The Liberty of Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780195349146
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (491 download)

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Book Synopsis The Liberty of Strangers by : Desmond King

Download or read book The Liberty of Strangers written by Desmond King and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harry S. Truman once said, "Ours is a nation of many different groups, of different races, of different national origins." And yet, the debate over what it means--and what it takes--to be an American remains contentious. Nationalist solidarity, many claim, requires a willful blending into the assimilationist alloy of these United States. Others argue that the interests of both nation and individual are best served by allowing multiple traditions to flourish--a salad bowl of identities and allegiances, rather than a melting pot. Tracing how Americans have confronted and relinquished, but mostly clung to group identities over the past century, Desmond King here debunks one of the guiding assumptions of American nationhood, namely that group distinction and identification would gradually dissolve over time, creating a "postethnic" nation. Over the course of the twentieth century, King shows, the divisions in American society arising from group loyalties have consistently proven themselves too strong to dissolve. For better or for worse, the often-disparaged politics of multiculturalism are here to stay, with profound implications for America's democracy. Americans have now entered a post-multiculturalist settlement in which the renewal of democracy continues to depend on groups battling it out in political trenches, yet the process is ruled by a newly invigorated and strengthened state. But Americans' resolute embrace of their distinctive identities has ramifications not just internally and domestically but on the world stage as well. The image of one-people American nationhood so commonly projected abroad camouflages the country's sprawling, often messy diversity: a lesson that nation-builders worldwide cannot afford to ignore as they attempt to accommodate ever-evolving group needs and the demands of individuals to be treated equally. Spanning the entire twentieth century and encompassing immigration policies, the nationalistic fallout from both world wars, the civil rights movement, and nation-building efforts in the postcolonial era, The Liberty of Strangers advances a major new interpretation of American nationalism and the future prospects for diverse democracies.

Strangers to the Constitution

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400821959
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Strangers to the Constitution by : Gerald L. Neuman

Download or read book Strangers to the Constitution written by Gerald L. Neuman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gerald Neuman discusses in historical and contemporary terms the repeated efforts of U.S. insiders to claim the Constitution as their exclusive property and to deny constitutional rights to aliens and immigrants--and even citizens if they are outside the nation's borders. Tracing such efforts from the debates over the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 to present-day controversies about illegal aliens and their children, the author argues that no human being subject to the governance of the United States should be a "stranger to the Constitution." Thus, whenever the government asserts its power to impose obligations on individuals, it brings them within the constitutional system and should afford them constitutional rights. In Neuman's view, this mutuality of obligation is the most persuasive approach to extending constitutional rights extraterritorially to all U.S. citizens and to those aliens on whom the United States seeks to impose legal responsibilities. Examining both mutuality and more flexible theories, Neuman defends some constitutional constraints on immigration and deportation policies and argues that the political rights of aliens need not exclude suffrage. Finally, in regard to whether children born in the United States to illegally present alien parents should be U.S. citizens, he concludes that the Constitution's traditional shield against the emergence of a hereditary caste of "illegals" should be vigilantly preserved.

Contented among Strangers

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Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252054350
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Contented among Strangers by : Linda Schelbitzki Pickle

Download or read book Contented among Strangers written by Linda Schelbitzki Pickle and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-11-20 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German-Americans make up one of the largest ethnic groups in the United States, yet their very success at assimilating has also made them one of the least visible. Contented among Strangers examines the central role German-speaking women in rural areas of the Midwest played in preserving their ethnic and cultural identity. Even while living far from their original homelands, these women applied traditional European patterns of rural family life and values to their new homes in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. As a result they were more content with their modest lives than were their Anglo-American counterparts. Through personal recollections--including interesting diary material translated by the author, church and community documents, and migration and census data--Pickle reveals the diversity and richness of the women's experiences.

A Government of Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
ISBN 13 : 9780815705192
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis A Government of Strangers by : Hugh Heclo

Download or read book A Government of Strangers written by Hugh Heclo and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do political appointees try to gain control of the Washington bureaucracy? How do high-ranking career bureaucrats try to ensure administrative continuity? The answers are sought in this analysis of the relations between appointees and bureaucrats that uses the participants' own words to describe the imperatives they face and the strategies they adopt. Shifting attention away form the well-publicized actions of the President, High Heclo reveals the little-known everyday problems of executive leadership faced by hundreds of appointees throughout the executive branch. But he also makes clear why bureaucrats must deal cautiously with political appointees and with a civil service system that offers few protections for broad-based careers of professional public service. The author contends that even as political leadership has become increasingly bureaucratized, the bureaucracy has become more politicized. Political executives—usually ill-prepared to deal effectively with the bureaucracy—often fail to recognize that the real power of the bureaucracy is not its capacity for disobedience or sabotage but its power to withhold services. Statecraft for political executives consists of getting the changes they want without losing the bureaucratic services they need. Heclo argues further that political executives, government careerists, and the public as well are poorly served by present arrangements for top-level government personnel. In his view, the deficiencies in executive politics will grow worse in the future. Thus he proposes changes that would institute more competent management of presidential appointments, reorganize the administration of the civil service personnel system, and create a new Federal Service of public managers.

The Liberty of Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190287144
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis The Liberty of Strangers by : Desmond King

Download or read book The Liberty of Strangers written by Desmond King and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harry S. Truman once said, "Ours is a nation of many different groups, of different races, of different national origins." And yet, the debate over what it means--and what it takes--to be an American remains contentious. Nationalist solidarity, many claim, requires a willful blending into the assimilationist alloy of these United States. Others argue that the interests of both nation and individual are best served by allowing multiple traditions to flourish--a salad bowl of identities and allegiances, rather than a melting pot. Tracing how Americans have confronted and relinquished, but mostly clung to group identities over the past century, Desmond King here debunks one of the guiding assumptions of American nationhood, namely that group distinction and identification would gradually dissolve over time, creating a "postethnic" nation. Over the course of the twentieth century, King shows, the divisions in American society arising from group loyalties have consistently proven themselves too strong to dissolve. For better or for worse, the often-disparaged politics of multiculturalism are here to stay, with profound implications for America's democracy. Americans have now entered a post-multiculturalist settlement in which the renewal of democracy continues to depend on groups battling it out in political trenches, yet the process is ruled by a newly invigorated and strengthened state. But Americans' resolute embrace of their distinctive identities has ramifications not just internally and domestically but on the world stage as well. The image of one-people American nationhood so commonly projected abroad camouflages the country's sprawling, often messy diversity: a lesson that nation-builders worldwide cannot afford to ignore as they attempt to accommodate ever-evolving group needs and the demands of individuals to be treated equally. Spanning the entire twentieth century and encompassing immigration policies, the nationalistic fallout from both world wars, the civil rights movement, and nation-building efforts in the postcolonial era, The Liberty of Strangers advances a major new interpretation of American nationalism and the future prospects for diverse democracies.

Saints and Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801882531
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (825 download)

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Book Synopsis Saints and Strangers by : Joseph A. Conforti

Download or read book Saints and Strangers written by Joseph A. Conforti and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-01-09 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of colonial New England, this work synthesizes the scholarship to explore how Puritan saints and "strangers" to Puritanism participated in the making of colonial New England. Aimed at general readers and college students as well as historians, it shows that New England was neither as Puritan nor as insular as most familiar stories imply.

Strangers in the Land

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Author :
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813531236
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (312 download)

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Book Synopsis Strangers in the Land by : John Higham

Download or read book Strangers in the Land written by John Higham and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book attempts a general history of the anti-foreign spirit that I have defined as nativism. It tries to show how American nativism evolved its own distinctive patterns, how it has ebbed and flowed under the pressure of successive impulses in American history, how it has fared at every social level and in every section where it left a mark, and how it has passed into action. Fundamentally, this remains a study of public opinion, but I have sought to follow the movement of opinion wherever it led, relating it to political pressures, social organization, economic changes, and intellectual interests."--from the Preface, taken from back cover.

A Country of Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 1101973595
Total Pages : 624 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis A Country of Strangers by : David K. Shipler

Download or read book A Country of Strangers written by David K. Shipler and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-04-20 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Country of Strangers is a magnificent exploration of the psychological landscape where blacks and whites meet. To tell the story in human rather than abstract terms, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David K. Shipler bypasses both extremists and celebrities and takes us among ordinary Americans as they encounter one another across racial lines. We learn how blacks and whites see each other, how they interpret each other's behavior, and how certain damaging images and assumptions seep into the actions of even the most unbiased. We penetrate into dimensions of stereotyping and discrimination that are usually invisible, and discover the unseen prejudices and privileges of white Americans, and what black Americans make of them. We explore the competing impulses of integration and separation: the reference points by which the races navigate as they venture out and then withdraw; the biculturalism that many blacks perfect as they move back and forth between the white and black worlds, and the homesickness some blacks feel for the comfort of all-black separateness. There are portrayals of interracial families and their multiracial children--expert guides through the clashes created by racial blending in America. We see how whites and blacks each carry the burden of our history. Black-white stereotypes are dissected: the physical bodies that we see, the mental qualities we imagine, the moral character we attribute to others and to ourselves, the violence we fear, the power we seek or are loath to relinquish. The book makes clear that we have the ability to shape our racial landscape--to reconstruct, even if not perfectly, the texture of our relationships. There is an assessment of the complexity confronting blacks and whites alike as they struggle to recognize and define the racial motivations that may or may not be present in a thought, a word, a deed. The book does not prescribe, but it documents the silences that prevail, the listening that doesn't happen, the conversations that don't take place. It looks at relations between minorities, including blacks and Jews, and blacks and Koreans. It explores the human dimensions of affirmative action, the intricate contacts and misunderstandings across racial lines among coworkers and neighbors. It is unstinting in its criticism of our society's failure to come to grips with bigotry; but it is also, happily, crowded with black people and white people who struggle in their daily lives to do just that. A remarkable book that will stimulate each of us to reexamine and better understand our own deepest attitudes in regard to race in America.

The Love of Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691210403
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis The Love of Strangers by : Nile Green

Download or read book The Love of Strangers written by Nile Green and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a group of Iranian students sought love and learning in Jane Austen's London In July 1815, six Iranian students arrived in London under the escort of their chaperone, Captain Joseph D'Arcy. Their mission was to master the modern sciences behind the rapid rise of Europe. Over the next four years, they lived both the low life and high life of Regency London, from being down and out after their abandonment by D’Arcy to charming their way into society and landing on the gossip pages. The Love of Strangers tells the story of their search for love and learning in Jane Austen’s England. Drawing on the Persian diary of the student Mirza Salih and the letters of his companions, Nile Green vividly describes how these adaptable Muslim migrants learned to enjoy the opera and take the waters at Bath. But there was more than frivolity to their student years in London. Burdened with acquiring the technology to defend Iran against Russia, they talked their way into the observatories, hospitals, and steam-powered factories that placed England at the forefront of the scientific revolution. All the while, Salih dreamed of becoming the first Muslim to study at Oxford. The Love of Strangers chronicles the frustration and fellowship of six young men abroad to open a unique window onto the transformative encounter between an Evangelical England and an Islamic Iran at the dawn of the modern age. This is that rarest of books about the Middle East and the West: a story of friendships.

In The Company of Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Hera books Ltd
ISBN 13 : 1804369039
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis In The Company of Strangers by : Awais Khan

Download or read book In The Company of Strangers written by Awais Khan and published by Hera books Ltd. This book was released on 2022-10-20 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She had everything she ever wanted – apart from love. As the wife of a wealthy but cruel businessman, Mona has all her heart desires: money, friends, social status... everything aside from freedom. Reconnecting with old friend, Meera, introduces her to a world of glamour, parties and covert affairs. And when she meets Ali, a young man whose beautiful exterior hides the pain of his humble roots and family tragedy, Mona feels alive for the very first time. Heady with love, Mona and Ali begin a delicate game of deceit that spirals out of control. But in a world where danger lurks on every corner, their forbidden love may not only destroy Mona’s marriage, but have tragic and long-lasting consequences. A captivating tale of love and loss, set against a backdrop of contemporary Pakistan that fans of Christy Lefteri and Lucinda Riley will love.

Land of Strangers

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745660622
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

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Book Synopsis Land of Strangers by : Ash Amin

Download or read book Land of Strangers written by Ash Amin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-24 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impersonality of social relationships in the society of strangers is making majorities increasingly nostalgic for a time of closer personal ties and strong community moorings. The constitutive pluralism and hybridity of modern living in the West is being rejected in an age of heightened anxiety over the future and drummed up aversion towards the stranger. Minorities, migrants and dissidents are expected to stay away, or to conform and integrate, as they come to be framed in an optic of the social as interpersonal or communitarian. Judging these developments as dangerous, this book offers a counter-argument by looking to relations that are not reducible to local or social ties in order to offer new suggestions for living in diversity and for forging a different politics of the stranger. The book explains the balance between positive and negative public feelings as the synthesis of habits of interaction in varied spaces of collective being, from the workplace and urban space, to intimate publics and tropes of imagined community. The book proposes a series of interventions that make for public being as both unconscious habit and cultivated craft of negotiating difference, radiating civilities of situated attachment and indifference towards the strangeness of others. It is in the labour of cultivating the commons in a variety of ways that Amin finds the elements for a new politics of diversity appropriate for our times, one that takes the stranger as there, unavoidable, an equal claimant on ground that is not pre-allocated.

Imperfect Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501706888
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Imperfect Strangers by : Salim Yaqub

Download or read book Imperfect Strangers written by Salim Yaqub and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-10 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Imperfect Strangers, Salim Yaqub argues that the 1970s were a pivotal decade for U.S.-Arab relations, whether at the upper levels of diplomacy, in street-level interactions, or in the realm of the imagination. In those years, Americans and Arabs came to know each other as never before. With Western Europe’s imperial legacy fading in the Middle East, American commerce and investment spread throughout the Arab world. The United States strengthened its strategic ties to some Arab states, even as it drew closer to Israel. Maneuvering Moscow to the sidelines, Washington placed itself at the center of Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Meanwhile, the rise of international terrorism, the Arab oil embargo and related increases in the price of oil, and expanding immigration from the Middle East forced Americans to pay closer attention to the Arab world. Yaqub combines insights from diplomatic, political, cultural, and immigration history to chronicle the activities of a wide array of American and Arab actors—political leaders, diplomats, warriors, activists, scholars, businesspeople, novelists, and others. He shows that growing interdependence raised hopes for a broad political accommodation between the two societies. Yet a series of disruptions in the second half of the decade thwarted such prospects. Arabs recoiled from a U.S.-brokered peace process that fortified Israel’s occupation of Arab land. Americans grew increasingly resentful of Arab oil pressures, attitudes dovetailing with broader anti-Muslim sentiments aroused by the Iranian hostage crisis. At the same time, elements of the U.S. intelligentsia became more respectful of Arab perspectives as a newly assertive Arab American community emerged into political life. These patterns left a contradictory legacy of estrangement and accommodation that continued in later decades and remains with us today.

Talking to Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316535621
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis Talking to Strangers by : Malcolm Gladwell

Download or read book Talking to Strangers written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Killing Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192608754
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (926 download)

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Book Synopsis Killing Strangers by : T. K. Wilson

Download or read book Killing Strangers written by T. K. Wilson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bewildering feature of so much contemporary political violence is its stunning impersonality. Every major city centre becomes a potential shooting gallery; and every metro system a potential bomb alley. Victims just happen, as the saying goes, to 'be in the wrong place at the wrong time'. We accept this contemporary reality - at least to some degree. But we rarely ask: where has it come from historically? Killing Strangers tackles this question head on. It examines how such violence became 'unchained' from inter-personal relationships. It traces the rise of such impersonal violence by examining violence in conjunction with changing social and political realities. In particular, it traces both 'push' and 'pull' - the ability of modern states to force the violence of their challengers into niche forms: and the disturbing new opportunities that technological changes offer to cause mayhem in fresh and original ways. Killing Strangers therefore aims to highlight the very strangeness of contemporary experience when it is viewed against a long-term perspective. Atrocities regularly capture media attention - and just as quickly fade from public view. That is both tragic - and utterly predictable. Deep down we expect no different. And that is why such atrocities must be repeated if our attention is to be re-engaged. Deep down we expect that, too. So Killing Strangers deliberately asks the very simplest of questions. How on earth did we get here?

The Company of Strangers

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691118215
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (182 download)

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Book Synopsis The Company of Strangers by : Paul Seabright

Download or read book The Company of Strangers written by Paul Seabright and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a wonderful book, very well written and accessible to a wide audience.

Stranger Among Friends

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Author :
Publisher : Bantam
ISBN 13 : 030742958X
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Stranger Among Friends by : David Mixner

Download or read book Stranger Among Friends written by David Mixner and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2009-11-25 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From my fear of coming out to coming on strong in the struggle for human rights, this is my American journey, the story of an outsider on the inside, a gay man proudly committed to a life of standing up for freedom. "President Clinton and I were born three days apart. We had both dreamed of serving our country. There was one difference: He could pursue his dream, while I felt I could not. The President was born straight and I was born gay." In this stirring personal history, one of America's most influential gay rights advocates recounts his extraordinary career as a policy maker and adviser to the major political leaders of our time, and his own often anguishing, ultimately triumphant life as a gay man. A longtime personal friend of Bill Clinton, in Stranger Among Friends David Mixner offers an insider's look at the power struggles that occur every day in our nation's capital and candid insights on the Clinton administration's successes and failures. Spanning three decades of human rights activism--from the behind-the-scenes negotiations to the painful betrayals to the hard-won victories--his forthright story unflinchingly explores what it means to be an outsider on the inside, and sends a message of hope to all who have ever stood up for what they believe.

Strangers in a Strange Land

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Author :
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1627796746
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis Strangers in a Strange Land by : Charles J. Chaput

Download or read book Strangers in a Strange Land written by Charles J. Chaput and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The archbishop of Philadelphia presents a hopeful treatise for Catholics on how to live the faith with confidence in today's post-Christian culture while evaluating the reasons behind declining Catholic numbers.