Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back PDF

Author: Christopher R. Weingarten

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2010-04-08

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1441151419

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Christopher R. Weingarten provides a thrilling account of how the Bomb Squad produced such a singular-sounding record: engineering, sampling, scratching, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing - even occasionally stomping on vinyl that sounded too clean. Using production techniques that have never been duplicated, the Bomb Squad plundered and reconfigured their own compositions to make frenetic splatter collages; they played samples by hand together in a room like a rock band to create a "not quite right" tension; they hand-picked their samples from only the ugliest squawks and sirens. Weingarten treats the samples used on Nation Of Millions as molecules of a greater whole, slivers of music that retain their own secret histories and folk traditions. Can the essence of a hip-hop record be found in the motives, emotions and energies of the artists it samples? Is it likely that something an artist intended 20 years ago would re-emerge anew? This is a compelling and thoroughly researched investigation that tells the story of one of hip-hop's landmark albums.

It Takes a Nation

It Takes a Nation PDF

Author: Rebecca M. Blank

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 0691004013

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"In this impeccably researched book, Rebecca Blank demonstrates that government aid has been far more effective in reducing poverty than most people think. It Takes a Nation argues that federal, state, and local assistance should go hand in hand with private efforts at community development and personal empowerment and change."--Jacket

It Takes a Nation

It Takes a Nation PDF

Author: Rebecca M. Blank

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0691190259

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As Americans experiment with dismantling the nation's welfare system, clichés and slogans proliferate, ranging from charges that the poor are simply lazy to claims that existing antipoverty programs have failed completely. In this impeccably researched book, Rebecca Blank provides the definitive antidote to the scapegoating, guesswork, and outright misinformation of today's welfare debates. Demonstrating that government aid has been far more effective than most people think, she also explains that even private support for the poor depends extensively on public funds. It takes a nation to fight a problem as pervasive and subtle as modern poverty, and this book argues that we should continue to implement a mix of private and public programs. Federal, state, and local assistance should go hand in hand with private efforts at community development and personal empowerment and change. The first part of the book investigates the changing nature of poverty in America. Poverty is harder to combat now than in the past, both because of the changing demographics of who is poor as well as the major deterioration in earnings among less-skilled workers. The second part of the book delves into policies designed to reduce poverty, presenting evidence that many though not all programs have done exactly what they set out to do. The final chapters provide an excellent review of recent policy changes and make workable suggestions for how to improve public assistance programs to assure a safety net, while still encouraging poor adults to find employment and support their families.

A Nation for All

A Nation for All PDF

Author: Alejandro de la Fuente

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2011-01-20

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 9780807898765

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After thirty years of anticolonial struggle against Spain and four years of military occupation by the United States, Cuba formally became an independent republic in 1902. The nationalist coalition that fought for Cuba's freedom, a movement in which blacks and mulattoes were well represented, had envisioned an egalitarian and inclusive country--a nation for all, as Jose Marti described it. But did the Cuban republic, and later the Cuban revolution, live up to these expectations? Tracing the formation and reformulation of nationalist ideologies, government policies, and different forms of social and political mobilization in republican and postrevolutionary Cuba, Alejandro de la Fuente explores the opportunities and limitations that Afro-Cubans experienced in such areas as job access, education, and political representation. Challenging assumptions of both underlying racism and racial democracy, he contends that racism and antiracism coexisted within Cuban nationalism and, in turn, Cuban society. This coexistence has persisted to this day, despite significant efforts by the revolutionary government to improve the lot of the poor and build a nation that was truly for all.

Inventing a Nation

Inventing a Nation PDF

Author: Gore Vidal

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 0300127928

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This New York Times bestseller offers “an unblinking view of our national heroes by one who cherishes them, warts and all” (New York Review of Books). In Inventing a Nation, National Book Award winner Gore Vidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and bedrooms), the convention halls, and the salons of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others. We come to know these men, through Vidal’s splendid prose, in ways we have not up to now—their opinions of each other, their worries about money, their concerns about creating a viable democracy. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation. He also illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they delivered, and the institutions of government by which we still live. More than two centuries later, America is still largely governed by the ideas championed by this triumvirate. The author of Burr and Lincoln, one of the master stylists of American literature and most acute observers of American life, turns his immense literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of these formidable men

Don't Rhyme For The Sake of Riddlin'

Don't Rhyme For The Sake of Riddlin' PDF

Author: Russell Myrie

Publisher: Canongate Books

Published: 2009-09-25

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1847676111

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Public Enemy are one of the greatest hip-hop acts of all time. Exploding out of Long Island, New York in the early 1980s, their firebrand lyrical assault, the Bomb Squad’s innovative production techniques, and their unmistakeable live performances gave them a formidable reputation. They terrified the establishment, and have continued to blaze a trail over a twenty year period up until the present day. Today, they are more autonomous and as determined as ever, still touring and finding more ingenious ways of distributing their music. Russell Myrie has had unprecedented access to the group, conducting extensive interviews with Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Terminator X, Professor Griff, the Shocklee brothers, and many others who form part of their legacy. He tells the stories behind the making of seminal albums such as their debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show, the breakthrough It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back, and multi-million selling Fear of a Black Planet. He tackles Professor Griff's alleged anti-semitic remarks which caused massive controversy in the late eighties, the complexities of the group’s relationship with the Nation of Islam, their huge crossover appeal with the alternative audience in the early nineties, and the strange circumstances of Flavor Flav’s re-emergence as a Reality TV Star since the turn of the millennium.

A Nation of Wusses

A Nation of Wusses PDF

Author: Ed Rendell

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2012-05-29

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1118330668

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Governor Ed Rendell explains why America's leaders rarely call for sacrifice for the greater good—to avoid making any sacrifices themselves! Rendell has seen job security become the primary consideration of any person with power in America—their own job security! Most politicians and bureaucrats can see no further ahead than the next election, sometimes no further than the next press conference. Americans are rarely afraid of sacrifice and hard work when they mean building a better future, but when was the last time you heard of a leader of anything making a sacrifice for the greater good? The people can only win when they make it clear to the powers that be that making the right choices, even the hard ones, is the key to winning the next election. Explains in rollicking stories ranging from the profane to the profound that most hard choices are only "hard" because the polls conflict with your principles Ed Rendell rose to the top of Philadelphia, then Pennsylvania, then national politics, by doing what he thought was right, and there were plenty of times that looked like it would be his downfall as well This book revisits the high points of Ed Rendell's career and current landscape to define the political fights his peers seem just as afraid of winning as losing Rendell is a former head of the Democratic National Committee, a current MSNBC Senior Political Analyst, and a Partner at Ballard Spahr LLP

A Nation of Takers

A Nation of Takers PDF

Author: Nicholas Eberstadt

Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press

Published: 2012-10-10

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1599474360

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In A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic, one of our country’s foremost demographers, Nicholas Eberstadt, details the exponential growth in entitlement spending over the past fifty years. As he notes, in 1960, entitlement payments accounted for well under a third of the federal government’s total outlays. Today, entitlement spending accounts for a full two-thirds of the federal budget. Drawing on an impressive array of data and employing a range of easy-to-read, four-color charts, Eberstadt shows the unchecked spiral of spending on a range of entitlements, everything from Medicare to disability payments. But Eberstadt does not just chart the astonishing growth of entitlement spending, he also details the enormous economic and cultural costs of this epidemic. He powerfully argues that while this spending certainly drains our federal coffers, it also has a very real, long-lasting, negative impact on the character of our citizens. Also included in the book is a response from one of our leading political theorists, William Galston. In his incisive response, he questions Eberstadt’s conclusions about the corrosive effect of entitlements on character and offers his own analysis of the impact of American entitlement growth.

A Nation Unmade by War

A Nation Unmade by War PDF

Author: Tom Engelhardt

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 1608469026

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“In his searing new book . . . Engelhardt has composed a requiem for a nation turned upside down by the relentless pursuit of global power” (Karen J. Greenberg, author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State). As veteran author Tom Engelhardt argues, despite having a more massive, technologically advanced, and better-funded military than any other power on the planet, in the last decade and a half of constant war across the greater Middle East and parts of Africa, the United States has won nothing. Its unending wars, in fact, have only contributed to a world growing more chaotic by the second. “The violence, destruction, and suffering resulting from the imperial arrogance of Bush, Cheney, and cohorts have proceeded on their shocking course while most Americans, Tom Engelhardt writes, were ‘only half paying attention.’ Regular readers of his incisive, lucid, and brutally informative columns could not fail to pay attention and to be appalled at what was revealed. Their impact is all the more forceful in this collection, which casts a brilliant and horrifying light on a sordid chapter of history, far from closed.” —Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hopes and Prospects “No one has had a keener eye for American militarism, hypocrisy, and flat-out folly than Tom Engelhardt.” —John W. Dower, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering “The mainstream media call it the ‘Age of Trump.’ Tom Engelhardt knows better: It’s the ‘Era of America Unhinged.’ This new collection of essays gives us Engelhardt at his very best: incisive, impassioned, and funny even, in a time of great darkness.” —Andrew J. Bacevich, New York Times–bestselling author “Tom Engelhardt is a tireless analyst of the miseries of American Empire . . . [an] indispensable book.” —Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan