Search results for ""Hoover Institution Press""

In Motherland Lost, Samuel Tadros provides a clear understanding of the Copts—the native Egyptian Christians—and their crisis of modernity in conjunction with the overall developments in Egypt as it faced its own struggles with modernity. He argues against the dominating narratives that have up to now shaped our understanding of the Coptic predicament - their eternal persecution, from the Roman and Byzantine emperors to the rule of Islam, and the National Unity discourse - asserting rather that it is due to the crisis of modernity. Linking the Egyptian and Coptic stories, the book argues that the plight of Copts today is inseparable from the crisis of modernity and the answers developed to address that crisis by the Egyptian state and intellectuals, as well as by the Coptic Church and laypeople. The author asserts that the answers developed by Egyptian intellectuals and state modernisers to the challenge modernity poses revolved around the problem of Islam. The Copts, then, although affected, like their fellow Egyptians, by the challenge of modernity, were faced with a separate crisis: a specific challenge to their ancient church and the need for a new orientation and revival to be able to deal with modernity and its discontents. Tadros concludes that the prospects for Copts in Egypt appear bleak and are leading to a massive Coptic exodus from Egypt.

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In The Illusion of Net Neutrality, coauthors Bob Zelnick and his daughter, Eva Zelnick, sound the alarm on how the ever-increasing threat of regulations, rules, and powerful competing interests could strip the Internet of its unfettered, open nature—the very framework that has allowed it to become a life-altering invention. In just two short decades, this powerful global information and retail powerhouse has changed the way we communicate, how we stay informed on national and world events, how we manage our health and finances, and how we research virtually any subject—from genealogy to astrology.In their riveting, cautionary treatise, the Zelnicks clearly and simply outline the technologies and factors that allowed the Internet to evolve and to become such a society-changing force in such a short period of time. They also carefully lay out the imminent threats that could rob the Internet of its full potential. They expose “network neutrality” for what is truly is, explain how FCC regulations would harm the Internet, and, in the end, make a strong, compelling case for an independent, unregulated Internet

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Vitaly Leonidovich Katayev was an eyewitness to history as he saw the arms race accelerating at an absurd and inexplicable pace, and he understood why. His perspective was from inside the Soviet system, in an office that was devoted to analysis of arms control and defence matters in the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and later in an interdepartmental working group. Vitaly Katayev was a skilled designer and an acute observer. His recollections in this book, along with documents he deposited at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, offer an extraordinary window into Soviet decisions and calculations. This monograph shows how Soviet leaders were often hobbled by a poor understanding of what was happening in the United States, but it also demonstrates that Americans, too, had a weak grasp of what was happening in Moscow, before and after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. The misunderstandings on both sides were a symptom of the deepest chasm of the Cold War and A Memoir of the Missile Age provides a valuable key with which to open the Soviet black box.

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In The Syrian Rebellion, Fouad Ajami offers a detailed historical perspective on the current rebellion in Syria. Focusing on the similarities and the differences in skills between former dictator Hafez al-Assad and his successor son, Bashar, Ajami explains how an irresistible force clashed with an immovable object: the regime versus people who conquered fear to challenge a despot of unspeakable cruelty. Although the people at first hoped that Bashar would open up the prison that Syria had become under his father, it was not to be—and rebellion soon followed.Ajami shows how, for four long decades, the Assad dynasty, the intelligence barons, and the brigade commanders had grown accustomed to a culture of quiescence and silence. But Syrians did not want to be ruled by Bashar's children the way they had been ruled by Bashar and their parents had been by Bashar's father. When the political hurricane known as the Arab Spring hit the region, Bashar al-Assad proclaimed his country's immunity to the troubles. He was wrong. This book tells how a proud people finally came to demand something more than a drab regime of dictatorship and plunder.

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In recent years, the term lawfare has come to describe the use of international law as a political weapon. The Goldstone Report, which was published by the United Nations in September 2009, and the Gaza flotilla controversy, which erupted at the end of May 2010, are examples of it. In both cases, UN officials, distinguished lawyers, and diplomats put forward weak or indefensible legal arguments to condemn actions taken by Israel in self-defense. In this book, Peter Berkowitz exposes these abuses of the international laws of war by bringing into focus the flawed assumptions on which they rest and refuting the defective claims they promulgate.Berkowitz shows that the Goldstone Report engaged in disreputable fact-finding and misapplied the relevant legal tests, even as its mission lacked proper foundations in international law. And he demonstrates that the arguments presented in the Gaza flotilla controversy to condemn Israel's blockade of Gaza as unlawful prove on inspection to be unsound and insubstantial. In both cases, he explains, the result has been to reward terrorists who, in gross violation of the international laws of war, deliberately efface the distinction between civilian and military objects and to punish liberal democracies—in particular Israel and the United States—that expose their soldiers and civilian populations to heightened risk in the quest to wage war lawfully.

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Twenty years ago, John Taylor proposed a simple idea to guide monetary policy. Quickly the idea spread, not only through academia, but also to the trading floors of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve's boardroom in Washington. Now, two decades later, the Taylor rule remains a focal point for discussions of monetary policy around the world. In The Taylor Rule and the Transformation of Monetary Policy, a veritable contributors' "who's who" from the academic and policy communities explain and provide perspectives on John Taylor's revolutionary thinking about monetary policy. From the Great Inflation of the 1970s through the Great Moderation of the 1980s and 1990s to the Great Deviation following the 2001 recession, the contributors analyse Taylor's influences on monetary theory and policy around the world. They explore some of the literature that Taylor inspired and help us understand how the new ways of thinking that he pioneered have influenced actual policy here and abroad.

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'A Muslim has no nationality except his religious beliefs,' said Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, a key figure in the world of political Islam who was executed by the secular regime in his homeland in 1966. For decades, the ideologues of pan-Islam have refused to accept the boundaries and the responsibilities of the order of states. In Trial of a Thousand Years, Charles Hill analyzes the long war of Islamism against the international state system. Hill places the Islamists in their proper historical place, showing that they are but the latest challenge to the requirements that states had placed on themselves since the international system was born in 1648. The author describes the many wars on world order over the modern centuries--the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, World Wars I and II, the cold war--and gives a unique historical perspective to the Islamic challenge of the twenty-first century in Iran, Afghanistan, and beyond. He concludes that America must not give up its values; neither should we retreat by declaring that we will practice them only at home or by telling ourselves that our values are no more worthy than any others selected at random from among the world's many cultures. The first step, he says, is to recognize the problem and then try to develop ways to deal with the exploitation of asymmetries by the enemies of world order.

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Herbert Hoover's "magnum opus"—at last published nearly fifty years after its completion—offers a revisionist reexamination of World War II and its cold war aftermath and a sweeping indictment of the "lost statesmanship" of Franklin Roosevelt. Hoover offers his frank evaluation of Roosevelt's foreign policies before Pearl Harbor and policies during the war, as well as an examination of the war's consequences, including the expansion of the Soviet empire at war's end and the eruption of the cold war against the Communists.

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Stewart A. Baker, a former Homeland Security official, examines the technologies we love—jet travel, computer networks, and biotech—and finds that they are likely to empower new forms of terrorism unless we change our current course a few degrees and overcome resistance to change from business, foreign governments, and privacy advocates. He draws on his Homeland Security experience to show how that was done in the case of jet travel and border security but concludes that heading off disasters in computer networks and biotech will require a hardheaded recognition that privacy must sometimes yield to security, especially as technology changes the risks to both.

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This essay unscrambles gross misconceptions that have made rational debates about tax policies virtually impossible for decades.

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The first English-language book to present a complete picture of this intriguing East European borderland, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture illuminates the perennial problems of identity politics and cultural change that the country has endured.

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In this first up-do-date, single volume history of the Czechs, Agnew provides an introduction to the major themes and contours of Czech history for the general reader–from prehistory and the first Slavs to the Czech Republic's entry into the European Union.

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A government monopoly over drug regulation is not sacrosanct. This hard-hitting book describes the current regulation of drugs by the FDA and proposes a model for fundamental, yet workable, reform—including an innovative proposal for drug testing and certification review.

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Machan and his contributors offer highly unusual insights that expose our "one size fits all" approach to education as misguided and ultimately damaging to learning—and propose a bold entrepreneurial solution, which would require full separation of school and state.

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NATO: Its Past, Present, and Future tells the complete story of the most successful peacetime venture in Western cooperation, from the historic alliance's shaky beginnings to its cold war triumphs, failures and successes, as well as its recent enlargement and its controversial involvement in the Yugoslav imbroglio.

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In Political Environmentalism, Terry Anderson and his contributors show how environmental special interests have indeed provided the high moral ground for economic special interests who stand to gain from legislation that hampers competition. The book documents a range of examples of how politics and environmentalism mix to produce strange bedfellows and perverse results. It shows for instance, how clean air and water legislation based on technology standards actually results in dirtier air and higher costs to consumers. It tells how wilderness designations and Superfund sites are usually determined more by economic interests than by any other factor. And it reveals how the Endangered Species Act puts property up for grabs in the political arena—doing little to save species but consuming considerable resources in the process.

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This concise volume examines the relationship between law, governance, and economic development and shows the main substantive and procedural legal factors that developing nations must address to promote political stability and economic growth, intended for the general informed reader as well as for policymakers in governments and civil society.

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A collection of essays that discusses such issues as the media, immigration, the minimum wage and multiculturalism.

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In Facing the Age Wave, four experts explain the most significant areas of concern created by the aging of the American population and offer possible solutions.David Wise analyzes the declining participation in the labor force by older Americans and the role played in encouraging this phenomenon by Social Security and the early retirement plans funded by employees. Douglas Bernheim measures the inadequacy of personal saving for retirement and proposes methods to encourage saving for the critical senior years. John Shoven and David Wise describe the taxing of pensions as a disincentive to the most important form of saving in this country. David Cutler presents principles that are key to averting the crisis of looming health care costs.Facing the Age Wave is the product of a symposium of distinguished scholars on the subject of aging in America. The symposium was held in the spring of 1997 under the auspices of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

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This compete history of one of the largest non-Slavic ethnic groups charts it from its emergence in the mid–fifteenth century to the present. Olcott details the major events that have shaped the character of the Islamic nation of Kazakhstan, discussing the rise and fall of the Kazakh Khanate, the Kazakhs in imperial Russia, revolutionary and Soviet Kazakhstan, and the struggle for autonomy under Soviet rule.

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These essays identify key failures in modern American education and illuminate some ways in which those in the teaching profession—and their students—can achieve higher levels of performance, making the case for content-rich education and explicit teaching.

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In describing his seven and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, the late Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale has said: "In that atmosphere of death and hopelessness, stripped of the niceties, the amenities of civilization, my ideas on life and leadership crystallized." Despite torture, intimidation, and isolation, Stockdale fulfilled his duties as senior officer among the prisoners with intelligence and courage, defining rules of conduct and maintaining morale. He often described the intense pressures of that situation as a "melting" experience, in which preconceived feelings, fears, and bias melt as one comes to realize that, under the gun, you must grow or fail—or, in some cases, grow or die.This collection of his essays and speeches from the 1980s and 1990s reinforces how that experience formed a lifelong basis for his philosophical thought on issues of character, leadership, integrity, personal and public virtue, and ethics. The selections in this volume all reflect, in one way or another, a central theme: how man can rise with dignity to prevail in the face of adversity.

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This volume evaluates the complex developments between the United States and Korea and offers policy recommendations for how both countries in the future might avoid the bitter politiczation of trade disputes of the recent past and expand their economic relations.

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This is the first English-language volume that brings the history of Latvia to the threshold of the twenty-first century. Until the re-establishment of Latvian independence in 1991, Soviet dominance served for nearly fifty years to hinder publication of any complete and objective historical record of the region. Plakans now places the evolution and formation of the Latvian nation in a balanced, historical framework that stretches from the early medieval period to the present.

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A distinguished panel of scholars from around the world convened at the Hoover Institution in June 1993 to assess prospects for a reunited Korea. Scenarios for reunification identified at that conference are presented in this volume.

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The first comprehensive account of Azerbaijan's rich and tumultuous history up to the present time.

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In Foreign Policies of the Soviet Union, Richard F. Staar places revolutionary contemporary events into historical perspective. Citing Russian-language sources, he charts the recent structural changes within the USSR and how they have affected foreign policy. Detailing the shift of power from the CPSU political bureau to the presidential council, he explores the increasing importance of the foreign affairs ministry in the exercise of presidential power.

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The authors of this volume illustrate the extraordinary success of the Taiwan Relations Act in contributing to regional security and a high level of economic and political stability in one of the world's most tactically unpredictable and volatile areas.

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Herbert Hoover arrived at Stanford in 1891, neither wealthy nor from a distinquished family, and was admitted on the condition that he become "proficient" in English. From that inauspicious beginning came the long and mutually rewarding relationship between Herbert Hoover and his alma mater, Stanford University. During his lifetime Hoover followed several careers: engineer, philanthropist, author, statesman, and president of the United States.George H. Nash points out that Stanford gave Hoover his first chance, and he spent much of his life repaying that debt. The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, the Student Union, the Food Research Institute, the Lou Henry Hoover House, and the Graduate School of Business were direct results of his involvement as a Stanford trustee, his fundraising ability, and his personal philanthropy.Although Hoover in later years was often at odds with both the faculty and administration, Nash's research reveals the enduring ties that bound the man and his university together. Stanford president David Starr Jordan said at Hoover's commencement that men and women "are judged by achievement, not by dreams." Hoover shared that view of life, and Stanford University today is itself part of Herbert Hoover's living legacy of achievement.

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This collection of essays presents a sampling of the significant contributions to twentieth-century economic thought and practice by Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman.Friedman is widely regarded as the leader of the Chicago school of economics, which stresses the importance of the quantity of money as an instrument of governmental policy and as a major determinant of business cycles and inflation. Making an early impact on the economics profession was his analysis of economics as an empirical science, and in particular, his conclusion that the only relevant test of the acceptability of economic hypotheses is the conformity of the predictions they generate with observation. His permanent income theory of consumption, his restatement of the quantity theory of money, and his hypothesis of natural rate of unemployment have by now become part of received economic doctrine.Outside the economic profession, Friedman is best known for his outspoken statements on public policy, particularly his consistent belief that a free-enterprise system with minimum governmental intervention in the economic process will best preserve and extend both human freedom and economic prosperity. A number of the essays reprinted here are eloquent expressions of his commitment to everyone's freedom to choose.In 1976 Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis and monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization polivy.

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This lively, nontechnical book offers a positive reappraisal of the giant corporation. Hessen presents an uncompromising defense of the right of corporation to exist and function freely and outlines and examines the arguments and proposals of Ralph Nader, who is recognized as the most vocal critic of the corporation, in addition to addressing various other issues regarding the corporation.

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The author, writing on behalf of Hoover's Koret task Force on K–12 Education, presents a convincing case that, despite the controversy it has ignited, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law is making a positive difference and should be renewed. He outlines ten specific lessons and recommendations that identify the strengths and weaknesses of NCLB and offers suggestions for improving the law, building on its current foundation.

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This book reports on a three-year study of public housing tenants and their evaluation of public housing in Wilmington, Delaware.

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Drawn from presentations made at the Hoover Institution's October 2007 conference, this collection of essays examines the practical steps necessary to address the current security challenges of nuclear weapons and to move toward the Reykjavik goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons. The distinguished group of contributors includes former officials of the past six administrations—Republican and Democratic—along with senior scholar and scientific experts on nuclear issues.

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This collection of twenty-five essays written over the past five years by international economic policy expert Charles Wolf Jr. covers a range of worldwide economic, political, security, and diplomatic issues. Wolf looks at the challenges facing the United States at home and around the globe including critical issues regarding China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Iraq, and other key locales. Throughout the book, the author offers his often-controversial viewpoints, such as his assertion that "unilateralism" in U.S. national security policy may sometimes be preferable to multilateralism or that the erroneous expectation that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons does not imply that the intelligence leading to this expectation was flawed. Wolf reexamines each essay in the light of later developments with a "postaudit" comment to address whether the original argument is still valid and relevant compared with when it was first written.

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The expert contributors to this volume tell how state laws and policies have stacked the deck against charter schools by limiting the number of charter schools allowed in a state, forbidding for-profit firms from holding charters, forcing them to pay rent out of operating funds, and other ways. They explain how these policies can be amended to level the playing field and give charter schools—and the children they serve—a fairer chance to succeed.

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The expert contributors to this volume tell how state laws and policies have stacked the deck against charter schools by limiting the number of charter schools allowed in a state, forbidding for-profit firms from holding charters, forcing them to pay rent out of operating funds, and other ways. They explain how these policies can be amended to level the playing field and give charter schools—and the children they serve—a fairer chance to succeed.

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The author reveals the dangerous weaknesses undermining domestic intelligence in the United States and tells why a new national security service should not be part of the FBI. He explains the need for a new domestic intelligence agency, modeled on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and lodged in the Department of Homeland Security.

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A diverse collection of readings from scholarly journals, government reports, think tank studies, newspapers, and books that offers a comprehensive look at the drug debate. With each section featuring opposing articles written by many of the foremost authorities in their respective fields, the book offers a concise view of the many divergent viewpoints surrounding drug policy in America.

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With a journalist's eye for detail, Robert Zelnick looks at Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's key role in the controversial University of Michigan affirmative action cases of 2003, providing key background information, detailed descriptions of daily arguments, and an evaluation of the final rulings.

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To the doomsayers who maintain that natural resources are being depleted and the environment is getting worse, Terry Anderson and his fellow contributors offer a bold retort: it's getting better all the time. They present a powerful argument that, through such established institutions as property rights, the rules of law, and limited government, economic growth and environmental quality will both flourish.You Have to Admit It's Getting Better shows how, by focusing our energies on developing and protecting the institutions of freedom, rather than on regulating human use of natural resources through political processes, we can in fact have our environmental cake and eat it, too. The book offers a number of often-surprising revelations that debunk many commonly held beliefs about the future of our environment. It shows, for example, how liberalization of international trade is more likely to improve environmental quality than reduce it. It also explains how the prosperity and improved human well-being that we enjoy today are not leaving future generations worse off, but leaving them with more capital and larger stocks of natural resources. Throughout the book, the authors repeatedly show that economic growth is not the antithesis of environmental quality: rather, the two go hand in hand if the incentives are right.

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Thomas Sowell takes some of his most popular newspaper columns and examines the broader questions beyond the events which inspired them. One of conservatism's most articulate voices dissects today's most important economic, racial, political, education, legal, and social issues, sharing his entertaining and thought-provoking insights on a wide range of contentious subjects.

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The "red files" revealed. Examining the period from the early 1930s through Stalin's death in 1953—the height of the Stalinist regime—this enlightening book reveals what we have learned from the archives, what has surprised us, and what has confirmed what we already knew. Most of the authors have worked with these archives since they were opened.

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School Figures presents statistics, along with historical trends and cross-sectional comparisons, to provide a clear, factual picture of today's K–12 education landscape, including information on school demographics, cost and finance, testing and achievement, public school reform, and other key areas.

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The United States, Taiwan, and China are bound within a “silicon triangle.” Semiconductors link our geopolitics, our ongoing economic prosperity, and our technological competitiveness. This book draws on the deliberations of a multidisciplinary Hoover Institution–Asia Society working group of technologists, economists, military strategists, industry players, and regional policy experts to contemplate the dynamic global supply chain in semiconductors—one in which US industry faces growing vulnerabilities, China aggressively promotes home-grown semiconductor mastery, and Taiwan finds itself with a crucial monopoly on high-end logic chips sought by buyers globally. Silicon Triangle seeks to present a balanced view of how policies of the United States and its partners around semiconductors can increase the resilience of shared supply chains—and contribute to deterring conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

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Clint Bolick and Kate J. Hardiman begin with a thought experiment: how would we structure a 21st-century K-12 school system if we were starting from scratch, attending to contemporary parental needs and harnessing the power of technology? Maintaining that the status quo is unacceptable, they take a forward-thinking look at how choice, competition, deregulation, and decentralization can create disruptive innovation and reform education for all students.The US Supreme Court proclaimed 65 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that our schools must provide equal educational opportunities, but the authors argue we have yet to make good on that promise. School systems are bound to antiquated structures, outdated technology, and bureaucratic systems that work for adults, not children.The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how ossified the traditional public school system has become. Today's ruptures in traditional learning create opportunity for reinvention. Unshackled explains that technology can redefine the ways students learn in and out of the classroom and highlights the benefits of expanding educational freedom so that families are able to choose an education that fits their child's needs.

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What are the keys to good economic policy? George P. Shultz and John B. Taylor draw from their several decades of experience at the forefront of national economic policy making to show how market fundamentals beat politically popular government interventions—be they from Democrats or Republicans—as a recipe for success.Choose Economic Freedom reconstructs debates from the 1960s and 1970s about the use of wage and price controls as tools of policy, showing how brilliant economists can hold diametrically opposed views about the wisdom of using government intervention to spur the economy. Speeches and documents from the era include a recently unearthed memo from Arthur Burns, Federal Reserve chair, in 1971, in which he argues in favor of controls.Under Burns's guidance and in the face of stubborn inflation, Nixon introduced wage and price guidelines and freezes. But over the long run, these became a drag on the economy and ultimately failed. It wasn't until the Reagan administration that these controls were reversed, resulting in a vibrant economy.The words of iconic economist Milton Friedman—whose "free to choose" ethos inspired the free-market revolution of the Reagan era—along with lessons Shultz and Taylor learned from the front lines, demonstrate that tried-and-true economic policy works.

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Fyodor Sergeyevich Olferieff (1885-1971) led a remarkable life in the shadows of history. This book presents his memoirs for the first time, translated and annotated by his granddaughter Tanya A. Cameron. Born into a noble family, Olferieff was a Russian career military officer who observed firsthand key events of the early twentieth century, including the 1905-7 revolution, the Great War, the collapse of the imperial state, and the civil wars in Ukraine and Crimea. Olferieff wrestles with moral and political questions, wondering whether his own advantages could be justified—and whether, if born a peasant, he might have thrown himself into the revolution. As Gary Hamburg writes in an illuminating companion essay, Olferieff wrote "to understand himself and to record his broken life for posterity" as a privileged observer of a bloody, historically pivotal era.

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