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New Release: Demand the Impossible: Essays in History as Activism

 
Editors: Nathan Wuertenberg and William Horne

Born from the wave of activism that followed the inauguration of President Trump, Demand the Impossible asks scholars what they can do to help solve present-day crises. The twelve essays in this volume draw inspiration from present-day activists. They examine the role of history in shaping ongoing debates over monuments, racism, clean energy, health care, poverty, and the Democratic Party. Together they show the ways that the issues of today are historical expressions of power that continue to shape the present. Adequately addressing them means understanding their origins.

The way our society remembers the past has long served to cement inequality. It is no accident that the ahistorical slogan “make America great again” emerged after decades of income inequality and a generation of funding cuts to higher education. But the movement toward openly addressing injustice and inequality though historical inquiry is growing. Although many historians remain tucked away in ivory towers of their own making, we join a long tradition of activist scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, and C. Vann Woodward, as well as a growing wave of engaged colleagues including Keri Leigh Merritt, who penned the foreword for this volume. As historians and citizens, we feel a responsibility to preserve an authentic vision of the past in a moment riddled with propaganda and lies. In doing so, we hope to help provide a framework to fight the inequities we inherited from prior generations that are repurposed and enshrined by the powerful today.

Nathan Wuertenberg is a doctoral candidate at The George Washington University. He is conducting research for a doctoral dissertation on the 1775 American invasion of Quebec, entitled “Divided We Stand: The American War for Independence, the 1775 Quebec Campaign, and the Rise of Nations in the Twilight of Colonial Empires.” William Horne is a PhD candidate at The George Washington University researching the relationship of race to labor, freedom, and capitalism in post-Civil War Louisiana. His dissertation, “Carceral State: Baton Rouge and its Plantation Environs Across Emancipation,” examines the ways in which white supremacy and capitalism each depended on restricting black freedom in the aftermath of slavery.

New Release: The Politics of Impeachment

This is a book cover, solid red, with white text that says The Politics of Impeachment, centered, with a small white building Margaret Tseng, Editor

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As changes in our political system have developed over the last two centuries, impeachment has grown even more political. The polarization of political parties, the power of interest groups and the expansion of suffrage has deeply impacted who we elect. Those elected officials, in turn, are responsible for overseeing the impeachment process, and their decisions are impacted by party dynamics, interest group influence and the desires of their constituents. While discussion about impeachment seems ubiquitous today, on the state level, impeachments of governors are extremely rare. Over 2,000 people have served as governors in the United States, but only thirteen governors have been impeached and eight removed from office.

On the national level, there have only been two presidential impeachments, but modern presidents have faced increased impeachment efforts. Every president since Ronald Reagan has faced some type of impeachment resolution from the opposing party. President Trump is no exception. Starting from his first day in office, over a million people signed an online impeachment petition and within six months of taking office he faced articles of impeachment from two Democratic congressmen.

This edited volume addresses the increased political nature of impeachment. It is meant to be a wide overview of impeachment on the federal and state level, including: the politics of bringing impeachment articles forward, the politicized impeachment proceedings, the political nature of how one conducts oneself during the proceedings and the political fallout afterwards. The group of men profiled in this book are an interesting, over-the-top group of politicians including Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, William Sulzer, Evan Mecham, and Rod Blagojevich.

Margaret Tseng is Professor and Chair of the Department of History and Politics at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. She also serves as the director of the American Heritage Initiative at Marymount. She earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University. She is co-editor of The Presidents as Commander-in-Chief series with the Naval Institute Press.

Call for Manuscripts

 

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS
 
The Policy Studies Organization (PSO) offers publishing opportunities through its imprint and book program, Westphalia Press. We are looking for original manuscripts, all disciplines are welcome. Westphalia Press is multidisciplinary in scope, and publishes titles on a diversity of topics including history, art, and literature, as well as politics and government.
 
Our focus is on wider readership and dissemination. We offer attractive terms to authors under a print-on-demand model, producing books at a low cost for increased worldwide distribution. As a non-profit academic association, Westphalia Press is a growing part of the PSO's longtime mission of accessible scholarship dissemination, and aims to provide quality volumes at affordable prices.
 
 
 

New Release: The Death Penalty in the Caribbean: Perspectives from the Police

image of a book cover with a palm tree at night with the title text in white over it

 

 

 

 

Editor, Wendell C. Wallace PhD

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"The Death Penalty in the Caribbean is a novel, thought-provoking and timely contribution to the contentious debate of the Death Penalty in the Anglophone Caribbean. This book is directed at policy makers, law enforcement practitioners and scholars, and is a must read for students of criminology, international relations, political science and security studies for the light it sheds on this complex matter."
—Dr. Suzette A. Haughton, senior lecturer of international relations and security studies, Department of Government, The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus.

 

"The Death Penalty in the Caribbean is a clarion call to police leaders and police officers to share their views on the viability of the death penalty as a crime control mechanism for the Caribbean. The book presents cogent and reasoned discussions which are worthy of stimulating future discourse among policy makers, police leaders and academics and is very encouraging for the development of a Caribbean Jurisprudence."
—Stephen Williams, Commissioner of Police, Trinidad and Tobago Police Service.

 

Many individuals have yearned to hear the voices of the often voiceless police leaders in the Caribbean. With this in mind, two controversial topics, policing and the death penalty, are skillfully interwoven into one book in order to respond to this lacuna in the region. The book carries you through a disparate range of emotions, thoughts, frustrations, successes and views as espoused by police leaders throughout the Caribbean. The book is a riveting read that will quench readers’ thirst for knowledge on the death penalty and policing as viewed through the lens of police practitioners. This book is a must read for students of criminology, law, police sciences as well as man on the street and is a great opportunity to listen to the voices of Caribbean police leaders as they bare it all for the readers. If you are interested in understanding the challenges faced by police officers, crime prevention and reduction strategies and the efficacy of the death penalty in the Caribbean, then this is a book for you.

 

Dr. Wendell C. Wallace is a Criminologist, Barrister and a Certified Mediator who also has over 15 years of progressive policing experience. These unique qualifications have placed him in a prime position to deliberate on the myriad of crime related issues such as the Death Penalty, obstacles to policing and crime prevention and reduction strategies that confront Caribbean countries and their police departments.

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