Barbarian Memory: The Legacy of Early Medieval History in Early Modern Literature

Nicholas Birns is Associate Teaching Professor at the New School, USA. He is the author of Understanding Anthony Powell and Theory After Theory: An Intellectual History of Literary Theory From 1950 to the Early 21st Century, as well as the co-editor of A Companion to Australian Literature Since 1900, which was named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book in 2008.

• 1. Barbarian Memory and the Uncanny Past 2. Chaucer, Gower, and Barbarian History 3. Rome, Christianity, and Barbarian Memory in Titus Andronicus 4. Rhyme, Barbarism, and Manners from Trissino to Corneille

Barbarian Memory will be of interest to a variety of early-period scholars. It urges us to recognize the paradoxical and conflicted narrative of history and religion that emerges when we cast into relief the matter of the barbarian as part of a cultural tapestry extending from the late antique to the early modern period. Birns uncovers a barbarian uncanny that re-shapes literary readings at the levels of both character and form. - Seeta Chaganti, Associate Professor of English, University of California, Davis, USA JV FF8807E4-9A84-42BD-9BE8-5771870C598F 693782 Electronic Book Text 595577 9781137348753 1137348755 Building Cosmopolitan Communities A Critical and Multidimensional Approach E.Book Building Cosmopolitanism 14/08/2013 08/14/2013 56A Politics - USA Academic A. Nascimento 41908 By (Author) Author Record 1 Associate Professor of Philosophy University of Washington anascim@u.washington.edu 56A Politics - USA Academic US Domestic Pal Scholarly E7 - Distributed to Vendors E3 - Basic Record Set Up JPA - Political science & theory; HP - Philosophy; HPS - Social & political philosophy; JFFS - Globalization POL010000; PHI019000; POL011000; POL033000 Politics - Political Philosophy, Theory and Thought Professional and Scholarly 48.33 90.00 Green EPUB EBook 256 0 sa 2015-06-08 17:31:06.873 Words All Formats Introduction 1. Plural Discourse Communities as Point of Departure PART I: A CRITICAL AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL APPROACH 2. The Transformations of the Critical Tradition 3. Discourse Philosophy as a Critical Framework PART II: COMMUNITIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND COSMOPOLITAN IDEALS 4. Individuality and Collectivity in Changing Concepts of Community 5. From Plurality to Global Human Rights Discourses 6. Cosmopolitan Ideals and the Norms of Universality 7. Cosmopolitan Communities under Construction Conclusion Building Cosmopolitan Communities contributes to current debates on cosmopolitanism by discussing the justification and application of norms and human rights in different communitarian settings. Reviewer: Eduardo Mendieta Based on what I received (a proposal, an introduction, and two chapters), I like to immediately recommend that this book be contracted and eventually published. There are many virtues to the project. First of all, the author is right that by now it is time to attempt to survey the variety of theories and discourses on human rights and cosmopolitanism. Evidently, there are some general overviews of 'cosmopolitanism' but some are already dated (Archibungi, Held, and the wonderful anthology Debating Cosmopolitics), or they are skewed towards one or another theoretical perspective. I was fortunate to hear the author at a professional meeting in which he offered a typology of discourse on cosmopolitanism that gave me the impression that the author is vastly and prodigiously informed and thus in a propitious place to offer this kind of survey and typology. Second, the author not only aims to offer this kind of survey and typology, but wants to demonstrate the distinct virtues of what he calls discourse theory (Apel and Habermas, and younger followers) in developing a normative theory of cosmopolitanism that takes the form of human rights. Third, and consequently, when the volume appears it will be a welcome contribution to that very distinct and comprehensive tradition that counts already three or four generations (depending if we add a younger cohort Amy Allen, Ingram, Forst, Mendieta, Pensky, et. al. ) that takes up where Benhabib, so to say, left off. Fourth, this is one of the very few books that offers a very thorough analysis and genealogy of the development of the 'discourse theory' paradigm by both Apel and Habermas. Generally, even Frankfurt School Critical Theorists, give the credit for discourse ethics and a discourse theory of democracy only to Habermas. Nascimento, in chapter 1 and 2, offers one of the best analysis of the philosophical entwinement between Apel and Habermas. Apel, Habermas senior, already in the fifties undertook a 'linguistic' transformation of transcendental philosophy, which laid down the foundations for Habermas' own linguistic turn after Knowledge and Human Interests. Discourse ethics, it has been argued, was originally formulated by Apel in the second volume of his monumental Transformation der Philosophie (1973, if not sooner, in the introduction to his Habilitation), which was made up of essay written over three decades. The first two chapters, alone, warrant the publication of this volume. Or rather, in those two chapters you can already apprehend the deep familiarity Nascimento has with the tradition. These chapters are extremely useful and they will be quoted repeatedly. Fourth, Nascimento brings the 'Discourse Theory' tradition into dialogue with some very recent and unfortunately neglected work the work of Dussel, for instance, is extremely important to understand some developments in Apel's own work during the 90s. In addition, the engagement with the work of figures like Mignolo, Appiah, Nussbaum, and Benhabib, makes this an important contribution to a truly global and post-Eurocentric type of cosmopolitanism. Fifth, the book is based on primary knowledge of the key texts (in German), which makes this also a distinct work that does not rely on translations, which sometimes are highly edited, delayed and not widely available. In this sense, this is a very scholarly work, without being scholastic, pedantic, or arcane and obtuse. Sixth, the book is not simply a historical reconstruction, or exegesis. It aims to develop an original normative proposal: namely that the linguistification of Kant's deontological ethics, by the discourse theory tradition, is and can be a philosophical approach that allows us to mediate between the claims of local and distinct historical ethical communities and the universal claims of human rights that are grounded on the norms already implicit in human communication, or what Habermas calls 'communicative action.' Another way of putting Nascimento's argument is that discourse theory provides us with the philosophical tools that can mediate between the ethical claims of historical communications and the justice claims of humanity at the global level, which are crystallized or given legal and political force in globally recognized human rights. Yet, another way of putting Nascimento's argument would be to say that discourse theory provides for a dialectical mediation between discourse of application and discourses of justification. When we invoke human rights we do so from the standpoint of very distinct ethical traditions facing very distinct challenges and prejudices (Eurocentrism, sexism, racism, etc.), but as soon as we have made appeals to human rights we have entered a realm of norms, a space of reasons, in which we are justifying how to challenge and overcome our own ethical shortcoming. The dialectic between ethical discourse of application and the moral discourse of justification has been nicely thematized by Benhabib in terms of what she calls 'cosmopolitan iterations,' by which she means that cosmopolitanism is never one, and it is never complete. We appeal to it as an asymptotic ideal, but from our ethical locus, but as we do so, the ideal itself gets iterated in new, more cosmopolitan, more concrete, but also at the same time, more universalizing forms. To use a phrase from Benhabib's mid-nineties work: cosmopolitanism is to globalized humanity what the perspective of the 'generalized Other' is to the post-conventional moral subject, namely the horizon of a universality to come, a universality under construction. In my comments thus far, then, I have addressed implicitly several more concrete, let us call the pecuniary concerns. This book is sui generis. It offers something that its siblings don't offer. So, while you could put it on the same shelf as works by Archibungi, Held, Appiah, Gould, Nussbaum, it can't be replaced by any of those. In 2012 there will appear a volume edited by Gerard Delanty, titled Routledge Handbook of Cosmpolitanism Studies, which I think will augment interest in works like those proposed by Nascimento. Still, his book has its very unique place on that shelf. I think that the audience is going to be interdisciplinary and will cut across levels of expertise. I think that some sections of it can be profitably used in upper division classes in philosophy and political theory. It surely would be a nice text to use in graduate seminars. Scholars in the fields of contemporary social theory, critical theory, German philosophy, globalization theory, would want to read it, or at least, should be aware of it, and have it as a resource. I think that any good university library should have it. I imagine that it would be very favorably review in major journals of political philosophy and journals such as Constellations, Radical Philosophy, Notre Dame Philosophical Review, European Journal of Philosophy, Political Theory, etc. As someone who is familiar with the work of the Frankfurt School and has followed many of these debates, and thus, have read and being exposed to some of Nascimento's work, I am very confident, first, that Nascimento is amply and thoroughly qualified to carry out this project; and second, that he already has a substantive part of the manuscript ready (or drafted), and thus, can see him sticking to the time-line he has laid out for Palgrave. In what remains of my reader report I like to offer some suggestions for revisions, and execution. I think the present title is verbose and convoluted. I suggest something more terse and succinct: Cosmopolitan Communities: Values, Norms, and Human Rights. I think the triad in the subtitle is clear values refer to ethics, norms to justice and morality, and human rights refers to how we institutionalize global norms that transcend and sublate the tension between ethics and justice, application and justification. I take it that 'Cosmopolitan Communities' is both a descriptive and an ideal - -there are some communities that are more cosmopolitan than others, and no community is completely cosmopolitan, but if they subscribe to the norms of human rights, they can be on the path to cosmopolitanism. Here one could paraphrase Kant. We don't live in an enlightened age, we live in an age of enlightenment, that is, we don't live in a cosmopolitan global (or world) society, but in an age of cosmopolitanisms. Now, let me go by the chapters I was sent: Introduction. First, when Nascimento says that Apel and Habermas subscribe to three paradigms: metaphysical, epistemological, and discursive, he has to be careful. Apel has since his earliest work offer a fascinating, provocative, and original thematization of the history of philosophy in terms of three paradigms, which can be discerned from the standpoint of linguistic philosophy itself. Here one would have to discuss Apel's transcendental semiotics and the triadic dimension of the sign (semantics, syntactics, pragmatics). In other words, Apel's history of philosophy follows from his semitics. Habermas' is not committed to such a theory. In fact, Habermas has developed a distinct philosophical position, called 'postmetaphysics.' One can read Habermas book Postmetaphysical Thinking as a muted and indirect attack on his friend's position. Nascimento has to discuss briefly this book and how it can be read as a critique of Apel's high regard for a high view of philosophy. It is unfortunate that Nascimento has not paid enough attention in this intro to the powerful and innovative work of Pensky, whose The Ends of Solidarity offers an analysis that is in synchrony with his own. Additionally, it can help with the last section of chapter two, on the dialectic between discourses of justification and discourses of application. The author should refer to the wonderful essay by Matthias Kettner in Rasmussen's Handbook of Critical Theory, in which he lays out the relationship between Apel and Habermas. The author uses the formulation 'globalization from below' (a wonderful phrase by the way), but he misses the opportunity to link it with one of the aims of this book (as I see it), namely a cosmopolitanism of the subaltern. Mendieta, following Dussel, Appiah and Mignolo, in fact has argued that it is the subaltern, the colonized other, the wretched of the globalized planet, who have made cosmopolitan the Davos man, the privileged sons of the imperial metropolis. Following Benhabib, we could say: if there is only cosmopolitanism as a ceaseless process of cosmopolitan iterations, then, cosmopolitanism belongs to the 99% of the planet those who clamor for a world in which many worlds can thrive, but in justice and mutuality. Thus, to a globalization from below there corresponds a cosmopolitanism of the wretched of the planet. Chapter one. Awesome chapter. The author should consider adding a reference to Ernst Bloch, whose Natural Law and Human Dignity was very important to developing a proto, or ur-version of a cosmopolitan discourse, already in the sixties. Habermas was deeply influenced by it. And has rescued it again in his recent work on 'Human Rights as a Realistic Utopia.' The critique of Adorno, the alleged culprit for turning critical theory into aesthetic theory, has to be tempered. Adorno was one member of the Frankfurt School. There still remained Horkheimer, Marcuse, and of course Kirchheimer, Neuman, and Lowenthal. These were hardly narrowly focused on aesthetics. Furthermore, that the last book we got from Adorno was his Aesthetics was not his fault, nor his intent. He wanted to do an ethics, which was already implicit in his Negative Dialectics, and in his Aesthetic Theory. Additionally, Aesthetic Theory is hardly simply an aesthetics: it is also a critique of reason. In fact, Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory are two sides of the same coin. Adorno's lecture courses from the sixties indicate that he was hardly and narrowly concerned with aesthetics. The biggest and most important suggestion about this chapter is that Nascimento flip the order of presentation between Habermas and Apel. Chronologically, philosophically, and theoretically, Apel came before. So, Nascimento should transition to a discussion of Apel after Kant and Marx, before moving on to Habermas. The obvious link here is Peirce's semiotical transformation of Kant, which Apel introduce in his two-volume edition of Peirce's writings. AFTERALL, the linguistic transformation of Frankfurt Critical Theory was enabled by Apel's pioneering work of Austin, Wittgenstein, Searle, Morris, and of course Peirce. It was at the urging of Apel that Habermas read the pragmatists. Chapter 2: The discussion of Apel's dissertation is very nice. The author may want to look at Mendieta's discussion of this work in Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy, and link it as well to Apel's own critique of Heidegger in volume one of Transformation der Philosophie. Nascimento should discuss briefly the project that Apel and Habermas shared in the sixties, namely what they called 'Erkentnissanthropologie' both located themselves within philosophical anthropology. In fact, Habermas' Knowledge and Human Interest was still thought of as an epistemological anthropology. Both wanted to ground a theory of knowledge interests in a philosophical anthropology. Both eventually abandoned this project, for a theory of rationality. Evidently, eventually all the German citations will have to be translated. The sections Nascimento cites, especially from volume two of Transformation der Philosophie, are available in English in Towards a Transformation of Philosophy. Page 13, top, there has to be a type in the discussion there. Part B of discourse ethics, in Apel's formulation, refers to what he calls 'an ethics of responsibility,' and 'discourses of application.' Part A, is the normative part of morality, i.e. those discourses of justification or grounding. In tandem, in this discussion, Nascimento would be do well to cite Apel's pivotal essay on Hans Jonas, for it was the latter who inspired Apel to differentiate between these two levels of moral discourses. Finally, page 35, Nascimento should have a brief discussion of Klaus Gunther's The Sense of Appropriateness: Application Discourses in Morality and Law (SUNY Press, 1993), and Max Pensky's The Ends of Solidarity. To close, and this suggestion should not shadow all the virtues I have highlighted in this wonderful project, I think Nascimento would do great to have a separate chapter under Part I-Human Rights and the Problem of Particular Communities. This chapter would present the views of thinkers like Dussel, Mignolo, Fornet-Betancourt, Boaventura de Sosa Santos, Ranajit Guha, Spivak, Butler and Mendieta. What holds together these figures is that they are avowedly and unmistakably post-Eurocentric, post-Colonial, post-Occidentalist (to use Fernando Coronil's term), and post-Globalization (that is the rise of the hyper-urbanized Weltgesellschaft [world society]). I think these figures merit their separate treatment. Granting them their own platform dignifies their distinct contributions. It certainly gives more gravitas to the volume. Additionally, I think that it makes sense in terms of the theoretical trajectory of the book: on the one hand, that local communities have particular values that need to be heard, but that each community performs its own iteration of cosmopolitanism. In this way, then, the author can make good on the suggestion that to a globalization from below there corresponds a cosmopolitanism of what we can call the subaltern, the postcolonial, globalized citizen. CUTTING EDGE - First text to provide a survey of the theories and discourses on human rights and cosmopolitanism. INCLUSIVE - Offers a very thorough analysis and genealogy of the development of the 'discourse theory' paradigm by both Apel and Habermas. PRECISE - Author relies on his own interpretation of primary texts in their orignal languages, and does not rely on translations. TO COME JV A23E394D-BECF-46DE-A51F-577A466DEC43 865499 Electronic Book Text 715896 9781137389220 1137389222 The American Election 2012 Contexts and Consequences E.Book EVT;American Election 2012 21/05/2014 05/21/2014 56A Politics - USA Academic R. Holder; P. Josephson 47906 Edited By Author Record 2 Associate Professor St. Anselm College pjosephs@anselm.edu 56A Politics - USA Academic Elections, Voting, Technology EVT US Domestic Pal Scholarly E7a - Distributed Connect Only E3 - Basic Record Set Up JPHF - Elections & referenda; JPA - Political science & theory; JP - Politics & government; 1KBB - USA; 3JMG - c 2010 to c 2020 POL010000; POL008000; POL015000 Politics - American Politics; Politics & IR - Elections and Electoral Politics Professional and Scholarly 2014 57.50 69.00 110.00 10.1057/9781137389220 Green PDF EBook 380 0 sa 2015-06-08 17:31:06.873 Words All Formats Introduction - The American Election 2012: Contexts and Consequences; R. Ward Holder and Peter B. Josephson PART I: THE STATE OF THE PARTIES IN 2012 1. The Consequences of Party Reform in the 21st Century; Terri Susan Fine 2. Closed for Repairs So It Can Reengage with the World: Prospects for Reforming the Republican Party; Douglas M. Brattebo 3. The 2012 Elections and the Southern Roots of Polarized Politics: The Continuing Power of Southern Conservatives After Obama's Reelection; Allen Neal 4. The Ever-Widening Gap: Gender and the 2012 Presidential Election; Derya Rix 5. Data, America's Shifting Landscape, and the Meaning of 2012; Dante Chinni PART II: EMERGING STRATEGIES IN THE 2012 CAMPAIGN 6. Are Super PACs Really Arms of Political Parties? A Study of Coordination; Dante Scala 7. Economic Appeals in Unequal Communities: Stump Speeches in the 2012 Presidential Election; Christopher B. Chapp 8. Casualties of the Ground War: Personal Contacting in 2012 and Its Discontents; Robert Boatright 9. Unfriendly to Women? Female Politicians, Rape Comments and the GOP in 2012; Jennifer Lucas and Tauna Sisco 10. Weighing In or Waiting: When, Whether, and Whom Republican Officeholders Endorsed in 2012; Kevin J. Parsneau and Christopher Galdieri PART III: IMPLICATIONS OF THE 2012 ELECTION: DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN POLICIES 11. The Past as Prologue: Obama, Health Care and the Election of 2012; Anne Marie Cammisa 12. Healthcare Spending and Prevention within the Affordable Care Act: Contrasting the Public Health and Medical Models of Prevention; T. Lucas Hollar 13. Natural Uncertainty: Reconciling the Contrasting Environmental Goals of America's First Natural Security President Barack Obama; Mark O'Gorman 14. Federal Judicial Vacancies: Obama's Record and Prospects; Susan Siggelakis 15. The Politics of Presidential Foreign Policy: Unilateral Authority and the Role of Congress; Brandon Prins and Bryan Marshall 16. Decline or Not: America's Continued Primacy in the Persian Gulf?; Wesley Renfro and Marc O'Reilly PART IV: FAITH AND POLITICS: 2012 AND BEYOND 17. Courting the Catholic Vote: Obama, Romney, and the U.S. Catholic Bishops in the 2012 Presidential Election; Richard J. Powell and Mark D. Brewer 18. Catholic Vice Presidential Candidates and the Politics of Abortion: The 2012 Debate in Context; Angela Senander 19. What Romney's Nomination Means for Mormons and the Presidency; Luke Perry 20. The Liberal State and the Gay Marriage Debate: Lessons from American Catholic Thought; Aaron Taylor 21. Obama and the Common Good; Daniel Daly 22. The Rise of the Liberal Protestant? Faith and Politics in the Obama Administration; R. Ward Holder and Peter B. Josephson Elections capture a sense of national identity and imply a future direction for the nation. The book seeks to unravel how elections and policies act together dynamically by analyzing parties, strategies, foreign and domestic policies, and the role of religion in political dialogue. After reading the prospectus, I thought there might be something really original in this book, the connection of elections to specific public policies. As the authors point out, there are a number of edited collections on the 2012 campaign. These tend to focus on the nomination process and campaign strategy. The authors cite James W. Ceasar, Andrew E. Busch, and John J. Pitney, After Hope and Change: the 2012 Elections and American Politics (Rowman & Littlefield) and Michael Nelson, The Elections of 2012 (CQ Press). I would add to this partial list a book which I will probably use in my class next year, William Crotty ( ed.), Winning the Presidency 2012 (Paradigm Publishers.) The prospectus for this manuscript is strongly stated in terms that would resonate positively with most political scientists: 'Elections matter. They both capture a sense of national identity, and imply a future direction for the nation. Our proposed volume is thematically unified around the thesis that elections and policies act dynamically together.' In the prospectus, the authors seek to distinguish their collection of essays from other collections on the 2012 election by focusing on public policy implications the nomination process and election dynamics. At first look, this is very appealing given the significant differences between the candidates on domestic issues (although not so much on foreign policy issues). The victor of presidential elections, in this case Obama, always likes to claim a mandate for their positions. Many of the essays by themselves look to be original and informative and I look forward to reading the finished product. As it is currently written, the introduction and the outline of the book abandon the policy emphasis of the prospectus for 'a contest for the meaning of the American dream' in which voters were asked 'to recast the American vision of the good society.' It is difficult to claim a mandate for something as abstract as a vision and more difficult still to turn visions into specific policy initiatives. Although the introduction returns to 'elections matter' in the third paragraph, the policy focus is gone. The chapter abstracts could do more to reflect the policy American vision themes. The first chapter addresses party reform and seems to apply its irrelevance to the 2012 election. This is followed by four chapters (the balance of Part One) on the demographic aspects of the Republican coalition, then by five chapters (Part Two) on specific aspects of campaigning super PACs, campaign rhetoric, micro-targeting, Republic women as campaign surrogates, and endorsements. Nothing about public policy specifically. The difference between the prospectus and the introduction/abstracts provides creates a dilemma for this reviewer whether to evaluate the book proposal on the basis of the prospectus, which is original and appealing, or to evaluate the book proposal on the basis of the introduction/ abstracts, which are rather conventional. Of the 22 proposed chapters, only six are in 'Part Three, Implications of the 2012 Election: Domestic and Foreign Policies.' I was hoping that there would be more connections made between elections and policy within this section. In the first essay, Cammisa, 'The Politics of Health Care Reform,' discusses the 'extra-constitutional maneuvers and parliamentary tactics to get things done' in health care. This would seem to undercut 'elections matter.' Hollar, 'Cost and Quality within the Affordable Care Act,' contrasts the public health and medical models of prevention in health care. This is an interesting policy topic and may prove important to the success or failure of Obamacare to reduce health costs, but it was not an issue discussed in the election. O'Gorman's abstract seems to suggest that Obama's environmental policy is partially shaped by his national security policy and the two policies are not mutually exclusive. 'Reconciling the Contrasting Environmental Goals of America's First Natural Security President,' suggests that this was clear during the campaign. This is contrary to the general perception, that Obama took politically expedient positions on environmental issues during the campaign and that he has sharply alerted course becoming more environmentally friendly since his re-election. To be convincing, O'Gorman needs to make some specific connections between campaign statements and Obama's actions since the campaign. Siggelakis, 'Federal Judicial Vacancies: Obama's Record and Prospects,' seems out of place in a policy discussion, especially since Obama's lack of success in making appointments was not a major campaign issue. From the abstract, Prins, 'The Politics of Presidential Foreign Policy: Party Cover vs. Policy Availability,' does not seem to be making a case that 'elections matter,' although the thesis of this chapter is unclear. Is he arguing that election outcomes shape foreign policy? Obama turned to foreign policy at the outset of his administration, to the disappointment of much of his base that wanted him to focus on jobs and the economy. Romney basically endorsed Obama's foreign policy in the presidential debates. What is the connection between the election and Obama's policy? Maybe this is clear in the chapter, but it is not clear in the abstract. The abstract for Renfro and Reilly, 'Empire by Any Other Name,' doesn't seem to suggest any connection between the 2012 election and U.S. policy in the Gulf. Maybe that's the point. Part Four, 'Faith and Politics: 2012 and Beyond,' stands almost in isolation from the other parts of the book. In the prospectus, the only reference to 'faith' is in the title to Part Four. In the draft introduction, the only references to faith are in the descriptions of the essays in that part. In other words, no connections are made between faith and religion and the other chapters of the book proposal. Some of the abstracts in this part are closer to theology and philosophy than political science, on Catholic doctrine and the failure of individualism, for example. These are interesting topics, but call that the stated goal is 'To explore the theme of the relation of campaigns to policies.' Despite the historical significance of the first Mormon candidate for president, the presence of Catholics on both major party tickets, and an attempt by some outside the campaigns to reintroduce Obama association with Rev. Wright into the campaign, the role of religion was muted in the 2012 campaign. The most promising election relevant chapter, based upon the abstracts, is Brewer and Powell, who promise to discuss the micro-targeting of specific sub-groups of Catholics by both campaigns. This chapter almost sounds like it belongs in Part Two. If I were editing this book, I would start by rewriting the prospectus and introduction to focus the book. Once I had established the focus, I would ask the contributors to rewrite their abstracts. If the focus is to be public policy and 'elections matter,' ask the contributors to be more specific. How much of the campaign was devoted to the issue? What was the specific language used. Use quotes from campaign literature, speeches, and ads. Also, use polling taken during the campaign on the policy issues. After the chapters are at least in draft, rewrite the introduction to reflect what is actually in the chapters, even if that means shifting the focus of the introduction. It is very difficult to get academics to write to a common theme. They often follow their own lead, or fail to write anything useable. As for the market for this book, I have little to go on. I know that these post-election collections have been commonplace since the 1970s. Somebody must be buying them, some faculty must be ordering them for their courses, or they wouldn't continue to be published. With twenty-seven authors, mostly at 'teaching colleges' where they teach three or four courses per semester, the authors might be a sufficient market in themselves. Since many of the authors are from religiously affiliated institutions, ...