JAMES TRAUB and JONATHAN MAHLER discuss Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did) and The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power
Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome New York Times Magazine contributing writers James Traub and Jonathan Mahler for a discussion of their new analyses of, respectively, America’s democratic evangelizing in The Freedom Agenda, and an historic Supreme Court showdown in The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power. "Traub (The Best Intentions) tries to rescue the policy of democracy-promotion from the ashes of the Iraq War in this book that is both a critique of contemporary politics and a nimble history of the continuities in American foreign policy. According to the author, the Freedom Agenda—George W. Bush's declaration that American liberty is dependent on liberty in other lands is—for all its contemporary bungling—a venerable American axiom.... [The] author's cogent assessment of the current necessity and challenges of recent efforts by presidents Carter to George W. Bush makes for a useful primer on American intervention in a changing world." —Publishers Weekly The Challenge tells the inside story of a historic Supreme Court showdown. At its center are a Navy JAG and a young constitutional law professor who, in the aftermath of 9/11, find themselves defending their nation in the unlikeliest of ways: by suing the president of the United States on behalf of an accused terrorist in order to prevent the American government from breaking the law and violating the Constitution. “One recalls the ethically simple Gideon's Trumpet when reading the latest great-case narrative, Jonathan Mahler's The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight Over Presidential Power…. A riveting read.” —Michael O’Donnell, San Francisco Chronicle
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