From a beloved former NPR reporter comes a news-breaking eyewitness account of how the U.S. government and armed forces allowed, and even abetted, the tragic return to violent warlordism in Afghanistan following the defeat of the Taliban.

Laboratories of Virtue investigates the complex and contested relationship between penal reform and liberalism in early America. Using Philadelphia as a case study, Michael Meranze interprets the evolving system of criminal punishment as a microcosm of social tensions that characterized the early American republic. Laboratories of Virtue demonstrates the ramifications of the history of punishment for the struggles to define a new revolution order. By focusing attention on the system of public penal labor that developed in the 1780s, Meranze effectively links penal reform to the development of republican principles in the Revolutionary era. In addition, Meranze argues, the emergence of reformative incarceration was a crucial symptom of the crises of the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary public spheres.

"In the course of his study of vengeance as a moral concept, French exposes important distinctions between types of moral theories (karmic and non-karmic) and between people who are morally handicapped and those who are morally challenged. He examines concepts relevant to vengeance, such as honor, moral authority, and evil, and issues such as the rationality of revenge and proportionality in punishment."--BOOK JACKET.

Michael Meranze uses Philadelphia as a case study to analyze the relationship between penal reform and liberalism in early America. In Laboratories of Virtue, he interprets the evolving system of criminal punishment as a microcosm of social tensions that characterized the early American republic. Engaging recent work on the history of punishment in England and continental Europe, Meranze traces criminal punishment from the late colonial system of publicly inflicted corporal penalties to the establishment of penitentiaries in the Jacksonian period. Throughout, he reveals a world of class difference and contested values in which those who did not fit the emerging bourgeois ethos were disciplined and eventually segregated. By focusing attention on the system of public penal labor that developed in the 1780s, Meranze effectively links penal reform to the development of republican principles in the Revolutionary era. His study, richly informed by Foucaultian and Freudian theory, departs from recent scholarship that treats penal reform as a nostalgic effort to reestablish social stability. Instead, Meranze interprets the reform of punishment as a forward-looking project. He argues that the new disciplinary practices arose from the reformers' struggle to contain or eliminate contradictions to their vision of an enlightened, liberal republic.

Winner of the 2015 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest. "I can’t imagine a more important book for our time." —Sebastian Junger The world is blowing up. Every day a new blaze seems to ignite: the bloody implosion of Iraq and Syria; the East-West standoff in Ukraine; abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria. Is there some thread tying these frightening international security crises together? In a riveting account that weaves history with fast-moving reportage and insider accounts from the Afghanistan war, Sarah Chayes identifies the unexpected link: corruption. Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes—ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes plunges readers into some of the most venal environments on earth and examines what emerges: Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government (but also redesigning Al-Qaeda), and Nigerians embracing both radical evangelical Christianity and the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. In many such places, rigid moral codes are put forth as an antidote to the collapse of public integrity. The pattern, moreover, pervades history. Through deep archival research, Chayes reveals that canonical political thinkers such as John Locke and Machiavelli, as well as the great medieval Islamic statesman Nizam al-Mulk, all named corruption as a threat to the realm. In a thrilling argument connecting the Protestant Reformation to the Arab Spring, Thieves of State presents a powerful new way to understand global extremism. And it makes a compelling case that we must confront corruption, for it is a cause—not a result—of global instability.

A timely, gripping novel about a girl who must speak out, stand up, and break free--perfect for teen fans of The Handmaid's Tale and Matched by Ally Condie, and perfect for this moment. As a girl, Miriam is forced to quiet her tongue and hold back her thoughts. That is the way of things in her desert haven, far away from the outside world. But Miriam knows that within the compound's gates and under the eye of its leader, Daniel, she is safe, and that makes her life far better than any alternative. But when a Matrimony ceremony goes wrong and Miriam winds up with someone other than the boy she loves--the boy she'd thought she was destined to marry--she can no longer keep quiet. For the first time, Miriam begins to question not only the rules that have guided her throughout her entire life, but also who she is at her very core. Alongside unexpected allies, Miriam fights to learn the truth and live the life she knows she's meant to have. In this compelling debut novel, one girl learns that the greatest power she has is her own voice. Now available in paperback, this book includes a discussion guide--perfect for your next book club pick Praise for The Virtue of Sin: "Shannon Schuren weaves a complex tale of love, faith, and lies in her thought-provoking debut The Virtue of Sin. As important as it is entertaining, this is a must-read for anyone who knows that independent thought trumps fitting in. One of my favorite reads of the year." --Christina Dalcher, bestselling author of Vox "Schuren beautifully captures the breathlessness of both first love, and first rebellion, in this engrossing, timely book. Part page-turning drama, part romance, the novel is above all an exploration of the ways repression can damage the soul--and what it takes to rise above it." --Jennifer Donaldson, critically acclaimed author of Lies You Never Told Me "Compulsively readable." --BCCB "Well written." --SLJ