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Listed below are some of the book summaries that we have in our library. Business Books A-F G-M N-S T-Z Telecommunications Competition: The
Last Ten Miles
This
book analyzes the effects of dramatic technological, regulatory,
and market changes on competition in the last ten miles
of the telephone network--the most pivotal issue raised
by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Why
is religion, any religion, important? How should we think
of God? Does one need to be a Mother Teresa to be a good
Christian? A long list of such questions from Jana Novak
to her father, theologian Michael Novak, led to Tell Me
Why, an extended dialogue about religion and its bearing
on contemporary life. Telling
the Truth: Why Our Culture and Our Country Have Stopped
Making Sense--and What We Can Do about It
This
book is a study of the threat to American culture and society
posed by contemporary doctrines of multiculturalism, critical
legal studies, radical feminism, and critical race theory.
The author is the W. H. Brady, Jr., Distinguished Fellow
at AEI. Excerpts from the book's introduction follow.
In this incisive analysis of securities regulation, Roberta Romano demonstrates that the current approach toward U.S. securities regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission should be revamped by implementing a regime of competitive federalism. Under such a system firms would select their regulator from among the fifty states, the District of Columbia, the SEC, or other nations. She asserts that competitive federalism harnesses the high-powered incentives of markets to the regulatory state to produce regulatory arrangements compatible with investors' preferences. Firms will locate in the domicile investors prefer so as to reduce the cost of capital, and states will have financial incentives, such as incorporation and registration fees, to adapt their securities regimes to firms' domicile decisions. Romano contends that empirical evidence does not indicate that the SEC is effective in achieving its stated objectives. The commission's expansions of disclosure requirements have not had a significant impact on investors' wealth. Indeed, she contends, evidence from institutional equity and debt markets and cross-country listing practices have shown that firms voluntarily disclose more information than they would under mandatory requirements because firms want to provide the information investors demand. Romano concludes that competitive federalism will enable new U.S. and foreign issuers as well as mature issuers to select a securities regulatory regime that is superior to that of the SEC: the aspects of the SEC's regime that are valuable to investors will be retained; those that are not will be discarded. The resulting regime will enhance the wealth of investors. The
Antitrust Laws: A Primer, Fourth Edition
This
book explains antitrust policy and the way antitrust laws
treat a variety of business practices. The
Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American
Life
The
Bell Curve is a meticulous examination of the nature of
human intelligence and its role in shaping American society.
It argues that intelligence, as measured by IQ and similar
tests, is a real and important attribute of individuals;
that intelligence varies from person to person in the same
way that height and other physical characteristics vary
(there is a "normal distribution" of intelligence
within a population--hence "the bell curve");
that American communities (residential, educational, occupational,
social) are becoming stratified by cognitive ability; that
this stratification jeopardizes social welfare and our
political institutions and ideals in important ways; and
that numerous government policies are aggravating the problem. The
Congress of Prague: Revitalizing the Atlantic Alliance
On
May 10-12, 1996, more than 300 intellectual and political
leaders met at the Congress of Prague. Czech President
V clav Havel welcomed the participants, who came to celebrate
the achievements of Western civilization and to affirm
the values on which that civilization is based. The event,
which launched the New Atlantic Initiative (NAI), concluded
with a declaration of common principles--an eloquent and
unapologetic statement of belief in individual liberty,
the market economy, and democratic pluralism, which those
present were invited to sign. The chapters in this volume
derive from the addresses and policy discussions at the
congress. Gerald Frost is research director of the New
Atlantic Initiative and a consultant director of the Institute
for European Defense and Strategic Studies. Lt. Gen. William
E. Odom, USA (ret.), is director of national security studies
for the Hudson Institute and an adjunct professor at Yale
University. The
Cuban Revolution and the United States: A History in
Documents, 1958-1960
In
this book, Mark Falcoff debunks longstanding myths about
the early years of the Cuban revolution, drawing primarily
on previously classified materials and other primary sources.
He covers the decline of the Batista regime, the ascendancy
of Fidel Castro and communism, and the growing alignment
with the Soviet bloc, as well as U.S. attempts to remove
Castro. The documents Falcoff examines underscore the confusion
and impotence of the United States when it was faced with
a ruthless and determined revolutionary backed by another
superpower and prepared to play a high-stakes game regardless
of the ultimate cost to his people. The
Demise of Environmentalism in American Law
This book is a study of legal doctrines that hinder the development of efficient, economically sound policies for protecting the environment. The author is the executive director of the Center for Individual Rights and an adjunct scholar at AEI. A summary of the book follows. Legal scholars, policy analysts, and journalists who follow environmental politics have noted that federal courts have become increasingly skeptical of environmental regulation. Judges now treat environmental interest groups and regulators more harshly, and industry plaintiffs more sympathetically. These tendencies signal a broader and more profound shift, the demise of environmental values and ideology in American constitutional and administrative law. The courts have jettisoned ecological presumption and returned to more traditional legal doctrines. This shift is conducive to somewhat more sensible and efficient regulation. Moreover, it has had a profound effect on the substance and tone of the environmental policy debate. The
Economics of Crop Insurance and Disaster Aid
This
book is a study of the history, operation, and performance
of U.S. crop insurance and disaster relief programs. The
authors are associate professors of agricultural economics
at North Carolina State University and Montana State University,
respectively. A summary of the book follows. The
Economics of Preferential Trade Agreements
The
essays collected in this volume critically assess the claims
advanced by proponents of free trade areas and analyze
the two principal initiatives of recent U.S. trade policy:
the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation. Mr. Bhagwati is the Arthur Lehman
Professor of Economics and professor of political science
at Columbia University. Mr. Panagariya is professor of
economics and codirector of the Center for International
Economics at the University of Maryland. The
Effects of Credit Policies on U.S. Agriculture
This
book is a study of the past performance of and future outlook
for public credit programs for agriculture. The author
is professor of agricultural economics at the University
of Illinois. A summary of the book follows. The
End of North Korea
As
the twentieth century draws to a close, it is apparent
that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)-which
has exemplified so many of the tragic, destructive, and
ultimately unworkable political tendencies of our era-is
itself a colossal failure. In fact, its failure is so pervasive,
so deep, and so apparently irremediable that we may now
begin to speak of, and to contemplate, the end of North
Korea. This book does just that. The author considers the
history, the present dire circumstances, and the current
options of the DPRK. He also assesses the risks that North
Korea poses to its neighbors and to international stability
and suggests ways in which concerned governments might
begin to think about the collapse of the DPRK and how to
respond. This summary is drawn from the book's introduction. The
End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society
This book is an inquiry into the history, nature, and ultimate meaning of racism
in modern America. The author is the John M. Olin Research Fellow at AEI. A
summary of the book follows. The
Ethics of Human Cloning
If human cloning becomes a practical reality, is it a
reality we humans should countenance? Should human cloning
be left to individual choice and discovery,
regulated (for example, limited to married couples or infertile married couples),
or banned outright? Leon R. Kass and James Q. Wilson arrive at different
answers to these questions, on the basis of different
assessments of the ethical implications
of cloning for human sexuality and the traditional family. This volume includes
two essays by each author-a main essay and a second one responding to the
other. The
Failure of Antitrust and Regulation to Establish Competition
in Long-Distance Telephone Services
This book examines the effect of regulation on competition
in long-distance telephone markets after the 1984 breakup
of the Bell System. Thus, it is a
useful guide to the thinking of the leaders in the industry, Congress, and
the state regulatory commissions on how far to proceed in relying on regulatory
agencies to establish competition in key public utility markets. The author
is the Williams Brothers Professor of Management Studies at the Yale School
of Management and former economic adviser to Presidents Ford and Bush.
The
achievement of women's equality poses a serious dilemma
for contemporary feminists, because it marks the end of
the movement's reason for existence. Thus, rather than
celebrate victory, today's feminists feign defeat. This
book explains how the contemporary feminists' ideological
campaign in the courts and in Congress is undermining the
principles of our economic system-and how those efforts
actually do not help women's progress. The
First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends
in America, 1900-2000
The First Measured Century is a comprehensive overview of twentieth-century America. A unique feature of the book is its presentation of key trends through more than two hundred charts with explanatory text. A companion reference volume to a PBS documentary of the same name, The First Measured Century examines one hundred years of data on diverse aspects of American life, including population, work, education, family, living arrangements, religion, active leisure, health, money, politics, government, crime, transportation, business, and communications. Theodore Caplow is the Commonwealth Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. Louis Hicks is an associate professor of sociology at St. Mary's College of Maryland. Ben J. Wattenberg is a senior fellow at AEI. Powered by massive immigration, a midcentury "baby boom," and a dramatic increase in life expectancy, the American population nearly quadrupled from 76 million in 1900 to 275 million in 2000. The
Fiscal Revolution in America, Policy in Pursuit of
Reality
This
book, a classic study of fiscal policy from the administration
of Herbert Hoover to that of Lyndon Johnson, has now been
augmented by a new essay covering the period from 1964
to 1994. The author is a senior fellow at AEI. A summary
of the book, by Mr. Stein, follows. In 1929 there was no doubt that balancing the budget was the fiscal policy of the United States. There had been deficits in wartime and some other years when the mark had been missed, but the misses had been small, and the debts incurred in wartime had been subsequently reduced. In 1929 not only was the budget in balance, but there was provision for annual reduction of the debt left from the world war. The
Foreign Investment Debate: Opening Markets Abroad or
Closing Markets at Home?
From R&D policy to deregulation of the telecommunications and financial service sectors, there is a growing movement to use foreign investors in the United States as a tool to open markets abroad. This volume brings together for the first time leaders from the business, research, and policy communities to examine whether this shift away from an open door makes economic sense. It also includes a statistical appendix on the economic role of foreign investment, a review of policy trends, and a listing of existing investment obligations and multilateral mechanisms. The editor is a research fellow at AEI. A summary of the book follows. Transnational investment flows increasingly drive economic growth and serve as the primary means for supplying a foreign market. Over the past decade, for example, annual foreign direct investment (FDI) outflows have increased twice as fast as has world trade. Yet, unlike trade, few multilateral rules on investment exist. Breaking down the barriers to transnational investment flows thus represents the next major step for expanding the global trading system. But there is a growing debate over how this should be accomplished. The
GAAP Gap: Corporate Disclosure in the Internet Age
Today's knowledge-based economy requires a new framework for corporate disclosure. The authors of this book envision an entirely new system of assessing the value of companies-a system tapping the vast communication capabilities of the Internet. Corporate financial reporting would become forward-looking, would be based on precise, comparable measures, and would be presented in real time. Robert E. Litan directs the economic studies program and holds Cabot Family Chair in Economics at the Brookings Institution. He is also the codirector of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. Peter J. Wallison is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and codirector of AEI's project on financial market deregulation. The Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in use today evolved out of an accounting system designed to measure and report the value of companies that used tangible assets-such as rolling stock, machinery, or land-to manufacture goods or provide services. In that system, the cost of the assets used in the production of income was the foundation of the values recorded on the balance sheet. That made sense because the cost of those assets was their value-they could be duplicated in most cases for the amount at which they were carried on the company's balance sheet. Moreover, the depreciation of those assets over time allowed costs to be allocated to revenues in order to provide a more accurate measure of profitability. The
Germans: Portrait of a New Nation
This book, a companion volume to the PBS television documentary of the same name, is an in-depth look at how unification has affected Germany's people. The bilingual book includes interviews with German families and commentary by leading public officials, including an exclusive interview with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The editor is a research fellow at AEI. A summary of the book and excerpts from key interviews follow. No Western country has felt more immediately the impact of the end of the cold war than Germany. For forty years Germany was divided between East and West, and the border between them was the focus of a nuclear standoff. Today Germany stands at the center of a new and changing Europe. In the West, it has become the most influential member of the European Union. In the East, it is the biggest investor in, contributor of aid to, and a leading trading partner with the former Soviet bloc. The
Illustrated Guide To The American Economy
This book consists of more than 120 factual statements-each illustrated by a page of color charts and explained in a page of text-that provide a broad picture of the U.S. economy. The following summary is meant to convey the scope and the major themes of the book. Herbert Stein, a former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, had long been a senior fellow at AEI before his death in September 1999. His other books available from the AEI Press include What I Think: Essays on Economics, Politics, and Life (1998); On the Other Hand: Essays on Economics, Economists, and Politics (1995); and Presidential Economics: The Making of Economic Policy from Roosevelt to Clinton (revised edition, 1994). Murray Foss, who was the senior staff economist in charge of forecasting for the Council of Economic Advisers, is a visiting scholar at AEI. Our best overall measure for gauging economies of different sizes is the per capita gross domestic product-the sum of the total output of goods and services produced within the borders of a country, divided by the population. Total output per capita is significantly higher in the United States than in other large "rich" countries. Comparisons for 1998 based on the purchasing power of different local currencies-rather than exchange rates-show that the per capita GDP of the United States was 15 percent above Switzerland's, 25 percent above Canada's and Japan's, and 33 percent above Germany's. For both Sweden and the United Kingdom, the margin was 43 percent or more. The
Imperative of American Leadership: A Challenge to Neo-Isolationism
This book presents the case for an active, interventionist American foreign policy in the post-cold war era. The author is a resident scholar at AEI. A summary of the book follows. This book is an argument. It is an argument for a certain kind of U.S. foreign policy now that the cold war is behind us. It is an argument for a foreign policy that is engaged, proactive, interventionist, and expensive--as compared with what others would do. This argument flies in the face of the shibboleth that America cannot be the world's policeman. In truth, it must be more than that. A policeman gets his assignments from higher authority. But in the community of nations, there is no higher authority. America is the wealthiest, mightiest, and most respected nation. At times, it must be the policeman or head of the posse--at others, the mediator, teacher, or benefactor. In short, America must accept the role of world's leader. The
Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey
In The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey, David R. Henderson demonstrates
the power of free markets to improve the environment, education, health, community,
culture, and every other important aspect of life.
The
Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families
Once a reliable thread in our social fabric, marriage is now a convenient promise easily made and just as easily broken. Long taken for granted, it is now under attack, and the result is devastating. This book exposes the patterns that have allowed us to degrade marriage and shows how we can reclaim it. James Q. Wilson is the chairman of AEI's Council of Academic Advisers and was formerly a professor at Harvard University and the University of California at Los Angeles. His books include On Character (AEI Press, expanded edition 1995) and, with Leon R. Kass, The Ethics of Human Cloning (AEI Press, 1996). A summary of The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families follows. Everyone knows and almost everyone regrets the difficulties into which marriage has fallen in the United States. Single-parent families hurt children, even after the effect of low income is taken into account. Divorces hurt many children, even after the predivorce family conflict is considered. Children born to a cohabiting couple are generally worse off than those born to a married couple.
Tocqueville
on American Character
In this book, Michael A. Ledeen discusses the portrait of the American people found in Alexis de Tocqueville's two-volume classic, Democracy in America (vol. 1, 1835; vol. 2, 1840). Tocqueville saw the United States as the bellwether of a grand historical trend toward equality. Although he greatly admired the energy and fortitude of the Americans he observed in the Jacksonian Era, he feared that Americans might eventually give in to selfishness, materialism, and dependence on government. Mr. Ledeen holds the Freedom Chair at AEI. His recent books include Machiavelli on Modern Leadership (1999) and Freedom Betrayed: How America Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away (1996). No one before Alexis de Tocqueville or since has understood us as well as he has, and no one can be considered well-educated without having grappled with Tocqueville's profound inquiry into American character. Tocqueville knew that the destiny of half the world would one day depend upon America, and it behooves everyone affected by that development-Americans and foreigners, friends and foes-to listen closely to him.
The
Neoconservative Imagination: Essays in Honor of Irving
Kristol
The essays in this volume were written by Irving Kristol's friends and intellectual compatriots for his seventy-fifth birthday, January 22, 1995. The book also includes a collection of passages from Kristol's writings and a bibliography of his published work through the end of 1994. Christopher DeMuth is the president of AEI; William Kristol is the chairman of the Project for the Republican Future. A summary of the book follows. Since his first published essay more than fifty years ago, Irving Kristol has written with rare insight and prescience on topics ranging from politics to literature and from economics to religion, while editing several of the most influential intellectual journals of our time and serving as mentor and career shaper to hundreds of journalists, intellectuals, and academics. What is most striking about Kristol, however, is not that he is an effective generalist in an age of specialists but that his wide-ranging work exhibits strong intellectual unity; he not only crosses but combines disparate fields of inquiry and does so in a way that deepens our understanding of each field.
The
New Finance: Regulation and Financial Stability
This book describes revolutionary developments in American finance and proposes regulatory reforms aimed at strengthening the stability of financial markets and reducing the need for government support and oversight of financial institutions. The author is the Arthur F. Burns Professor of Free and Competitive Enterprise at the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University. Dramatic changes in information and telecommunications technologies have transformed U.S. financial markets in the 1980s and 1990s. Traditional financial intermediaries, such as banks, have had to change what they do and how they do it in response to a steady stream of new financial products and instruments that have crumpled the competitive barriers that historically separated financial institutions in the United States.
The
New Illustrated Guide to the American Economy
This book consists of 120 basic factual statements about the American economy, each illustrated by a page of four-color charts and explained in a page of text. The colored charts, which are a distinctive feature of the book, unfortunately cannot be reproduced here. The scope of the book and the picture of the U.S. economy that emerges from it are suggested by the following excerpts from the text. Mr. Stein is a senior fellow, and Mr. Foss is a visiting scholar, at AEI. Total output in the United States has increased greatly from generation to generation. Total output per capita is the best available single measure of the performance of an economy. It limits how much its population can consume, how much they can devote to investment to increase consumption in the future, and how much they can devote to defense of the country.
The
Permanent Campaign and Its Future
In this book, eleven prominent political scientists aim to make sense of the permanent campaign, to understand how and why it has evolved, to weigh its consequences for our ability to govern ourselves effectively, and to consider whether steps might be taken to ameliorate its more damaging effects. In publishing these essays, they seek to make a substantive contribution to understanding this critically important feature of contemporary American politics. This work is part of AEI's Transition to Governing Project, which is run in conjunction with the Brookings Institution and Hoover Institution and generously funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The project directors-Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at AEI, and Thomas E. Mann, the W. Averell Harriman Senior Fellow in American Governance at the Brookings Institution-edited the volume and wrote its concluding chapter, from which this summary is largely drawn. The other contributors are Karlyn Bowman, a resident fellow at AEI; David Brady, the McCoy Professor of Political Science at Stanford University; Anthony Corrado, an associate professor of government at Colby College; Morris Fiorina, a professor of political science and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; Hugh Heclo, the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University; Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Charles O. Jones, the Hawkins Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of WisconsinÿMadison and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Burdett A. Loomis, professor of political science at the University of Kansas; and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, associate director of the University of Pennsylvania's Washington Semester Program. We live in the era of the permanent campaign, in which the line between campaigning and governing has been nearly erased. As Hugh Heclo makes clear in the opening chapter, even if campaigning and governing are inextricably interlinked in American-style democracy, the process is distinctly different now from what it was some decades ago. Sidney Blumenthal popularized the term permanent campaign in 1982, but the change in governing style goes back further. Systematic and sophisticated polling in presidential campaigns nearly reached its full bloom in 1960, but the process of tracking public views, or of politicians garnering support from the public for their priorities, is not what we mean by the permanent campaign. Rather, we mean, as Heclo suggests, "a nonstop process seeking to manipulate sources of public approval to engage in the act of governing itself." In this era of the permanent campaign, the process of campaigning and the process of governing have each lost their distinctiveness. Just as significant, the process of campaigning has become in many ways the dominant partner of the two.
The
Productivity of Health Care and Pharmaceuticals: An
International Comparison
Among wealthy countries, levels of pharmaceutical consumption vary widely. Does greater consumption contribute to better health? If so, can that effect be measured? Answers to those questions would be valuable to policymakers in the health care industry and in government, but the questions are difficult to address. To begin with, analysts must distinguish the health benefits of drug consumption from the benefits of all other forms of health care. The authors of this book undertake that task and analyze data from a sample of twenty-one countries to isolate and measure the health effects of pharmaceutical consumption. Their results show that the use of pharmaceuticals leads to significantly longer lives, especially for those at middle age and beyond. H. E. Frech III is a professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an adjunct scholar of AEI. Richard D. Miller Jr. is a research analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia. Many international studies of health care are available, especially in the member-countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Most of those studies have responded to cost-containment problems, and therefore the vast majority have focused on the determinants of health care expenditures.
The
Rage and the Pride
With The Rage and the Pride, Oriana Fallaci breaks a silence that has lasted for ten years. She breaks it in the wake of the apocalypse that, on the morning of September 11 2001, not far from her home in Manhattan, disintegrated the Twin Towers and incinerated thousands of people. This edition is enriched by a dramatic preface in which Oriana Fallaci explains how the book was born and, considering the reasons why Islamic terrorism will not end with the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, describes the global reality of the Jihad: the Holy War. A preface in which Oriana Fallaci takes us by surprise, talking also about herself: about her work, about her disdainful isolation, about her rigorous and hard choices. Often slipping into personal memories, enlightening episodes of her life, she talks about the themes related to September 11, 2001: America, Europe, Italy, the West, the Islamic world, the Christian world, us. Above all, us. With her well-known courage she launches pitiless accusations and furious invectives. With her brutal sincerity she hurls the lucid ideas and the passions, the uncomfortable truths and the reflections, the ideas that almost all of us have but do not dare to say, or don't dare to say at loud voice.
The
Right Man
The Right Man is the first inside account of a historic year in the Bush White House, by the presidential speechwriter credited with the phrase axis of evil. David Frum helped make international headlines when President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union address linked international terrorists to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. But that was only one moment during a crucial time in American history, when a president, an administration, and a country were transformed. Frum worked with President Bush in the Oval Office, traveled with him aboard Air Force One, and studied him closely at meetings and events. He describes how Bush thinks--what this conservative president believes about religion, race, the environment, Jews, Muslims, and America's future. Frum takes us behind the scenes of one of the most secretive administrations in recent history, with revealing portraits of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, and many others. Most significant, he tells the story of the transformation of George W. Bush: how a president whose administration began in uncertainty became one of the most decisive, successful, and popular leaders of our time.
The
Search for New Vaccines: The Effects of the Vaccines
for Children Program
This book examines the potential effect of the federal government's Vaccines for Children Program on incentives to invest in research and development for new and improved vaccines. Henry Grabowski is professor of economics and director of the Program in Pharmaceuticals and Health Economics at Duke University. John Vernon is professor of economics at Duke University. Our government has traditionally provided free vaccination for the poor and near poor and has imposed vaccination requirements to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. The Vaccines for Children Program (VFC), which went into effect in October 1994, has the potential to expand vastly the public market for pediatric vaccines. This book focuses on how increased government purchases for vaccines at below-market prices under the VFC will affect the incentives to invest in new and improved children's vaccines.
The
Tyranny of Numbers: Mismeasurement and Misrule
This book is a study of the use and misuse of statistics by governments responding to such problems as world hunger, infant mortality, third world debt, and population growth. The author is a visiting scholar at AEI and a visiting fellow at the Center for Population Studies, Harvard University. A summary of the book follows. Most of us probably regard the official statistics that governments nowadays continuously collect as dull but essentially harmless. The data that modern governments amass may well appear to be dull, but they are not essentially harmless. To the contrary: ordinary people around the world routinely suffer injury when these selfsame dull statistics are used to determine policy. On more than a few occasions, these injuries have been grave and irreversible, and they have afflicted large numbers of people.
The
U.S. Organ Procurement System: A Prescription for Reform
The organ procurement system in the United States has failed patients awaiting transplants, as evidenced by years-long waiting lists, with many patients declining in health or dying before a suitable organ donor is found. The cadaveric organ shortage can be remedied by allowing for organ purchases and sales, to encourage families of the deceased to donate the organs.
Study
of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and
Saddam Hussein's War against America
In Study of Revenge, Laurie Mylroie engages the reader in a gripping examination of the evidence from the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. In the process, she uncovers links between the bombing and the Iraqi leadership and reveals a terrifying tale of America left exposed and vulnerable following the mishandling of what had been the most ambitious terrorist attack ever attempted on U.S. soil. In his foreword to the revised edition, former CIA director R. James Woolsey explains the relevance of Mylroie's work to the events of September 11, 2001. Mylroie is an AEI adjunct fellow and is the coauthor, with Judith Miller, of the New York Times number-one bestseller Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf. She has taught at Harvard University and the U.S. Naval War College and is the publisher of Iraq News, an online newsletter that analyzes developments in the continuing U.S. confrontation with Baghdad. This summary is adapted from Mylroie's introduction and conclusion to Study of Revenge. In May 1994, the first group of conspirators convicted for the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing was sentenced. The defendants' goal-according to Judge Kevin Duffy-was to topple the north tower onto the south tower amid a cloud of cyanide gas that would engulf those trapped in the north tower. "That's clearly what you intended," the judge said. "If that had happened, we would have been dealing with tens of thousands of deaths." The
Emergence of Russian Foreign Policy
This
book contains ten essays by American and Russian experts
on the development of Russian foreign policy since the
breakup of the Soviet Union. Mr. Aron is the E. L. Wiegand
Fellow at AEI. Mr. Jensen is director of special programs
at the United States Institute of Peace. Excerpts from
Mr. Aron's introductory essay follow.
The
War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming
Our Young Men
This
book refutes the widely accepted notions that American
girls are being shortchanged in school and deprived of
self-esteem by a society that favors boys. On the contrary,
Christina Hoff Sommers shows that, by virtually every academic
and social measure, boys are falling behind girls-and the
gap is widening. Moreover, the social and educational struggles
of boys are aggravated by a prejudice that punishes them
simply for being male. To
Empower People: From State to Civil Society
In 1977, AEI published a now-famous essay by Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus that examined the crucial importance of such "mediating structures" as family, church, and neighborhood to a healthy civil society. This new edition contains the original text of that essay, eleven new essays by distinguished social scientists that assess what has happened since, and a response by the original authors to the new essays. Mr. Berger is professor of sociology at Boston University. Mr. Neuhaus is president of the Institute on Religion and Public Life. Mr. Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at AEI. Excerpts from Mr. Novak's introduction follow. The new and fruitful public policy approaches for the future, Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus dared to suggest in 1977, do not lie in pursuing the lines of attack long beloved of both liberals and conservatives. They lie in taking up a fresh starting place and heading in a different direction.
Tocqueville
on American Character
In this book, Michael A. Ledeen discusses the portrait
of the American people found in Alexis de Tocqueville's two-volume
classic, Democracy in America (vol. 1, 1835; vol. 2, 1840).
Tocqueville saw the United States as the bellwether of a
grand historical trend toward equality. Although he greatly
admired the energy and fortitude of the Americans he observed
in the Jacksonian Era, he feared that Americans might eventually
give in to selfishness, materialism, and dependence on government.
Toward
a More Perfect Union: Writings of Herbert J. Storing
This volume brings together the major writings of Herbert J. Storing (1928-1977), one of America's most thoughtful students of constitutional theory and public administration. Included are essays on such topics as the American founding, race relations in America, rights and the public interest, bureaucracy and big government, and statesmanship. The editor is the Alice Tweed Tuohy Associate Professor of Government and Ethics at Claremont McKenna College. Excerpts from the editor's introduction follow. Of the twenty-four selections included here, fourteen were originally published as separate essays. In the present volume they are joined by ten other writings, five of which have not been published before. In any project of this sort, space limitations dictate that judgments must be made about what to include and exclude. The purpose here has been to bring together Herbert J. Storing's major essays, excerpts from longer works, and significant unpublished writings across the range of issues that focused his scholarship (and teaching) during his highly productive, though unfortunately truncated, academic career.
Trade
and Security: U.S. Policies at Cross-Purposes
This book is a critical analysis of recent trends in U.S. international trade policy that undercut U.S. security objectives and run counter to broader U.S. gains in economic competitiveness. The author is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. A summary of the book follows. From the earliest months of his presidency, Bill Clinton staked a large part of his foreign and domestic economic strategy on U.S. trade policy. Now, as the president begins his campaign for reelection, that policy is in serious trouble. When Clinton came into office, he set five broad trade policy goals: (1) to pursue a more aggressive strategy of geo-economic warfare with America's allies, especially Japan and the European Union; (2) to shift the emphasis of U.S. trade policy toward the rapidly growing markets of Asia; (3) to complete the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Uruguay Round negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); (4) to launch a national export strategy in emerging markets such as China, Indonesia, Argentina, Poland, and South Africa; and (5) to convert America's traditional Pentagon-based, defense-oriented industrial and technology policy into a civilian-oriented Advanced Technology Program based in the Commerce Department.
Transition
Costs of Fundamental Tax Reform
The authors of this volume challenge the common perception that the removal of old distortions from the tax system would seriously harm segments of the economy. The three essays, each of which is followed by a commentary, discuss the understatement of benefits from fundamental reform, the perniciousness of the current tax system, the distribution of benefits from reform, and the effects of reform on the housing market and on stock prices. Kevin A. Hassett is a resident scholar at AEI. R. Glenn Hubbard is a visiting scholar at AEI and the Russell L. Carson Professor of Economics and Finance at Columbia University; President Bush has nominated him to be chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. The authors of the essays are Donald Bruce of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee, Kenneth L. Judd of the Hoover Institution, Douglas Holtz-Eakin of Syracuse University, Andrew B. Lyon of the University of Maryland, and Peter R. Merrill of PricewaterhouseCoopers. The commentators are Alan J. Auerbach of the University of California, Berkeley; William G. Gale of the Brookings Institution; and James R. Hines of the University of Michigan. This summary is adapted from the editors' introduction to the volume. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was a sweeping reform that lowered marginal tax rates and broadened the tax base. Although many economists felt that the law, given its broad bipartisan support and sound economic underpinnings, would stand for many years, events soon proved them incorrect. Significant increases in marginal tax rates were passed in 1990 and 1993; subsequent reforms have narrowed the tax base and have increased effective marginal rates in a particularly crazy hodgepodge. The tax system is now probably further from the economic ideal than in 1985, and economists are again calculating and debating the potential gains to the economy from another fundamental tax reform.
Transmission
Pricing and Stranded Costs in the Electric Power Industry Telecommunications Competition: The
Last Ten Miles
This
book analyzes the effects of dramatic technological, regulatory,
and market changes on competition in the last ten miles
of the telephone network--the most pivotal issue raised
by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. |
