Divider-in-Chief

Divider-in-Chief
Author: Kate Obenshain
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2012-09-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1621570118

Argues that the Obama administration has become the most divisive presidency in history, describing how the president has put his ideological and electoral interests ahead of what is best for the country.

The Divider

The Divider
Author: Peter Baker
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 769
Release: 2022-09-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0385546548

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • "The most comprehensive and detailed account of the Trump presidency yet published."—The Washington Post • A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker and Financial Times • "The book everyone is talking about."—Politico The inside story of the four years when Donald Trump went to war with Washington, from the chaotic beginning to the violent finale, told by revered journalists Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker—an ambitious and lasting history of the full Trump presidency that also contains dozens of exclusive scoops and stories from behind the scenes in the White House, from the absurd to the deadly serious. "A sumptuous feast of astonishing tales...The more one reads, the more one wishes to read."—NPR.com • "A beautifully written, utterly dispiriting history of the man who attacked democracy." —The Guardian The bestselling authors of The Man Who Ran Washington argue that Trump was not just lurching from one controversy to another; he was learning to be more like the foreign autocrats he admired. The Divider brings us into the Oval Office for countless scenes both tense and comical, revealing how close we got to nuclear war with North Korea, which cabinet members had a resignation pact, whether Trump asked Japan’s prime minister to nominate him for a Nobel Prize and much more. The book also explores the moral choices confronting those around Trump—how they justified working for a man they considered unfit for office, and where they drew their lines. The Divider is based on unprecedented access to key players, from President Trump himself to cabinet officers, military generals, close advisers, Trump family members, congressional leaders, foreign officials and others, some of whom have never told their story until now.

The Power to Divide

The Power to Divide
Author: Timothy W. Crawford
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2021-05-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1501754734

Timothy W. Crawford's The Power to Divide examines the use of wedge strategies, a form of divisive statecraft designed to isolate adversaries from allies and potential supporters to gain key advantages. With a multidimensional argument about the power of accommodation in competition, and a survey of alliance diplomacy around both World Wars, The Power to Divide artfully analyzes the past and future performance of wedge strategy in great power politics. Crawford argues that nations attempting to use wedge strategy do best when they credibly accommodate likely or established allies of their enemies. He also argues that a divider's own alliances can pose obstacles to success and explains the conditions that help dividers overcome them. He advances these claims in eight focused studies of alliance diplomacy surrounding the World Wars, derived from published official documents and secondary histories. Through those narratives, Crawford adeptly assesses the record of countries that tried an accommodative wedge strategy, and why ultimately, they succeeded or failed. These calculated actions often became turning points, desired or not, in a nation's established power. For policymakers today facing threats to power from great power competitors, Crawford argues that a deeper historical and theoretical grasp of the role of these wedge strategies in alliance politics and grand strategy is necessary. Crawford drives home the contemporary relevance of the analysis with a survey of China's potential to use such strategies to divide India from the US, and the United States' potential to use them to forestall a China-Russia alliance, and closes with a review of key theoretical insights for policy.

Religion and the American Presidency

Religion and the American Presidency
Author: Mark J. Rozell
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2024-01-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 303140758X

This book chronologically analyzes fourteen key US Presidents, from Washington to Biden, to highlight how religion has informed or influenced their politics and policies. For years, leading scholars have largely neglected religion in presidential studies. Yet, religion has played a significant role in a number of critical presidencies in US history. This volume reveals the deep religious side to such presidents as Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan, among others, and the impact that faith had on their administrations. Now in its fourth edition, this work includes analysis of Joe Biden as the second Catholic president in United States history and provides a timely update to a key text in the study of religion and the presidency.

How to Become a Big Man in Africa

How to Become a Big Man in Africa
Author: Wale Adebanwi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 591
Release: 2024
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0253070376

Can subalterns transform themselves into members of the elite, and what does it take to do so? And how do those efforts reveal the nature of ethnic politics in postcolonial Africa? How to Become a Big Man in Africa: Subalternity, Elites, and Ethnic Politics in Contemporary Nigeria examines these questions by revealing how, through ethno-regional conflict, violence and cultural activities, an artisan, Gani Adams, transformed himself into the holder of the most prestigious chieftaincy title among the Yoruba. Addressing persistent gaps in anthropological studies of the subaltern and of "big men" in politics through in-depth biography and rich social history, Wale Adebanwi follows Adams and other major figures in Nigeria's Oodua People's Congress (OPC) over two decades of ethnographic study and visual representations. Challenging existing models of African political mobility by leveraging his initial lack of formal education into a position of power, Adams moved from a "radical lumpen" and "area boy" to a "big man" who continues to struggle--and reflect--over the significance of his role as a cultural subject. Blurring the lines between tradition and modernity, Adams and his group have used Yoruba rituals to simultaneously claim authenticity and champion new movements for democracy and self-determination. How to Become a Big Man in Africa encourages us to understand the full complexity of Adams's political trajectory and how it reflects the structural and personal realities of becoming a "Big Man" in the contemporary postcolony.

A Sacred Oath

A Sacred Oath
Author: Mark T. Esper
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 752
Release: 2022-05-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0063144344

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Former Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper reveals the shocking details of his tumultuous tenure while serving in the Trump administration. From June of 2019 until his firing by President Trump after the November 2020 election, Secretary Mark T. Esper led the Department of Defense through an unprecedented time in history—a period marked by growing threats and conflict abroad, a global pandemic unseen in a century, the greatest domestic unrest in two generations, and a White House seemingly bent on breaking accepted norms and conventions for political advantage. A Sacred Oath is Secretary Esper’s unvarnished and candid memoir of those extraordinary and dangerous times, and includes events and moments never before told.

Conspiracy of Silence

Conspiracy of Silence
Author: Azukaoma Uche Osakwe
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 591
Release: 2022-08-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1728374499

Nigeria is rife with divisions, particularly between Christians and Muslims. Both groups aim at converting others, and so they are in direct conflict with each other. The bitterness came to a head when Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, succeeded his former boss, Musa Yar’Adua, upon his death. Jonathan would serve as president from 2010 to 2015. The northern oligarchy was infuriated because they depended on rent and patronage, which they knew would not be feasible under a Christian president. They employed every tactic they could to destabilize his regime, and in 2015, he lost the presidential election to the former military head of state, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. In this book, the author lays out how politics in Nigeria is no longer based on what politicians can do for the community. Rather, the focus is on what they can do for themselves. There is no more catching fish for God. The religion they follow is based on stealing from the people. Buhari was presented as an agent of change, but his seven years in charge have only brought pain, bloodshed, anarchy, and more turmoil. Something must be done to move Nigeria away from the precipice. Praise for Conspiracy of Silence “Azukaoma Uche Osakwe’s book is another in a growing list of sad narratives on the failure of leadership in Nigeria under the leadership of Muhammadu Buhari's Administration. The book painstakingly combs through the many ills of Nigerian society under Buhari and the collapse of such institutions as the police, army, electoral body, government officials and the various ethnic nationalities. He accuses these people of conspiring to stay mum amid terrible governance. The author charges the citizenry, as well as the Igbo Nation, which, he says, are marginalized, to buckle up and take what remains of their destiny in their own hands.” —Jude Atupulazi, editor-in-chief, Fides Newspaper, Awka, Nigeria “Conspiracy of Silence ... this book must necessarily take a long title. It would indeed, be difficult to capture the Muhammadu Buhari era as president of Nigeria with an elegantly titled book. The simple reason is that the Buhari tenure was devoid of neither elegance nor finesse. Conspiracy of Silence encapsulates this rather dark epoch in fine detail – warts and all. It’s a racy report of Africa’s giant caught in the vice grips of mediocrity and mendacity in equal measures. It's stranger than fiction!” —Steven Osuji, columnist and former member of the editorial board, The Nation, Nigeria

Confidence Man

Confidence Man
Author: Maggie Haberman
Publisher: Singel Uitgeverijen
Total Pages: 828
Release: 2022-10-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9029549815

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times reporter who has defined Donald J. Trump’s presidency like no other journalist: a magnificent and disturbing reckoning that chronicles his life and its impact, from his rise in New York City to his tortured postpresidency. All of Trump’s behavior as president had echoes in what came before. In this revelatory and news-making book, Haberman brings together the events of his life into a single mesmerizing work. It is the definitive account of one of the most norms-shattering and consequential eras in American political history.