Armed with an empty whiskey bottle and wearing a tie-dyed Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, Florida State University dropout Marshall Ledbetter broke into the Florida State Capitol early one morning in June 1991. He occupied the Sergeant of Arms suite, demanding an extra-large Gumby’s pizza and 666 donuts for the cops waiting outside. He hoped to garner media attention for his protest of poverty, homelessness, and cuts to higher education. After an eight hour standoff, Ledbetter was betrayed by the very media he had counted on to tell his story; his demands were not broadcast on CNN as he had been promised but streamed into the office on closed-circuit TV. Although he left the building peacefully, the ensuing trial, his trips in and out of the state’s mental health institutions over the following decade, and his eventual suicide in 2003 speak to how difficult it is to untangle addiction, isolation, brilliance, and deviance. Ledbetter’s invasion of the Capitol remains the biggest security breach of the building’s history, but Daniel Harrison’s telling of the Ledbetter saga is about more than one misguided young man’s breaking and entering into the state’s most secure building. Making Sense of Marshall Ledbetter thoughtfully and honestly explores the ways society manages deviant people in real world situations and whether or not our law enforcement and justice systems are adequately equipped to handle mental illness.

Globalization has accelerated the process of social, political, cultural, and especially economic transformations since the 1990s. Examining the choices of modern society, Dahms and contributors ask: what are the social costs of “progress”?

Explores the idea of leadership in our culture today and in the past through theological evaluation, theory and practice, and examples of exemplary leaders.

One Nation Under Gold examines the countervailing forces that have long since divided America—whether gold should be a repository of hope, or a damaging delusion that has long since derailed the rational investor. Worshipped by Tea Party politicians but loathed by sane economists, gold has historically influenced American monetary policy and has exerted an often outsized influence on the national psyche for centuries. Now, acclaimed business writer James Ledbetter explores the tumultuous history and larger-than-life personalities—from George Washington to Richard Nixon—behind America’s volatile relationship to this hallowed metal and investigates what this enduring obsession reveals about the American identity. Exhaustively researched and expertly woven, One Nation Under Gold begins with the nation’s founding in the 1770s, when the new republic erupted with bitter debates over the implementation of paper currency in lieu of metal coins. Concerned that the colonies’ thirteen separate currencies would only lead to confusion and chaos, some Founding Fathers believed that a national currency would not only unify the fledgling nation but provide a perfect solution for a country that was believed to be lacking in natural silver and gold resources. Animating the "Wild West" economy of the nineteenth century with searing insights, Ledbetter brings to vivid life the actions of Whig president Andrew Jackson, one of gold’s most passionate advocates, whose vehement protest against a standardized national currency would precipitate the nation’s first feverish gold rush. Even after the establishment of a national paper currency, the virulent political divisions continued, reaching unprecedented heights at the Democratic National Convention in 1896, when presidential aspirant William Jennings Bryan delivered the legendary "Cross of Gold" speech that electrified an entire convention floor, stoking the fears of his agrarian supporters. While Bryan never amassed a wide-enough constituency to propel his cause into the White House, America’s stubborn attachment to gold persisted, wreaking so much havoc that FDR, in order to help rescue the moribund Depression economy, ordered a ban on private ownership of gold in 1933. In fact, so entrenched was the belief that gold should uphold the almighty dollar, it was not until 1973 that Richard Nixon ordered that the dollar be delinked from any relation to gold—completely overhauling international economic policy and cementing the dollar’s global significance. More intriguing is the fact that America’s exuberant fascination with gold has continued long after Nixon’s historic decree, as in the profusion of late-night television ads that appeal to goldbug speculators that proliferate even into the present. One Nation Under Gold reveals as much about American economic history as it does about the sectional divisions that continue to cleave our nation, ultimately becoming a unique history about economic irrationality and its influence on the American psyche.

The smoke was thick, the music was loud, and the beer was flowing. In the fast-and-loose 1980s, Jackson Station Rhythm & Blues Club in Hodges, South Carolina, was a festive late-night roadhouse filled with people from all walks of life who gathered to listen to the live music of high-energy performers. Housed in a Reconstruction-era railway station, the blues club embraced local Southern culture and brought a cosmopolitan vibe to the South Carolina backcountry. Over the years, Jackson Station became known as one of the most iconic blues bars in the South. It offered an exciting venue for local and traveling musical artists, including Widespread Panic, the Swimming Pool Qs, Bob Margolin, Tinsley Ellis, and R&B legend Nappy Brown, who loved to keep playing long after sunrise. The good times ground to a terrifying halt in the early morning hours of April 7, 1990. A brutal attack—an apparent hate crime—on the owner Gerald Jackson forever altered the lives of all involved. In this fast-paced narrative, Jackson Station emerges as a cultural kaleidoscope that served as an oasis of tolerance and diversity in a time and place that often suffered from undercurrents of bigotry and violence—an uneasy coexistence of incongruent forces that have long permeated southern life and culture.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “We need a new idea of how to govern. The current system is broken. Law is supposed to be a framework for humans to make choices, not the replacement for free choice.” So notes Philip K. Howard in the new Afterword to his explosive manifesto The Death of Common Sense. Here Howard offers nothing less than a fresh, lucid, practical operating system for modern democracy. America is drowning—in law, lawsuits, and nearly endless red tape. Before acting or making a decision, we often abandon our best instincts. We pause, we worry, we equivocate, and then we divert our energy into trying to protect ourselves. Filled with one too many examples of bureaucratic overreach, The Death of Common Sense demonstrates how we—and our country—can at last get back on track.

"An indispensable and provocative guide through the thicket of today's most challenging constitutional controversies by some of the most eminent judges of their time. It offers an invaluable peek behind the curtain of judicial decision making." —David Cole, Professor of Law, Georgetown University The Embattled Constitution presents the fourth collection of the James Madison lectures delivered at the NYU School of Law, offering thoughtful examinations of an array of topics on civil liberties by a distinguished group of federal judges, including Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court. The result is a fascinating look into the minds of the judges who interpret, apply, and give meaning to our “embattled Constitution.” In these insightful and incisive essays, the authors bring to bear decades of experience to explore wide-ranging issues. Are today’s public schools racially segregated? To what extent can the federal courts apply the Bill of Rights without legislative guidance? And what are the criteria for the highest standards of judging and constitutional interpretation? The authors also discuss how and why the Constitution came to be embattled, shining a spotlight on the current polarization in both the Supreme Court and the American body politic and offering careful and informed analysis of how to bridge these divides. Contributors include Marsha S. Berzon, Michael Boudin, Stephen Breyer, Guido Calabresi, Robert H. Henry, Robert Katzmann, Pierre N. Leval, M. Blane Michael, Davis S. Tatel, J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, and Diane P. Wood.