Revenge versus Legality: Wild Justice from Balzac to Clint Eastwood and Abu Ghraib (Birkbeck Law Press)

Revenge versus Legality: Wild Justice from Balzac to Clint Eastwood and Abu Ghraib (Birkbeck Law Press) Review

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Revenge versus Legality: Wild Justice from Balzac to Clint Eastwood and Abu Ghraib (Birkbeck Law Press) Feature

In the wake of Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary renditions, and secret torture centres in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, Revenge versus Legality addresses the relationship between law and wild or vigilante justice; between the power to enforce retribution and the desire to seek revenge. Taking up a variety of narratives from the eras of Romanticism, Realism, Modernism and the Contemporary period, and including new theories to explain the interactions that occur between legalistic courtroom justice and the vigilante variety, Revenge versus Legality analyzes some of the main obstacles to justice, ranging from judicial corruption, to racism and imperialism. The book culminates in a consideration of that form of crime or lawlessness that poses the most serious threat to the rule of law: vigilante justice masquerading as legality. With its mixture of politics, literature, law, and film, this lively and accessible book offers a timely reflection on the enduring phenomenon of revenge.

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Viewpoints Critical: Selected Stories

Viewpoints Critical: Selected Stories Review

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Viewpoints Critical: Selected Stories Feature

This is the first story collection ever from bestselling fantasy and science fiction writer L. E. Modesitt, Jr. Modesitt began publishing short fiction in the SF magazines in the 1970s, and this collection includes a selection of stories from the whole of his career. Some of the early stories are kernels for his early SF novels, others display the wide range of his talents and interests, from satire to military adventure.

This book also contains three new stories that have never been published before: “Black Ordermage,” set in Modesitt’s bestselling Recluce series; “Beyond the Obvious Wind,” set in his Corean Chronicles universe; and “Always Outside the Lines,” which is related to the Ghost of Columbia books. Viewpoints Critical is an excellent introduction to the work of one of the major SF and fantasy writers publishing today.

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The Last Freedom: Religion from the Public School to the Public Square

The Last Freedom: Religion from the Public School to the Public Square Review

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The Last Freedom: Religion from the Public School to the Public Square Feature

The presidency of George W. Bush has polarized the church-state debate as never before. The Far Right has been emboldened to use religion to govern, while the Far Left has redoubled its efforts to evict religion from public life entirely. Fewer people on the Right seem to respect the church-state separation, and fewer people on the Left seem to respect religion itself--still less its free exercise in any situation that is not absolutely private. In The Last Freedom, Joseph Viteritti argues that there is a basic tension between religion and democracy because religion often rejects compromise as a matter of principle while democracy requires compromise to thrive. In this readable, original, and provocative book, Viteritti argues that Americans must guard against debasing politics with either antireligious bigotry or religious zealotry. Drawing on politics, history, and law, he defines a new approach to the church-state question that protects the religious and the secular alike.

Challenging much conventional opinion, Viteritti argues that the courts have failed to adequately protect religious minorities, that the rights of the religious are under greater threat than those of the secular, and that democracy exacts greater compromises and sacrifices from the religious than it does from the secular. He takes up a wide range of controversies, including the pledge of allegiance, school prayer, school vouchers, evolution, abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, and religious displays on public property.

A fresh and surprising approach to the church-state question, The Last Freedom is squarely aimed at the wide center of the public that is frustrated with the extremes of both the Left and the Right.

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The International Commission of Jurists: Global Advocates for Human Rights (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)

The International Commission of Jurists: Global Advocates for Human Rights (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights) Review

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The International Commission of Jurists: Global Advocates for Human Rights (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights) Feature

Since its founding in 1952, the International Commission of Jurists has inspired the international human rights movement with persistent demands that governments obey the rule of law.

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Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big-Time American Evangelism

Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big-Time American Evangelism Review

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Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big-Time American Evangelism Feature

In this fast-paced, captivating account of Billy Sunday's life, Roger A. Bruns masterfully unfolds the story of modern evangelism. Born in Iowa during the Civil War, Sunday rose to fame as the "fastest man in baseball" during his career with the Chicago White Stockings in the 1880s. But he turned his back on the game when he heard the call of God, first spreading his old-fashioned, fundamentalist message in Chicago's gritty saloons. By 1896, Sunday's swashbuckling campaign was on the road. He riled and rallied audiences across the country, firing off a slew of railing diatribes in his quest to expurgate the moral rot of society, board up bars and brothels, rid the world of cigarettes and dime novels, and save faithless, sinful, and rum-soaked souls from eternal damnation. In the tabernacles and tents of his traveling revival, Sunday served up a spectacle of rambunctious antics and quick-tongued invectives all grounded in his own moral and religious authority. He beseeched the "fal-da-rol" and "tommyrot" displayed by intellectuals, evolutionists, Unitarians, and left-wing radicals to build a massive religious dynasty that foreshadowed the successful careers of Jimmy Swaggart and Billy Graham. A stirring orator and consummate showman, Sunday's evangelical message reached millions of Americans, even before the advent of radio and television broadcasting. With unerring verve, Bruns chronicles how Sunday bridged the gap between the tent revivals of the nineteenth century and the evangelical empires of today.

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Seven Myths about Christianity

Seven Myths about Christianity Review

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Seven Myths about Christianity Feature

The 7 myths are:1 Christians force their morality on others.2Christianity supresses women3 Christianity caused the ecological crisis4 Christians are antiscientifis5 Christians have done terrible things in the name of Christ6 Christian missionaries destroy native cultures7 Christians are arrogant.

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The Twenties in America: Politics and History (BAAS Paperbacks)

The Twenties in America: Politics and History (BAAS Paperbacks) Review

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The Twenties in America: Politics and History (BAAS Paperbacks) Feature

The Twenties in America offers the first balanced account of the history and politics of this much-maligned decade. Niall Palmer focuses on the governing styles and political philosophies of presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. He suggests that Harding's executive style and achievements were not as poor as traditional portraits have claimed and that Coolidge was largely successful in his efforts to distance himself from the financial scandals of his predecessor, reviving much of the US economy. Palmer argues that the pace of social and technological change created conflicts over race, religion, and poverty, and employment rights. Consequently, old solutions became increasingly irrelevant to the changing times.

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Toxic Mix?: A Handbook of Science and Politics

Toxic Mix?: A Handbook of Science and Politics Review

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Toxic Mix?: A Handbook of Science and Politics Feature

Toxic Mix?: A Handbook of Science and Politics takes a topic very much in the center of public debate in the last decade and places it in a revealing historical context. It follows the often contentious relationship of science and politics from the FDR era to the current Obama administration, highlighting the many highly charged moments when the two were in conflict.

Toxic Mix? ranges across the major areas of scientific inquiry with public policy implications, including atomic energy, space science, public health, stem cells, sexual reproduction, environmental science, global warming, and evolution, to examine important events where political imperatives and scientific research were at odds. In addition, the book looks at another important area where politics and science are at cross purposes; immigration—as many of our most accomplished degree earners are foreign born and are unable to stay and work in the United States. A final chapter analyzes the attempts by the early Obama administration to build public policy that embraces science rather than manipulates it.

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Smith Wildman Brookhart-95

Smith Wildman Brookhart-95 Review

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Smith Wildman Brookhart-95 Feature

This is an examination of the career and character of Brookhart, Iowa's radical senator. He was labelled a socialist, a communist, a Bolshevik and a buffoon, but he offered a populist solution to the agricultural depression of the 1920s that advocated the formation of co-operatives.

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Governor Smylie Remembers

Governor Smylie Remembers Review

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Governor Smylie Remembers Feature

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for the University of Idaho Press

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