The Reshaping of America's Game

The Reshaping of America's Game
Author: Bryan Soderholm-Difatte
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2021-04-23
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1538145960

The past 25 years have been the most dynamic in the history of Major League Baseball, from the league’s recovery after the players’ strike to the growth of analytics and the rise of new World Series contenders. In The Reshaping of America’s Game: Major League Baseball after the Players' Strike, Bryan Soderholm-Difatte reflects on the factors and challenges that have changed major league baseball since the 1994-1995 players’ strike. He examines the consolidation of power in the Commissioner’s Office, the influx of Latin and Asian players, the boom in new stadiums, the influence of analytics in reshaping how rosters are constructed, the relationship between managers and the front office, and the rise of the power-game between pitchers and batters that has led to unprecedented strikeout and home run totals. While Major League Baseball continues to develop and grow, the league has had to grapple with repeated steroids scandals, the struggle of small-market teams to remain competitive, and the “forever” unfinished business between players and owners over free agency and fair compensation. The Reshaping of America’s Game provides a detailed and intriguing review of the many issues affecting the national pastime during the liveliest years in MLB history. The Reshaping of America’s Game, together with Soderholm-Difatte’s America’s Game, Tumultuous Times in America’s Game, and America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era, form the author’s complete, definitive history of Major League Baseball.

America's Game in the Wild-Card Era

America's Game in the Wild-Card Era
Author: Bryan Soderholm-Difatte
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2021-04-23
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1538145944

A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title "Baseball fans actively following the sport in the 1990s and 2000s will greatly appreciate this fantastic book and its detailed insight." —Library Journal Major League Baseball has had a long and storied history, but perhaps no era has been as competitive and unpredictable as the past 25 years, with an expanded postseason making for an unexpected and entertaining end to each season. In America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era: From Strike to Pandemic, Bryan Soderholm-Difatte provides a compelling examination of Major League Baseball since the 1994 players’ strike. He reveals how the last quarter century has been the most dynamic in MLB history and argues that bringing wild-card teams and the division-series round into the postseason mix have fundamentally changed how dynasties should be perceived. Following the major storylines for all 30 teams, along with the division races and state of dynasties over the past 25 years, America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era is a captivating look into a new age of baseball. America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era, together with Soderholm-Difatte’s America’s Game, Tumultuous Times in America’s Game, and The Reshaping of America’s Game, form the author’s complete, definitive history of Major League Baseball.

The Agenda

The Agenda
Author: Ian Millhiser
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781734420760

From 2011, when Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, until the present, Congress enacted hardly any major legislation outside of the tax law President Trump signed in 2017. In the same period, the Supreme Court dismantled much of America's campaign finance law, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, permitted states to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, weakened laws protecting against age discimination and sexual and racial harassment, and held that every state must permit same-sex couples to marry. This powerful unelected body, now controlled by six very conservative Republicans, has and will become the locus of policymaking in the United States. Ian Millhiser, Vox's Supreme Court correspondent, tells the story of what those six justices are likely to do with their power. It is true that the right to abortion is in its final days, as is affirmative action. But Millhiser shows that it is in the most arcane decisions that the Court will fundamentally reshape America, transforming it into something far less democratic, by attacking voting rights, dismantling and vetoing the federal administrative state, ignoring the separation of church and state, and putting corporations above the law. The Agenda exposes a radically altered Supreme Court whose powers extend far beyond transforming any individual right--its agenda is to shape the very nature of America's government, redefining who gets to have legal rights, who is beyond the reach of the law, and who chooses the people who make our laws.

The Long Game

The Long Game
Author: Rush Doshi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2021-06-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197527876

For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries - not Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviet Union - has ever reached sixty percent of US GDP. China is the sole exception, and it is fast emerging into a global superpower that could rival, if not eclipse, the United States. What does China want, does it have a grand strategy to achieve it, and what should the United States do about it? In The Long Game, Rush Doshi draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades worth of party documents, leaked materials, memoirs by party leaders, and a careful analysis of China's conduct to provide a history of China's grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. Taking readers behind the Party's closed doors, he uncovers Beijing's long, methodical game to displace America from its hegemonic position in both the East Asia regional and global orders through three sequential "strategies of displacement." Beginning in the 1980s, China focused for two decades on "hiding capabilities and biding time." After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, it became more assertive regionally, following a policy of "actively accomplishing something." Finally, in the aftermath populist elections of 2016, China shifted to an even more aggressive strategy for undermining US hegemony, adopting the phrase "great changes unseen in century." After charting how China's long game has evolved, Doshi offers a comprehensive yet asymmetric plan for an effective US response. Ironically, his proposed approach takes a page from Beijing's own strategic playbook to undermine China's ambitions and strengthen American order without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.

The Crisis in Pro Baseball and Japan’s Lost Decade

The Crisis in Pro Baseball and Japan’s Lost Decade
Author: Paul Dunscomb
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2023-10-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000992667

This book examines Japan’s Heisei era through the lens of the crisis in Japanese professional baseball of 2004, challenging the narrative of decline which dominates the discourse on the period. The story of this crisis reveals much about the Japanese psyche during the “Lost Decade,” about the nature of change during Heisei Japan and of the nation’s resilience. The business of professional baseball provides crucial insights as it achieved its basic form at the same time as Japan's post-war political economy, and shared many characteristics with it, including systemic inefficiencies which post “bubble” Japan could no longer sustain. The book traces how the crisis unfolded and the cast of characters who appeared during it (including team owners, players, IT entrepreneurs, and ordinary fans) revealing much about the push and pull of continuity and change in Japan. Featuring an in-depth analysis or the key participants and developments of the crisis in baseball this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of sports management, Japanese history, and Japanese culture, particularly of the Heisei era.

The Great Revolt

The Great Revolt
Author: Salena Zito
Publisher: Forum Books
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2019-11-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1524763705

A CNN political analyst and a Republican strategist reframe the discussion of the “Trump voter” to answer the question, What’s next? NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS • “Unlike most retellings of the 2016 election, The Great Revolt provides a cohesive, non-wild-eyed argument about where the Republican Party could be headed.”—The Atlantic Political experts were wrong about the 2016 election and they continue to blow it, predicting the coming demise of the president without pausing to consider the durability of the winds that swept him into office. Salena Zito and Brad Todd have traveled over 27,000 miles of country roads to interview more than three hundred Trump voters in ten swing counties. What emerges is a portrait of a group of citizens who span job descriptions, income brackets, education levels, and party allegiances, united by their desire to be part of a movement larger than themselves. They want to put pragmatism before ideology and localism before globalism, and demand the respect they deserve from Washington. The 2016 election signaled a realignment in American politics that will outlast any one president. Zito and Todd reframe the discussion of the “Trump voter” to answer the question, What’s next?

Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape

Native Americans, Christianity, and the Reshaping of the American Religious Landscape
Author: Joel W. Martin
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2010-10-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807899666

In this interdisciplinary collection of essays, Joel W. Martin and Mark A. Nicholas gather emerging and leading voices in the study of Native American religion to reconsider the complex and often misunderstood history of Native peoples' engagement with Christianity and with Euro-American missionaries. Surveying mission encounters from contact through the mid-nineteenth century, the volume alters and enriches our understanding of both American Christianity and indigenous religion. The essays here explore a variety of postcontact identities, including indigenous Christians, "mission friendly" non-Christians, and ex-Christians, thereby exploring the shifting world of Native-white cultural and religious exchange. Rather than questioning the authenticity of Native Christian experiences, these scholars reveal how indigenous peoples negotiated change with regard to missions, missionaries, and Christianity. This collection challenges the pervasive stereotype of Native Americans as culturally static and ill-equipped to navigate the roiling currents associated with colonialism and missionization. The contributors are Emma Anderson, Joanna Brooks, Steven W. Hackel, Tracy Neal Leavelle, Daniel Mandell, Joel W. Martin, Michael D. McNally, Mark A. Nicholas, Michelene Pesantubbee, David J. Silverman, Laura M. Stevens, Rachel Wheeler, Douglas L. Winiarski, and Hilary E. Wyss.

America's Game(s)

America's Game(s)
Author: Benjamin Eastman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2007-12-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136802630

This book considers how to locate America in the sporting world and howAmerican Sport should reflect the vast networks of expertise, finance, and performance moving out from American athletic body as well as the influx of talent coming from abroad.

Political Demography

Political Demography
Author: Jack A. Goldstone
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2012-08-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199945969

The field of political demography - the politics of population change - is dramatically underrepresented in political science. At a time when demographic changes - aging in the rich world, youth bulges in the developing world, ethnic and religious shifts, migration, and urbanization - are waxing as never before, this neglect is especially glaring and starkly contrasts with the enormous interest coming from policymakers and the media. "Ten years ago, [demography] was hardly on the radar screen," remarks Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, two contributors to this volume. "Today," they continue, "it dominates almost any discussion of America's long-term fiscal, economic, or foreign-policy direction." Demography is the most predictable of the social sciences: children born in the last five years will be the new workers, voters, soldiers, and potential insurgents of 2025 and the political elites of the 2050s. Whether in the West or the developing world, political scientists urgently need to understand the tectonics of demography in order to grasp the full context of today's political developments. This book begins to fill the gap from a global and historical perspective and with the hope that scholars and policymakers will take its insights on board to develop enlightened policies for our collective future.