検索キーワード： 21世紀

Derided by the Right as dangerous and by the Left as spineless, Barack Obama puzzles observers. In Reading Obama, James T. Kloppenberg reveals the sources of Obama's ideas and explains why his principled aversion to absolutes does not fit contemporary partisan categories. Obama's commitments to deliberation and experimentation derive from sustained engagement with American democratic thought.

It is the largest oil disaster in American history, and it could happen again. It is more than a story of ruined beaches, dead wildlife, corporate spin, political machinations, and financial fallout. It is a riveting human drama filled with people whose lives will forever be defined as "before" and "after the gulf oil disaster". Black Tide is the only book to tell this story through the perspective of people on all sides of the catastrophe.

The historical significance of Barack Obama's triumph in the presidential election of 2008 scarcely requires comment. Yet it contains an irony: He won a victory as an African American only by denying that he was the candidate of African Americans. Obama's very success, writes Fredrick Harris, exacted a heavy cost on black politics.

In The Price of the Ticket, Harris puts Obama's career in the context of decades of black activism, showing how his election undermined the very movement that made it possible.

Plastic surgery has become the answer for many Americans, and in American Plastic sociologist Laurie Essig explores how we arrived at this particular solution. Over the last decade there has been a 465 percent increase in cosmetic work, and we now spend over $12 billion annually on procedures like liposuction, face-lifts, tummy tucks, and boob jobs.

Operation Protective Edge, launched in early July 2014, was the third major Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in six years. It was also the most deadly. By the conclusion of hostilities some seven weeks later, 2,200 of Gaza's population had been killed, and more than 10,000 injured. In this book, journalist Mohammed Omer, a resident of Gaza who lived through the terror of those days with his wife and then three-month-old son, provides a first-hand account of life on-the-ground during Israel's assault.

In late March of 1943, four commandos arrive in northern Norway with a mission of establishing a base for sabotage operations. Before they can unload their cutter, they are betrayed, as a German Schnell boat arrives and turns the quiet fjord into a battle zone. Only one man, Jan Baalsrud, surrvives the attack. This is the story of his perilous journey to freedom. Wounded, the dauntless soldier swims icy fjord waters, climbs snow-laden granite peaks, endures violent snowstorms and is hurled off a mountain by an avalanche.

We have released the genie from the bottle: climate change is coming, and there's no stopping it. The question, according to Matthew Kahn, is not how were going to avoid a hotter future but how were going to adapt to it. In Climatopolis, Kahn, one of the worlds foremost experts on the economics of the environment, argues that cities and regions will adapt to rising temperatures over time, slowly transforming our everyday lives.

In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson, the star business columnist of The New York Times, exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy.

North Korea would be horrific enough if it was a fictional place, but its nuclear weapons program is all too real. Meanwhile, rumors regarding Iran's nuclear capabilities have understandably left many nations on the edges of their seats. Experts insist that the Iranian propaganda program is chiefly responsible for entrenching into its masses a resentment of the West, unlike North Korea, which proudly walls itself off from the rest of civilization.

Making History: The Life of Barack Obama chronicles the amazing life story and Obama's path to the presidency from his unique roots to his unique victory, but it also looks at his first term before the 2012 election. You will learn about Obama like you never have before, in no time at all.

In November 2012, Americans went to the polls to make yet another historic decision. Their choice was to reelect the nation's first African-American president or to elect the first Mormon president. Obama faced one of the least conventional Republican politicians the country ever had. From his Mormon faith to his governorship of the very blue Massachusetts, Mitt Romney left many on the right wondering whether he possessed the traditional conservative values they deemed necessary.

Horrified, saddened, and angered: That was the American people's reaction to the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia Tech shootings, and the 2008 financial crisis. In Consuming Catastrophe, Timothy Recuber presents a unique and provocative look at how these four very different disasters took a similar path through public consciousness. He explores the myriad ways we engage with and negotiate our feelings about disasters and tragedies.

In 1988, a recently organized militant group issued its charter, which called upon Muslims to "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine". The group, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared, "Allah is its goal, the Prophet is the model, the Qur'an its constitution, jihad its path, and death for the sake of Allah its most sublime belief."

"It's very simple. We want sharia. Sharia in economy, in politics, in judiciary, in our borders and our foreign relations." Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, the son of Omar Abdel-Rahman, Time. October 8, 2012.

Beginning in 2010, much of the Middle East, including Egypt, was swept up by a series of revolutions later referred to as the Arab Spring. The wave of riots and demonstrations — some violent, some not, but all impactful and sizeable — began in Tunisia.

The record of any American President attracts attention, but Barack Obama, the first African-American president in the nation's 240-year history, is of special interest. Obama came into office as the economy was careening into the worst downturn since the Great Depression. On the political front, he would be challenged by the intense congressional polarization faced by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, exacerbated by the rise of the Tea Party movement.

Obama's presidency has suffered the fiercest opposition any administration has had and yet Mr. Obama has managed to lead the country to financial recovery, end the senseless war in Iraq, implement universal healthcare, put an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions and re-open diplomatic relations with Cuba all the while remaking US standing in the world. But Republicans believe he is the worst president the country has had.

Before its destruction in the attacks on September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center in New York consisted of two of the world's most recognizable buildings, representing the strength and wealth of New York City in particular and the United States in general. That was the goal all along for philanthropist David Rockefeller, who had largely self-financed the development of One Chase Manhattan Plaza in the late 1950s in the hopes that the 70 story skyscraper would help spur further development nearby.

The name "World Trade Center", when spoken by an American, tends to conjure up the best and worst about the nation. The idea for such a financial center was conceived of in the heady days of post-World War II prosperity, when the nation's financial prospects had never looked better and Americans were trading all over the world with both former allies and enemies.

In December 2010, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor's self-immolation triggered protests that spread from his hometown in Sidi Bouzid to cities across the country. The next month, on January 14, the country's autocratic president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country. This would be the start of what became known as the "Arab Spring", which ultimately saw anti-government protests responded to with violence, reform, or both in countries across the Middle East.

Since the earliest days of recorded human history, people have constructed buildings not just to provide shelter but to send a message. In the dark days following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, New York City began searching for some way to demonstrate its recovery and resolve. The Freedom Tower experienced many of the same ups and downs that the nation did. At some points, it seemed that the project would never end. This book looks at the construction history of the Twin Towers' replacement.