September Acquisitions Highlights
Women and the Art of Negotiating (Initiate and Implement the Process More Easily)
by Juliet Nierenberg, Irene S. Ross
Provides a complete guide for full understanding and control of the process of negotiation. Shows how to prepare successfully, overcome emotional barriers and deal with difficult people in personal relationships, as well as the workplace. A must for all women at a time when their opportunities, responsibilities and participation are expanding. Addresses the special needs & abilities of women with regard to negotiating. Learn to use your talents of intuition & flexibility to best advantage, overcome fear of success & lack of aggressiveness, create a positive negotiating climate, more.
Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It
by Robert Jerome Glennon
From the author of Water Follies, Robert Glennon captures the irony—and tragedy—of America’s water crisis in a book that is both frightening and wickedly comical. From manufactured snow for tourists in Atlanta to trillions of gallons of water flushed down the toilet each year, Unquenchable reveals the heady extravagances and everyday inefficiencies that are sucking the nation dry.
American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World, 1776-1989: A Global Perspective
by George Billias
American constitutionalism represents this country's greatest gift to human freedom, yet its story remains largely untold. For over two hundred years, its ideals, ideas, and institutions influenced different peoples in different lands at different times. American constitutionalism and the revolutionary republican documents on which it is based affected countless countries by helping them develop their own constitutional democracies. Western constitutionalism—of which America was a part along with Britain and France—reached a major turning point in global history in 1989, when the forces of democracy exceeded the forces of autocracy for the first time.
Historian George Athan Billias traces the spread of American constitutionalism—from Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean region, to Asia and Africa—beginning chronologically with the American Revolution and the fateful "shot heard round the world" and ending with the conclusion of the Cold War in 1989. The American model contributed significantly by spearheading the drive to greater democracy throughout the Western world, and Billias's landmark study tells a story that will change the way readers view the important role American constitutionalism played during this era.
The Discretionary President: The Promise and Peril of Executive Power
by Benjamin A. Kleinerman
George W. Bush's use of the war on terror to justify the creation of a unitary executive, acting outside and even against the law, was a source of praise and blame for his administration. Immediately after 9/11, a constitutionalist would have worried about the peril of executive power, but today he might worry that we ignore its promise and distrust discretionary actions that truly ought to be taken by presidents in times of peril.
Benjamin Kleinerman addresses the fundamental question of what role discretionary executive power should play in a constitutional order, reexamining what has become an intractable debate to show that what can destroy our Constitution also has the potential to save it. Kleinerman traces this problem from Hobbes through Lincoln to address one of the central dilemmas of our post-9/11 age: how to empower the president to respond to legitimate threats without endangering the constitutional order. He stakes out a middle ground in this highly contentious debate, affirming that a president has the discretionary power to act for the public good without statutory authorization—but warning that, to remain constitutional, it must be truly discretionary power that could not be legalized.
Kleinerman articulates and defends a "constitutional politics of necessity," best exemplified by Lincoln, in which opponents should call on presidents to defend the necessity of exceptional actions and explain why they had to be taken outside the existing legal framework, beyond simply being "for the public good." He observes that Lincoln acknowledged the illegality of his actions while claiming their necessity but that Bush claimed powers as if they were permanent. Healso reexamines separation of powers in light of executive discretion, suggesting that, during times of insecurity, discretionary executive power can be devoted to preservation of the Constitution so long as the other branches remain vigilant.
Kleinerman argues for a president sufficiently strong to take actions without which we cannot be secure yet sufficiently circumscribed that such actions do not become the norm. His book delineates the tough distinctions citizens need to make between the necessary exercise of extraordinary powers and the dangerous aggrandizement of unnecessary power.
The Science of False Memory
by Brainerd, C.J. 
Is false memory primarily associative? Is it at least partially cognitive? Do humans store real memories apart from those they construct? Is the study of false memory merely a listing of lying and error? The authors (both human development, Cornell U.) cover the issues long associated with false memory and also the most recent research, finding some startling notions and applications. They describe the basic science of false memory in terms of its theoretical explanations and its control through opponent process in adults, children and adolescents. They show how false memory figures in such applications as criminal investigations involving children and adults and psychotherapy. They close with some "growing tips" about further study and applications.
In the Name of Justice: Leading Experts Reexamine the Classic Article, The Aims of the Criminal Law
by Timothy Lynch
Is the American criminal justice system dysfunctional? Our criminal codes are so voluminous that they bewilder not only the average citizen, but also the average lawyer. Our courthouses are so busy that they no longer have time for trials. And the American prison population now leads that of the world. Are these trends desirable, satisfactory, or disturbing? In order to answer that question, one must first be clear about the fundamental purpose of the criminal law. Fifty years ago, the distinguished Harvard law professor Henry M. Hart Jr. wrote his classic article entitled The Aims of the Criminal Law. In this volume, America's leading judges and scholars reexamine Professor Hart's thesis and the first principles of American criminal law.
After Wallace: The 1986 Contest for Governor and Political Change in Alabama
by Patrick R. Cotter, James Glen Stovall
All Alabama elections are colorful, but the 1986 gubernatorial contest may trump them all for its sheer strangeness. With the retirement of an aging and ill George Wallace, both the issues and candidates contending for the office were able to set the course of Alabama politics for generations to follow. Whereas the Wallace regimes were particular to Alabama, and the gubernatorial campaign was conducted in a partial vacuum with his absence, Alabama also experienced a wave of partisan realignment. A once solidly Democratic South was undergoing a tectonic political shift as white voters in large numbers abandoned their traditional Democratic political home for the revived Republicans, a party shaped in many respects by the Wallace presidential bids of 1968 and 1972 and the Reagan revolution of the 1980s.
Alabama’s own Democratic party contributed to this massive shift with self–destructive campaign behavior that disgusted many of its traditional voters who wound up staying home or voting for a little–known Republican. From the gubernatorial election of 1986 came the shaky balance between the two parties that exists today.
After Wallace recollects and analyzes how these shifts occurred, citing extensive newspaper coverage from the time as well as personal observations and poll data collected by the authors. This volume is certain to be a valuable work for any political scientist, especially those with an interest in Alabama or southern politics.
The National Security Court System: A Natural Evolution of Justice in an Age of Terror
by Glenn Sulmasy
The recent Boumediene v. Bush decision, which tossed aside the dysfunctional military court system envisioned by the Bush administration and upheld the right of habeas corpus for detainees, promises to throw national security law into chaos, and will also probably lead to the closing of Guantanamo. In this timely and much-needed book, Glenn Sulmasy, one of America's leading experts on national security law, opens with a much-needed history of America's long and complicated experience with such courts since the early days of the Republic. After tracing their evolution in the contemporary era, Sulmasy argues for a more sensible approach to the global war on terror's unique set of prisoners. He proposes a reasonable "third way" solution that avoids even more extreme measures, on the one hand, and a complete shuttering of the court system, on the other. Instead, he advocates creating a separate standing judicial system, overseen by civilian judges, that allows for habeas corpus appeals and which focuses exclusively on existing war-on-terror cases as well as the inevitable cases to come. For all those who want to explore the crucial legal issues behind the headlines about Gitmo and the rights of detainees, The National Security Court System offers a clear-headed assessment of where we are and where we ought to be going.