Political Science : Federal Government

Some people think they know all the answers. They know how far you should live from your job. They know how big your backyard should be. They know how cities and forests should grow. Government planners claim to know all of that and more. They say that if you want to live in pleasant communities, enjoy beautiful wilderness, and get to work on time, you should put them in charge. But 30 years of research has convinced Randal O’Toole—one of Newsweek's top 20 “movers and shakers in the West”—that they’re wrong. In The Best-Laid Plans, he shows in case after case that government planning frequently causes the very problems it is intended to solve. Although national economic planning has been widely discredited in theory and practice, government planners still control much of our infrastructure and land. O’Toole examines how the schemes of the planners go horribly wrong. Planners, obsessed with “smart growth,” think they can make our towns better places to live, but their plans result in unaffordable housing, more congestion, and increased crime. The Best-Laid Plans is a powerful challenge to the conventional wisdom about public lands, urban growth, and government planning. more...

Price: $12.00

Thanks to constant political oratory against ''frivolous lawsuits'' and ''jackpot justice,'' it is widely known that there's a legal crisis in this country. President Bush never misses an opportunity to call for laws that would bring more ''common sense'' to a legal system that, he claims, is out of control, wrecking the economy, driving doctors out of their practices, bankrupting small businesses, and costing American jobs. Journalists repeat the charges without examining them. By exposing some of the dubious characters, corporate chicanery, skewed research, fudged numbers, and bogus journalism that have buttressed the calls for lawsuit reform,Stephanie Mencimer shows who's behind the movement to close the courthouse doors, and how they've successfully persuaded millions of Americans to give up their critical legal rights without fully understanding what they're losing -- often until it's too late. more...

Price: $26.00

British Parliamentary Lists, 1660-1800 identifies all known lists - division lists, forecasts, management, and propaganda lists - for the House of Commons between 1660 and 1761; for the House of Lords between 1660 and 1800; and for the Scottish Parliament between 1660 and 1707. This new listing entirely supersedes the 1979 Register of Parliamentary Lists, containing many new lists and additions and corrections to those previously listed. It will also be a useful adjunct to Donald E. Ginter's Voting Records of the British House of Commons, 1761-1820. more...

Price: $130.00

The former White House counsel faults Republican mismanagement for the current state of the government John Dean has become one of the most trenchant and respected commentators on the current state of American politics and one of the most outspoken and perceptive critics of the administration of George W. Bush in his New York Times bestsellers Conservatives Without Conscience and Worse Than Watergate. In his eighth book, Dean takes the broadest and deepest view yet of the dysfunctional chaos and institutional damage that the Republican Party and its core conservatives have inflicted on the federal government. He assesses the state of all three branches of government, tracing their decline through the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. Unlike most political commentary, which is concerned with policy, Dean looks instead at process— making the case that the 2008 presidential race must confront these fundamental problems as well. Finally, he addresses the question that he is so often asked at his speaking engagements: What, if anything, can and should politically moderate citizens do to combat the extremism, authoritarianism, incompetence, and increasing focus on divisive wedge issues of so many of today’s conservative politicians? With the Democrats now in control of both the House and Senate, the stakes for the 2008 presidential election have never been higher. This is a book for anyone who wants to return government to the spirit of the Constitution. more...

Price: $16.00

The first edition of this landmark work is one of the Brookings Institution's most successful titles. Since that original publication, authors Morton Halperin and Priscilla Clapp, with Arnold Kanter have been significant participants in America's foreign policy community. more...

Price: $28.95