A fascinating sociological assessment of the damaging effects of the for-profit partnership between government and corporation on rural Americans. Why is government distrust rampant, especially in the rural United States? This book offers a simple explanation: corporations and the government together dispossess rural people of their prosperity, and even their property. Based on four years of fieldwork, this eye-opening assessment by sociologist Loka...

"Americans are preoccupied with political polls. In this book, John Zogby, one of America’s most prominent pollsters, offers readers a master class in understanding what polls can reveal about public opinion. He argues that those who focus only on the horse race numbers—who is leading and who is trailing—miss the many ways that polls can help us understand the fundamentals of the electorate at any given time. Illustrating his arguments from...

"American democracy is in crisis. In 2020, more than half of Americans claimed they were dissatisfied with their political system, and an increasing number are willing to consider alternatives to popular rule-including authoritarianism. We view our political opponents with disdain, if not terror. These fears aren't entirely misguided: democratic debate often puts America's ugliest impulses on display. But in Two Cheers for Politics, renowned political...

"2016 continues to be the most surreal and unpredictable election year in recent memory and this is due in large part to one Donald J. Trump and the millions of Americans who made him this year's Republican nominee for president. As Trump continues to succeed despite behavior that would cripple any other politician, whether it is questioning the patriotism of the Gold Star Khan family or banishing a baby from one of his press conferences, it is imperative...

"In our current age of hyper-partisan politics, nearly everyone takes sides. This is especially true with regard to the Trump presidency. It has become difficult to have a reasonable discussion about the most controversial president in our recent history. For Trump zealots, their president has not only committed no crimes, he has done nothing wrong. For anti-Trump zealots, nothing Trump has done-even in foreign policy-is good. Everything he has done...

"Do you think mainstream America needs to find its voice? If so, you're not alone. The country is under attack by extremists at the fringes who put ideology before sanity and stoke division for their own gain. They are trying to rob America of its common sense and deny empirical truths, and we're all suffering the consequences. In We've Got Issues: How You Can Stand Strong for America's Soul and Sanity, Dr. Phil employs his signature no-nonsense approach...

"From the author of Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies, a probing exploration of the bizarre and dangerous conspiracies that have roiled America over the past decade and captured the minds of so many Americans. Among the more disturbing recent trends in politics is the unholy marriage of the Republican Party and virulent conspiracy theories. These theories not only contest the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and the allegiance of...