law, and Paul Kahn, author of Sacred Violence, examine how religious ideas and the use of “sacred violence” play a significant role in modern secular philosophy, political theory and ultimately, the state itself. 

Sarah Palin's Resignation According to John White

John White, author of the forthcoming book: Barack Obama's America, provides a series of views on American society.

Sarah Palin's resignation is the biggest political story of the summer.  But the speculation as to why the Alaska governor resigned her post, misses an important story.  When Republicans have been successful, they have put forward leaders whose personal story is emblematic of the times.  Richard Nixon and his throughly middle-class background is a case in point. 

Michael Jackson's Ability to Break Barriers

John White, author of the forthcoming book: Barack Obama's America, provides a series of views on American society.

 In 1991, Michael Jackson released the song "Black or White."  In the music video accompanying the song, male and female faces morphed into all shades of different colors.  The Reagan era had ended only a few years before, but the U.S. was still a mostly white country.  Jackson had transcended a racial barrier by becoming the first black artist to penetrate MTV.  Today, whites are fast becoming a minority and the morphing of the face of America is happening thanks to an increase interracial marriages (something that was still uncommon in 1991).  The Jackson video prophesized the coming of a new era in U.S. politics, one in which the binary concept of race (black/white) no longer really holds.  (Indeed, defining race constitutes something of a slippery slope.)

Watch the music video on YouTube.

Learn more about Barack Obama's America here.

Iraq, Afghanistan, and the controversy of "The New U.S. Army"

The U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual, published by the University of Michigan Press, signals a stark departure from traditional military doctrine. In doing, it has led to a divided response on the U.S. Army's fundamental role in overseas operations at this critical moment in history. Click here to read more about the U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual.

See below for commentary from both sides of the issue and let us know what you think.

Q&A with Tom Diaz, author of No Boundaries

No Boundaries: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement is a former journalist's disturbing account of what many consider the "next Mafia" -- Latino crime gangs.

Listen to the podcast at: http://www.press.umich.edu/podcasts/diaz.mp3

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH ACKNOWLEDGMENT by Karen Chilton

"Any woman who has a great deal to offer the world is in trouble. And if she's a Black woman, she's in deep trouble." –Hazel Scott

Over that grand expanse of time during February and March when Black Americans are honored and American women are acknowledged for their great works, I am often struck by what is missing, or better, who is missing out on the mass praise and adulation.