{"title":"Adam Jentleson","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiscover thought-provoking works by Adam Jentleson, exploring modern American politics and history. Perfect for readers interested in insightful analysis and contemporary issues. Browse his collection today.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"kill-switch-book-adam-jentleson-9781631497773","title":"Kill Switch","description":"Every major decision governing our diverse, majority-female, and increasingly liberal country bears the stamp of the United States Senate, an institution controlled by people who are almost exclusively white, overwhelmingly male, and disproportionately conservative. Although they do not represent a majority of Americans—and will not for the foreseeable future—today’s Republican senators possess the power to block most legislation. Once known as “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” the Senate has become one of the greatest threats to our democracy. How did this happen?   In Kill Switch, Senate insider Adam Jentleson contends that far from reflecting the Framers’ vision, the Senate has been transformed over the decades by a tenacious minority of white conservatives. From John Calhoun in the mid-1800s to Mitch McConnell in the 2010s, their primary weapon has been the filibuster, or the requirement that most legislation secure the support of a supermajority of senators. Yet, as Jentleson reveals, the filibuster was not a feature of the original Senate and, in allowing a determined minority to gridlock the federal government, runs utterly counter to the Framers’ intent.   For much of its history, the filibuster was used primarily to prevent civil rights legislation from becoming law. But more recently, Republicans have refined it into a tool for imposing their will on all issues, wielding it to thwart an increasingly progressive American majority represented by Barack Obama’s agenda and appointees. Under Donald Trump, McConnell merged the filibuster with rigid leadership structures initially forged by Lyndon Johnson, in the process surrendering the Senate’s independence and centrality, as infamously shown by its acquiescence in Trump’s impeachment trial. The result is a failed institution and a crippled democracy.   Taking us into the Capitol Hill backrooms where the institution’s decline is most evident, Jentleson shows that many of the greatest challenges of our era—partisan polarization, dark money, a media culture built on manufactured outrage—converge within the Senate. Even as he charts the larger forces that have shaped the institution where he served, Jentleson offers incisive portraits of the powerful senators who laid the foundation for the modern Senate, from Calhoun to McConnell to LBJ’s mentor, Richard Russell, to the unapologetic racist Jesse Helms.   An essential, revelatory investigation, Kill Switch ultimately makes clear that unless we immediately and drastically reform the Senate’s rules and practices—starting with reforming the filibuster—we face the prospect of permanent minority rule in America.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49525758689553,"sku":"GOR011592052","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49531199127825,"sku":"CIN1631497774G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49942081372433,"sku":"CIN1631497774VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50726465306897,"sku":"GOR012890439","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51098049806609,"sku":"NIN9781631497773","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":52866550268177,"sku":"CIN1631497774A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":53116000305425,"sku":"CIN1631497774LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53122228912401,"sku":"GOR014755148","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1631497774.jpg?v=1751437617"},{"product_id":"kill-switch-book-adam-jentleson-9781324091981","title":"Kill Switch","description":"Our democracy is under assault from homegrown authoritarians, with most observers blaming Donald Trump and the Republican Party that submitted to him. Yet as Adam Jentleson shows, the problem not only goes back to the nineteenth century, but is less about the presidency than it is about our nation’s most venerated institution: the United States Senate. A revelatory history of minority rule in America as expressed through the Senate filibuster, Kill Switch shows that white conservatives have long relied on the filibuster—which is not featured in the Constitution, and which, as Jentleson demonstrates, the Framers would have opposed—to shut down attempts to create a multiracial democracy. Featuring a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration, Kill Switch will remain an essential warning about the costs of empowering this nation’s right-wing minority.    • “Jentleson understands the inner workings of the institution, down to the most granular details, showing precisely how arcane procedural rules can be leveraged to dramatic effect.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times  • “Careful and thorough and exacting.” —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books  • “[An] excellent, surprising new book.” —Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50063085043985,"sku":"CIN1324091983G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50511719596305,"sku":"GOR013979483","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50515504202001,"sku":"GOR013981735","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51727084323089,"sku":"CIN1324091983VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53403255537937,"sku":"GOR014906835","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1324091983.jpg?v=1751444759"},{"product_id":"supermajority-book-adam-jentleson-9781324092193","title":"Supermajority","description":"With the fate of our democracy hanging in the balance, are we destined to watch every presidential election come down to a coin flip? Or is there a better way—can Democrats win enduring power and use it to solve the immense challenges we face? Can we learn from the past to dominate not just the next election, but the next decade?   These are the questions Adam Jentleson asks in Supermajority, the follow-up to his \"truly excellent\" (Ezra Klein) Kill Switch. Jentleson, who has been a party insider for two decades, demonstrates that we are not doomed to nail-biter elections and a broken government. But, he argues, the Democrats must change course. They learned the wrong lessons from the Obama era, believing that a rising, diverse generation of voters would swamp Republicans, and that the Democrats could—and should—embrace ideological purity as a way of motivating swing voters. That was a fatal miscalculation, as demonstrated by Donald Trump’s two electoral victories and Democrats’ shrinking tent.   Jentleson reminds us that Democrats once knew how to win and wield power. In a sweeping narrative, he takes us into earlier Democratic supermajorities—not just Barack Obama’s, but also FDR’s in the 1930s and LBJ’s in the 1960s—and reveals that these coalitions were messy, never pure. Building them required breaking away from a binary conception of politics altogether, because Americans are remarkably diverse in their thinking and values. But whatever compromises earlier Democrats made to get elected, once in power, they made it count, passing sweeping legislation, such as Social Security, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Obamacare, achievements that continue to benefit millions of people today.   The challenge now is greater than at perhaps any point in our history, due to Republicans’ entrenched advantages through redistricting, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Drawing from the past to inform the present, Jentleson forges a new view of political power—one in which politicians embrace their role as both students and shapers of public opinion, and work in constructive tension with activists—to chart a path forward for the Democratic Party and the survival of American democracy itself.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52628658782481,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52628659437841,"sku":"NGR9781324092193","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781324092193.jpg?v=1774001321"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-adam-jentleson.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}