Search results for ""hoover institution press,u.s.""

Morton Keller recounts his “not extraordinary life played out in quite extraordinary times”—from the Great Depression through World War Two, the cold war, the sixties, and 9/11. A classic American saga of respectable achievement from relatively humble origins, his life through eight-plus decades as a dues-paying member of the middle class resonates beyond the individual to echo the experiences, the beliefs, and the values of his generation.

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John Hughes examines lessons learned from the practice of public diplomacy—especially international broadcasting—in the cold war and tells how the United States could more effectively counter extremism, promote democracy, and improve understanding of itself in the Islamic world. He offers Indonesia as a successful example of the melding of democracy, Islam, and modernity and suggests that this country and other nations where Islam and democracy coexist—such as Turkey—could play a significant role in helping thwart Islamist extremism.

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Drawing on more than fifteen years of work on Social Security policy, first in the U.S. Senate and later in the White House, Chuck Blahous argues that our national Social Security debate is more polarized than it needs to be, even given the depth of legitimate differences over the program's appropriate future direction. Unless we identify and understand our respective initial assumptions, he explains, we will not be able to fathom the conflicting policy initiatives that they drive. In Social Security: The Unfinished Work he presents some often misunderstood, basic factual background about Social Security. He discusses how it affects program participants and explains the true demographic, economic, and political factors that threaten its future efficacy.Beginning with a review of the events of 1983, focusing on the substance, intent, and scorekeeping of that year's Social Security reforms, Blahous explains what happened then, why, and how it led to sharply divergent views of program finances during the Bush administration's reform initiative and on through today. He dissects competing positions in the current debate and concludes that, unless and until there is broader understanding of how these analytic differences drive opposing policy conclusions, we will continue to talk past and over each other, with little room for negotiation and compromise.

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For centuries, Islam and the West have been competing to define Turkish identity. Decades of close cooperation between Turkey and its NATO allies generated Western confidence that Turkey was a reliable ally and that its democratic system was sufficiently resilient to weather periodic political crises. But in recent years, those who have sought to soften the boundary between Islam and public life have become more organized and influential in Turkish politics.In Torn Country, Zeyno Baran examines the intense struggle between Turkey’s secularists and Islamists in their most recent battles over their country’s destination. Looking into the fate of both Turkey’s secularism and its democratic experiment, she shows that, for all the flaws of its political journey, the modern Turkish state has managed to maintain an essential separation between religion and the political realm—a separation that is now in jeopardy

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In September 2001, Europeans might have felt comfortable thinking that Al-Qaeda was only a scourge to the United States; some indulged in the unkind speculation that the United States had only itself to blame for 9/11. That innocence is now gone in the wake of attacks in Madrid and London. Since then Europe has oscillated through a range of stances in relation to Islamist terrorism, varying from country to country and across the political spectrum. In Freedom or Terror, Russell A. Berman offers an analysis of Europe’s ambivalence toward jihadist terror and the spread of aggressive Islamism, with particular emphasis on the European responses—or lack thereof—to Islamist terrorism.Berman describes how some European countries opt for appeasing and apologizing for terror, whereas others stand up for freedom. In individual chapters he examines the responses of England, France, Germany, and the smaller nations: Belgium, Holland, and Denmark. He also analyzes the dialectic of genocide and terror in Bosnia. Each country addresses the issues in light of its particular institutions and national history. Ultimately, the author argues that the European responses to Islamist terrorism involve the confrontation of contemporary postmodern European culture with the extremist values of jihadist radicals. Whether Europe is truly up to the challenge will only become clear in the struggles of the next decade.

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Joshua Teitelbaum evaluates Saudi foreign policy in the Persian Gulf and in the Arab-Israeli peace process and provides a shrewd assessment of the Saudi-U.S. relationship. He debunks the traditional view of Saudi foreign policy that emphasizes the Saudi concern with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and explains how the true concern of Arabia's rulers is the ideological battle that has been opened up by Iran's push into Arab affairs.

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Health care in the United States has made remarkable advances during the past forty years. Yet our health care system also has several well-known problems: high costs, significant numbers of people without insurance, and glaring gaps in quality and efficiency—and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is not the answer. This second edition of Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise details a better approach, offering fundamental reform alternatives centering on tax changes, insurance market changes, and redesigning Medicare and Medicaid.The book proposes five specific reforms to improve the ability of markets to create a lower-cost, higher-quality health care system that is responsive to the needs of individuals, including increasing individual involvement, deregulating insurance markets and redesigning Medicare and Medicaid, improving availability and quality of information, enhancing competition, and reforming the malpractice system. The authors show that, by promoting cost-conscious behavior and competition in both private markets and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, we can slow the rate of growth of health care costs, expand access to high-quality health care, and slow down runaway spending.

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In Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina, Paul Gregory sheds light on how the world’s first socialist state went terribly wrong and why it was likely to veer off course through the story of two of Stalin’s most prominent victims. A founding father of the Soviet Union at the age of twenty-nine, Nikolai Bukharin was the editor of Pravda and an intimate of Lenin’s exile. (Lenin later dubbed him “the favorite of the party.”) But after Bukharin crossed swords with Stalin over their differing visions of the world’s first socialist state, he paid the ultimate price with his life. His wife, Anna Larina, the stepdaughter of a high Bolshevik official, spent much of her life in prison camps and in exile after her husband’s execution.Drawn from Hoover Institution archival documents, the story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina begins with the optimism of the socialist revolution and then turns into a dark saga of foreboding and terror as the game changes from political struggle to physical survival. Told for the most part in the words of the participants, it is, as Robert Conquest says in his foreword, “a story told to show the horrors of fate, of personal mistreatment and suffering by real people.” It is also a story of courage and cowardice, strength and weakness, misplaced idealism, missed opportunities, bungling, and, above all, love.

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Drawing from the findings of the Stanford Task Force on Preventive Force, Abraham D. Sofaer offers a practical guide to identifying and considering the issues relevant to preventive uses of force, in the hope that such uses of force, if undertaken, will advance national and international security and the purposes of the United Nations Charter. The book examines such key questions as What are the dangers and limitations of relying on preventive force in dealing with security threats? When, if ever, would states be justified in using preventive force without U. N. Security Council approval? What standards and procedures could enhance the legitimacy of preventive force?The Best Defense? Legitimacy and Preventive Force reveals that, although preventive uses of force in general pose even greater dangers and potentially adverse consequences than uses of force in self-defense, the costs of each type of error depend on the consequences of acting versus not acting in particular cases. No general rule is available to ensure foolproof decisions. It makes sense, the author concludes, to encourage states to undertake a systematic appraisal of the merits of any threat or use of preventive force based on legal standards, U.N. Charter purposes, and established norms of conduct.

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Before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans had thriving societies based on governing structures and property rights that encouraged productivity and trade. These traditional economies were crippled by federal law that has held Indians in colonial bondage. This book provides the knowledge for tribes trapped in "white tape" to revitalize their economies and communities.

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In December 1999, more than forty members of government, industry, and academia assembled at the Hoover Institution to discuss this problem and explore possible countermeasures. The Transnational Dimension of Cyber Crime and Terrorism summarizes the conference papers and exchanges, addressing pertinent issues in chapters that include a review of the legal initiatives undertaken around the world to combat cyber crime, an exploration of the threat to civil aviation, analysis of the constitutional, legal, economic, and ethical constraints on use of technology to control cyber crime, a discussion of the ways we can achieve security objectives through international cooperation, and more. Much has been said about the threat posed by worldwide cyber crime, but little has been done to protect against it. A transnational response sufficient to meet this challenge is an immediate and compelling necessity—and this book is a critical first step in that direction.

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The essays in this volume reconsider the case of the basic tenets of the U.S. political tradition, outlined in the Declaration of Independence and expressed in much of the U.S. legal system. The authors answer the innumerable criticisms advanced against the political philosophy of natural individual human rights over the last two centuries.

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The majority of Latin American revolutionaries and guerrillas have now laid down their weapons and opted to participate in that region's democratic processes. What brought about this transformation? When the AK-47s Fall Silent brings together for the first time many of these former Latin revolutionaries from both sides of the conflicts—who tell their own stories, in their own words.

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A distinguished group of international scholars debates the state of change or continuity in North Korea's post--Kim II Sung regime--shedding light on one of the world's most closed societies, its potential to adapt to post--cold war realities, and the prospects for a peaceful and stable Korean peninsula.

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Sowell challenges all the assumptions of contemporary liberalism on issues ranging from the economy to race to education in this collection of controversial essays, and captures his thoughts on politics, race, and common sense with a section at the end for thought-provoking quotes.

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Over the past three decades the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has achieved a degree of economic development that has attracted worldwide attention. Its economy is growing at a pace that will qualify the ROC as a developed country by the turn of the century; in Asia it will be second only to Japan in per capita income. How has the economy been able to expand as rapidly as it has? What governmental policies enable it to sustain an annual growth rate that is at the forefront of the newly industrializing countries? These centrally important questions guide Schive's study of the economic modernization of Taiwan.

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This diary offers an important new perspective on the critical events leading to the end of the Chinese civil war. From September 1945 to April 1946, Chang Kia-ngau kept a daily log in the negotiations between Nationalist China and Soviet Union to recover Manchuria from Soviet military occupation. The diary reveals that the Russians actively sought Nationalist China's cooperation in rehabilitating and operating the huge industrial complex that the Japanese had built in Manchuria during the 1930s and 1940s. The Russians were willing to let Chiang Kai-shek's government take control over Manchuria if the Nationalists would pledge that only Russia would be able to exert foreign influence in Manchuria. Chang Kia-ngau's diary is an eyewitness account of how Manchuria, one of the world's greatest industrial sites, fell to the control of the Chinese Red Army and thus led to the communist victory over Chiang Kai-shek. This book will interest students of cold war rivalry, U.S. foreign policy, Soviet diplomacy, and Chinese history alike.

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Economic analysis of the many roles governments play in contemporary societies.

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The twenty-one essays in this book provide an overview of the contributions of Nobel laureate and Hoover Institution honorary fellow Friedrich A. von Hayek to the fields of economics, political theory, history, and philosophy.

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Expert contributors examine the recent actions of the Federal Reserve and suggest directions for the Fed going forward by drawing on past political, historical, and market principles. They explain how the Fed arrived at its current position, offer ideas on how to exit the situation, and propose new market-based reforms that can help keep the Fed on the road to good monetary policy in the future.

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A renowned educator-psychologist explains how children learn and how family, classroom, and school practices can help them learn more effectively. In addition to drawing on studies of learning outcomes, Herbert Walberg reveals economic research on teacher education and school choice that challenges many popular assumptions. He debunks many of the myths of modern education and outlines the factors that psychologists have found consistently associated with high levels of classroom learning.Walberg reveals why teachers’ classroom practices—not their credentials or experience—are what makes a true difference in student learning. He presents research, showing that young learners thrive when teachers have clear goals, plan effective activities to attain them, and measure student progress. The author also discusses the powerful influence of parents on what students learn within and outside school and how choice programs give parents a stronger role in their children’s education.

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Kori Schake examines key questions about the United States' position of power in the world, including, Why is the United States' power so threatening? Is it sustainable? Does military force still matter? How can we revise current practices to reduce the U.S. cost of managing the system? What accounts for the United States' stunning success in the round of globalization that swept across the international order at the end of the twentieth century? The author also offers suggestions on what issues the next president should focus to build an even stronger foundation of U.S. power.

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In a powerful argument for free market environmentalism, Terry Anderson and Laura Huggins break down liberal and conservative stereotypes of what it means to be an environmentalist. They show that, by forming local coalitions around market principles, stereotypes are replaced by pragmatic solutions that improve environmental quality without necessarily increasing red tape.

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Dennis Bark offers an in-depth examination of the deteriorating relationship between America and Europe: our differences and similarities, the reasons behind our conflicts, and the future of our alliance. He shows that, by learning what our essential difference teaches us about ourselves and drawing on our shared affinities, we might repair our fading relationship.

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HOW CAN WE BEGIN TO CONTROL THE RISING COSTS OF HEALTH CARE?When calculated on a per capita basis, the United States has the costliest health care system in the world. The debate rages on over how to cope with the rising costs of medical care, with proposed solutions ranging from a single-payer system with broad government control to loosely defined market-driven plans. Power to the Patient: Selected Health Care Issues and Policy Solutions looks at three key elements of health care costs - third-party payment, the realities of growth in medical spending, and the medical liability system - and offers thoughtful, realistic suggestions to help stem the tide of rising expenses for everyone.Scott W. Atlas proposes changing the nature of health care insurance so that patients make direct payments to their health care providers. The critical focus, he says, should be on empowering the patient by putting consumers in charge of their money and letting them make cost-conscious decisions about spending health care dollars.Daniel P. Kessler reviews the current debate over the medical liability system, examining three areas of proposed reforms: limits on liability, 'patients' bill of rights' proposals, and alternative reforms such as medical practice guidelines, dispute resolutions, and no-fault insurance.Mark V. Pauly looks at the reasons why real medical spending has increased and concludes that it is virtually impossible to lower costs without lowering quality of care.

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The modern laws of war that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were developed with a particular concept of war in mind—one that does not apply to the conflict with our current adversaries. With the September 11 attacks the United States found itself engaged in a new kind of war, with new dilemmas that needed new rules. Terrorism, the Laws of War, and the Constitution examines three significant enemy combatant cases—Padilla, Hamdi, and Rasul—that represent the leading edge of U.S. efforts to devise legal rules, consistent with American constitutional principles, for waging the global war on terror.The volume's distinguished contributors analyze the crucial questions these cases raise about the balance between national security and civil liberties in wartime, discuss critical separation of powers issues, and call upon the courts, the political branches, and the country to reexamine the complicated connections between the Constitution and international law. Spanning the spectrum of informed legal opinion, the essays gathered here show that debating the enemy combatant cases is indispensable to meeting the legal challenges to come in the long war that lies ahead. Although they may disagree as to the details, the contributors are in full agreement that fortifying the rule of law at home is both a demand of justice and a national security imperative.Contributors: Mark Tushnet, Patricia M. Wald, Seth P. Waxman, Ruth Wedgwood, Benjamin Wittes, John Yoo

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Politics and science make strange bedfellows. In politics, perceptions are reality and facts are negotiable. The competing interests, conflicting objectives, and trade-offs of political negotiations often lend themselves to bending the truth and selectively interpreting facts to shape outcomes. In science, facts are reality. This collection examines the conflicts that arise when politics and science converge.In Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking, eleven leading scientists describe the politicization—through misapplication or overemphasis of results that favor a political decision or through outright manipulation—of scientific findings and deliberations to advance policy agendas. They show how the consequences of politicization are inflicted on the public, including the diversion of money and research efforts from worthwhile scientific endeavors, the costs of unnecessary regulations, and the losses of useful products—while increased power and prestige flow to those who manipulate science.The authors of three essays describe government diversions of scientific research and the interpretation of scientific findings away from where the evidence leads and toward directions deemed politically desirable. Three more contributions analyze the expensive and extensive efforts devoted to altering images of risk in order to establish linkages in the public's mind between deleterious human health effects and various areas of scientific research. Two essays examine the workings and results of consensus advisory panels and conclude that their recommendations are often based on far-from-certain science and driven by social and political dynamics that substitute group cohesion in favor of independent, critical thinking. Authors of two essays describe the unfortunate results of application of the "precautionary principle," which generally requires proof of no risk before a new product is introduced or an existing product can be continued in use. A concluding essay describes the personal costs of opposing the politicization of science.

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The authors call on the need to combine education with capitalism. Drawing on insights and findings from history, psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, they show how, if our schools were moved from the public sector to the private sector, they could once again do a superior job providing K–12 education.

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Although educators and school boards sometimes resist the idea, accountability is sorely needed in America's schools. Our students are falling behind those in other countries, yet compared to their foreign counterparts, our schools remain subject to little accountability. The U.S. school system lacks the marketplace accountability of schools competing with one another and the further accountability of large-scale examination systems, both of which are associated with high achievement. It is clear that after a quarter century of poor progress in educational productivity, the time has come for high academic standards and accountability.

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In this thought-provoking volume, scholars offer evidence, insights, and ideas on key policy questions affecting education—such as national exams, accountability, performance, and other vital issues, while detailing the importance of education to both the individual and society as a whole.

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In its unprecedented position as sole world superpower, the United States must judiciously consider what course to take in foreign affairs. Foreign Policy for America's Twenty-first Century: Alternative Perspectives presents six carefully crafted and bold approaches to this problem from some of the nation's foremost foreign policy experts. Chosen not for their unanimity but for their conflicting visions, these essays are written in accessible prose without esoteric language or scholarly jargon. Such issues as grand strategy, globalization, isolationism, and free trade are discussed in the context of a post-cold war world and a new century.

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Analyzing and ultimately placing in context Paul Hanna's vast contributions, this book provides a richly textured narrative of his life and his major role in twentieth-century American education and the development of modern American education.

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Marking the 75th anniversary of the first meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, in 1947, this volume presents for the first time the original transcripts from this landmark event. The society was created by Friedrich Hayek as a forum for leading economists and intellectuals to discuss and debate classical liberal values in the face of a rapidly changing world and political trends toward socialism. Bruce Caldwell, a major scholar of Hayek, provides an informative introduction and explanatory notes to the source documents, drawn from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, where they have been available to scholars. Now accessible to all, the transcripts reveal what was said on a wide range of topics, including free markets, monetary reform, wage policy, taxation, agricultural policy, the future of Germany, Christianity and liberalism, and more. They provide insights into the thinking of men such as Hayek, Milton Friedman, Aaron Director, Frank Knight, Walter Eucken, Karl Popper, and other leading figures in the classical liberalism movement, illuminating not only their ideas but also their distinctive personalities. A photo section shows rarely seen images from the meeting.

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Japan's Meiji Restoration brought swift changes through Japanese adoption of Western-style modernization and imperial expansion. Fanning the Flames brings together a range of scholarly essays and collected materials from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives detailing how Japanese propaganda played an active role in fostering national identity and mobilizing grassroots participation in the country's transformation and wartime activities, starting with the First Sino-Japanese War to the end of World War II.

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As a response to the Great Depression and an expression of executive power, President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal is widely understood as a turning point in American history. In How Public Policy Became War, David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd go even further, calling the New Deal "America's French Revolution," refashioning American government and public policy in ways that have grown to epic proportions today. Roosevelt's decisions of 1933 were truly revolutionary. They reset the balance of power away from Congress and the states toward a strong executive branch. They shifted the federal government away from the Founders' vision of deliberation and moderation toward war and action. Succeeding presidents seized on the language of war to exert their will and extend their power into matters previously thought to be the province of Congress or state and local governments. Having learned that a sense of crisis is helpful in moving forward a domestic agenda, modern-day presidents have declared war on everything from poverty and drugs to crime and terror. Exploring the consequences of these ill-defined (and never-ending) wars, How Public Policy Became War calls for a re-examination of this destructive approach to governance and a return to the deliberative vision of the Founders. "If we are constantly at war," the authors write, "America becomes a nation under siege.

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The conflict between Soviet Communists and Boris Pasternak over the publication of Doctor Zhivago did not end when he won the Nobel Prize, or even when the author died. Paolo Mancosu tells how Pasternak’s expulsion from the Soviet Writers’ Union left him in financial difficulty. Milan publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli and Sergio d’Angelo, who had brought the typescript of Doctor Zhivago to Feltrinelli, were among those who arranged a smuggling operation to help him.After Pasternak’s death, Olga Ivinskaya, his companion, literary assistant, and the inspiration for Zhivago’s Lara, also received some of the Zhivago royalties. After the KGB intercepted Pasternak’s will on her behalf, the Soviets arrested and sentenced her and her daughter, Irina Emelianova, to eight years and three years of labor camp, respectively. The ensuing international outrage inspired a secret campaign in the West to win their freedom.Mancosu’s new book—the first to explore the post-Nobel history of Pasternak and Ivinskaya—provides extraordinary detail on these events, in a thrilling account that involves KGB interceptions, fabricated documents, smugglers, and much more. While a general reader will respond to the dramatic human story, specialists will be rewarded with a rich assemblage of new archival material, especially letters of Pasternak, Ivinskaya, Feltrinelli, and d’Angelo from the Hoover Institution Library and Archives and the Feltrinelli Archives in Milan.

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What caused the Financial Crisis of 2008? While government mandates and private sector mistakes did contribute to the crisis and can be blamed at least in part for what happened, this book takes a different approach. Russ Roberts argues that the true underlying cause of the mess was the past bailouts of large financial institutions that allowed these institutions to gamble carelessly because they were effectively using other people's money.The author warns that despite the passage of Dodd-Frank, it is widely believed that we have done nothing to eliminate 'Too Big to Fail.' That perception allows the largest financial institutions to continue to gamble with taxpayer money.

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In Invisible Slaves, W. Kurt Hauser discusses slavery around the world, with research and firsthand stories that reframe slavery as a modern-day crisis, not a historical phenomenon or third-world issue. Identifying four types of slavery—chattel slavery, debt bondage, forced labor, and sex slavery—he examines the efforts and failures of governments to address them. He explores the political, economic, geographic, and cultural factors that shape slavery today, illustrating the tragic human toll with individual stories. Country by country, the author illuminates the harsh realities of modern-day slavery. He explores slavery’s effects on victims, including violence, isolation, humiliation, and the master-slave relationship, and discusses the methods traffickers use to lure the vulnerable, especially children, into slavery. He assesses nations based on their levels of slavery and efforts to combat the problem, citing the rankings of the United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act. He concludes with an appeal to governments and ordinary citizens alike to meet this humanitarian crisis with awareness and action.

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The turmoil which has been rattling the Middle East in recent years has confronted Israel with fresh challenges and opportunities and requires it to rethink the three levels of its strategy and security policies: National security Strategy (sometimes referred to as Grand Strategy), National Security Policy and National Military Strategy. The book points to the years 1979–1981 as the years of transition from conventional military challenges faced by Israel to the novel challenges of terrorism, missiles and rockets, sub-state guerrilla organizations on its borders and the prospect of nuclear weapons in hostile hands. Some of these challenges have been exacerbated by the unraveling of neighboring Arab states. The book's review of the evolution of Israeli policies through almost seven decades of war and conflicts shows the absence of a full-fledged grand strategy, the structural weakness of national security policy formulation by successive governments at the cabinet level and the dominant role of the IDF. This state of affairs helps explain why and how Israel has responded to the recent turmoil in a piecemeal fashion rather than formulate a comprehensive policy that would enhance its ability to respond to the new challenges and take advantage of the new opportunities.

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The American ability to inspire—which we call exceptionalism—is not automatic. It takes continued efforts to be realized in a changing world. In this book, scholars at the Hoover Institution—professors, thinkers, and practitioners of global renown in their respective fields—offer a series of accessible policy ideas for civic, economic, and security architecture that would shore up the long-term foundations of American strengths. Blueprint for America takes a beyond-the-Beltway look at the basic policies that should be prioritized by the next president and Congress. Economists Michael Boskin, John Cogan, John Cochrane, and John Taylor address questions of entitlement reform, deficits, monetary reform, national debt, and regulatory and tax reform. Scott Atlas draws on his experience in the practice of medicine to tackle the Affordable Care Act and propose incentive-based health care reforms. Cochrane returns to reframe the hot-button political discourses on immigration and international trade. Eric Hanushek addresses the current performance--and reform--of K–12 education. Retired admiral James Ellis, retired general Jim Mattis, and Kori Schake offer their visions of how to restore America's national security through proactive and realistic agenda setting. Ellis follows with a rethink of energy security strategy in an era of abundance and James Goodby expounds on the country's practice of diplomacy in a time of turbulent transition. George Shultz draws from his experiences in government, industry, and academia to lead off each section with a range of clear-eyed observations on spending, human resources, foreign policy, and, in conclusion, the art of governance. The spirit of Blueprint for America is positive and grounded in first principles, offering ideas, diagnoses, solutions, and road maps for the long view.

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Drawing from a 2014 Hoover Institution Conference on Inequality in honor of Gary Becker, a group of distinguished contributors explore various measures of inequality in America and address the issue of whether or not it is increasing. In looking at this question and examining policy implications, the authors draw on research on human capital and intergenerational mobility. The authors suggest that the emphasis on inequality and redistribution, while not wrong, is nevertheless misplaced, for it may lead us to adopt policies that will disrupt the progress we have made while doing nothing to promote the kind of growth that is essential to national progress.

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Ronald Reagan's Cold War strategy, well established in his first year in office, did not change: to make absolutely sure in the minds of the Soviets that they too would be destroyed in a nuclear war—even as Reagan sought an alternative through strategic defense to make nuclear missiles obsolete and thus eliminate the possibility of an all-out nuclear war. This book offers new perspectives on Ronald Reagan’s primary accomplishment as president: persuading the Soviets to reduce their nuclear arsenals and end the Cold War. It details how he achieved this success and in the process explains why Americans consider Reagan one of our greatest presidents.The authors examine the decisions Reagan made during his presidency that made his success possible and review Reagan's critical negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, ending with the 1988 Moscow summit that effectively ended the Cold War. They present Gorbachev’s thoughts on Reagan as a great man and a great president twenty years after he left office. Ultimately, they reveal the depth of Reagan’s vision of a world safe from nuclear weapons, painting a clear portrait of a Cold Warrior who saw the possibility of moving beyond that war.

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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was bold and controversial from the start. When first conceived, it was far from obvious that it would be possible given the circumstances of the times. Drawing from a December 2013 Hoover Institution conference on NAFTA at 20, this book brings together distinguished academics who have studied the effects of NAFTA with high-level policy makers to present a comprehensive view of the North American Free Trade Agreement. It looks at the conception, creation, outcomes so far, and the future of NAFTA from the perspective of economists, historians, and the aforementioned policy makers in the words of those who actually participated in the negotiations and research. In the context of the fundamental economic and political transformation of North America, they discuss the trade, real wage, and welfare gains that NAFTA has produced for the United States, Mexico, and Canada, along with a review of the major energy markets within and among the three countries. They include lessons from NAFTA for the future, both for NAFTA itself and for other trade agreements, and stress the importance of political leadership and providing information on the benefits of trade liberalization to voters and potentially ill-informed politicians who hear most loudly from the opponents.

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Looking beneath the surface of strategy, policy, and daily operations, this book uses the analogy of weaving to review the United States' historical responsibility for maintaining international peace and security.Author Charles Hill shows why the United States must marshal all possible elements in the Middle East, and supporters from without, to defeat the enemies of order in the region—and why the U.S. must weave an actively engaged, omnidirectional involvement to support and interact with whatever faction, regime, sect, leader, or state that seeks to gain legitimacy as a good citizen in the established international system.

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Facing the risks and potentially deadly consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear power Nuclear energy can provide great benefits to society; in the form of nuclear weapons, however, it can cause death and destruction on an unparalleled scale. The challenge is how to deal with the catastrophic risk of the nuclear enterprise so as to preserve its positive elements and make economic sense. In this book, an expert group of contributors attempts to answer two key questions facing the nuclear enterprise: (1) What can and should be done to improve operations and public understanding of the risks and consequences of major incidents? (2) How can informed scientists, economists, and journalists interact more effectively in understanding and reporting to the public on the most important issues affecting risks, consequences, and costs? Drawn from a conference held at Stanford University's Hoover Institution on October 3-4, 2011, the papers presented in The Nuclear Enterprise were prepared by specialists on various aspects of this challenging topic, including technical safety, management operations, regulatory measures, and the importance of accurate communication by the media. It is their hope that the findings of the conference will contribute to discussion and then actions to better contain and eliminate growing global dangers.

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In this collection of bold and wide-ranging essays, Fouad Ajami offers his views on the Middle East, commenting on the state of affairs in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt and more. He brings into focus the current struggles of the region through detailed historical standpoints and a highly personal perspective. The author discusses such landmark past events as the Algerian civil war, the state of the Arab world shortly after 9/11, and the pan-Arab awakening that began in 2011, as well as current events such as the Syrian rebellion and the repercussions of its brutal response from Bashar al-Assad. In addition, he sheds new light on some of the significant players in the Arab world, past and present, from Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel laureate of the Arabs, to Ziad Jarrah—the terrorist who is thought to have been at the controls of the plane forced down by its heroic passengers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11.

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The events of the last several years on Wall Street make a compelling case for comprehensive, fundamental reform in the oversight of financial firms. In Bankruptcy Not Bailout, a group of expert contributors show why, if a new addition to the bankruptcy laws—Chapter 14—were implemented along with other genuine reforms, the changes could strengthen the US financial system and provide the impetus the US economy needs to thrive once again. The authors reveal the weaknesses in Dodd-Frank Title II, showing how the current law creates an elaborate, and potentially cumbersome, bureaucratic procedure for triggering seizure of a financial company—and tell why Chapter 14 could greatly improve that process, creating greater financial stability and reducing the likelihood of bailouts. They lay the groundwork for a return to a clearer, more rules-based oversight regime that relies more on real capital and true market forces and urge adoption of a Chapter 14 even were Dodd-Frank left untouched. CONTRIBUTORS: Andrew Crockett, Darrell Duffie, Thomas H. Jackson, William F. Kroener III, Kenneth E. Scott, David A. Skeel, Kimberly Anne Summe, John B. Taylor, Kevin M. Warsh

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The pressing need to improve achievement in American schools is widely recognized. In Tests, Testing, and Genuine School Reform, Herbert J. Walberg draws on scientific studies of tests and their uses to inform citizens, educators, and policy makers about well-established principles of testing, current problems, and promising evidence-based solutions. He explains the central considerations in developing and evaluating good tests and tells how tests can best be used, covering such topics as using tests for student incentives, paying teachers for performance, and using tests in efforts to attain new state and national standards.To minimize mistaken policies and practices, the book also describes testing technology to enable readers to evaluate and make better use of tests. And because valid tests cannot be developed without clear, specific standards, one chapter is devoted to discussing standards and how they should determine the plans and development of tests and testing. In view of the continuing technical and political problems of tests and testing, the last chapter argues that, for accountability, to improve tests and testing, and to prevent fraud, the development, administration, scoring, and reporting test results should be conducted independent of traditional school authorities.

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