New Titles on New Book Shelf

The new fifth edition of this leading textbook provides a clear and comprehensive account of governance and politics in the Netherlands. The book has been revised throughout to provide full coverage of recent developments and events, including the latest proposals for constitutional reform.The Netherlands has often been characterized as a place of political calm, with a culture of cooperation and compromise in dealing with key political issues. Now, at a time when climate change and immigration are high on the political agenda, the electorate is growing ever more unpredictable and political fragmentation makes forming majority coalitions increasingly difficult, it is vital to question how the Dutch system will continue to achieve consensus.

This issue of The Reference Shelf looks at some of the best American journalism and writing on the topic of voting rights. Sections present articles on subjects ranging from convict disenfranchisement, voting and race, and the challenges of voting in urban versus rural areas. This issue pays special attention to the debate over voter fraud and voting security and how recent allegations of voter fraud have been used to justify new voter restrictions in many states. Other topics covered include voter ID requirements, voting and transportation for the elderly, and the debate over online voting.

In Necropolitics Achille Mbembe, a leader in the new wave of francophone critical theory, theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world, a world plagued by ever-increasing inequality, militarization, enmity, and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill. He outlines how democracy has begun to embrace its dark side---what he calls its "nocturnal body"---which is based on the desires, fears, affects, relations, and violence that drove colonialism. This shift has hollowed out democracy, thereby eroding the very values, rights, and freedoms liberal democracy routinely celebrates. As a result, war has become the sacrament of our times in a conception of sovereignty that operates by annihilating all those considered enemies of the state

A leading historian tells the story of the United States' most enduring political party and its long, imperfect and newly invigorated quest for "moral capitalism," from Andrew Jackson to Joseph Biden.

Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP's Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South. She was the first black woman elected to the state Senate in New York, the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary.      Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country.