City College of New York is perhaps the longest-running, radical social experiment in American history. For one hundred and fifty years, City has been the bellwether of this nation's effort to bring the urban poor into the middle class. And as generations of immigrant children passed beneath its arched gateway and emerged as scientists, scholars, and teachers, City more than justified America's liberal faith in the transformative power of education. But over the last few generations the dynamics and the demographics of urban poverty have changed; the barriers to assimilation have grown. City on a Hill spans these eras, telling the story of the college's difficult present against the backdrop of its fabled past. The juxtaposition forces a fundamental question: How much power do America's institutions have in the face of the cultural and economic forces that now perpetuate inner-city poverty?

City On A Hill: Testing The America Dream At City College

Education & Teaching

Traub, James

Schools & Teaching

Da Capo Lifelong Books

A portrait of City College's educational system, which provides open admission to impoverished students, depicts its struggles to overcome low inner-city school standards that permit advancement without achievement.

City On A Hill: Testing The American Dream At City College

Da Capo Press

A moral examination of one of the first Jewish senators, confidante to Jefferson Davis, and champion of the cause of slavery Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884) was a brilliant and successful lawyer in New Orleans, and one of the first Jewish members of the U.S. Senate. He then served in the Confederacy as secretary of war and secretary of state, becoming the confidant and alter ego of Jefferson Davis. In this new biography, author James Traub grapples with the difficult truth that Benjamin, who was considered one of the greatest legal minds in the United States, was a slave owner who deployed his oratorical skills in defense of slavery. &nbsp; How could a man as gifted as Benjamin, knowing that virtually all serious thinkers outside the American South regarded slavery as the most abhorrent of practices, not see that he was complicit with evil? This biography makes a serious moral argument both about Jews who assimilated to Southern society by embracing slave culture and about Benjamin himself, a man of great resourcefulness and resilience who would not, or could not, question the practice on which his own success, and that of the South, was founded.

Judah Benjamin: Counselor to the Confederacy (Jewish Lives)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Yale University Press

The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power

Updated for the Paperback Edition
During his first term as secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan was one of the most widely admired men in the world. In 2001, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Then the UN failed to stop war in Iraq and genocide in Darfur, and the institution was engulfed by the Oil-for-Food scandal. By the time Annan left office in December 2006, both he and the UN had suffered a terrible loss of standing.
Did the UN's failures arise from its own structure and culture or from a clash with an American administration determined to go its own way in defiance of world opinion?
In The Best Intentions, New York Times Magazine writer James Traub traces the entwined histories of Kofi Annan and the UN from 1992 to the present, and offers a definitive portrait of the institution's role in the age of American dominance.

Leaders & Notable People

Picador

The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did)

As we leave behind an era in which America tried to assert democracy by force (and often failed), the question arises: what part of our efforts to spread democracy can we preserve for the future? In The Freedom Agenda, James Traub traces the history of America's democratic evangelizing, offering an assessment of the George W. Bush administration's failed efforts abroad. And he puts forth the argument that democracy matters--for human rights, the resolution of conflicts, political stability and equitable development. But America must exercise caution in spreading it, both internationally and at home.

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Americans have been trying to shape democracy around the world for more than a century. It is the American mission, our distinctive form of evangelism. But when President Bush declared, in his second inaugural address, that “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands,” he elevated this cause—the “Freedom Agenda,” as he called it—to the central theme of American foreign policy. Yet the war in Iraq has proven the folly of seeking to impose American democracy by force. As we leave the Bush era behind, the question arises: What part of our efforts to spread democracy can we rescue from this failure? The Freedom Agenda traces the history of America’s democratic evangelizing. James Traub, a journalist for The New York Times Magazine, describes the rise and fall of the Freedom Agenda during the Bush years, in part through interviews with key administration officials. He offers a richly detailed portrait of the administration’s largely failed efforts to bolster democratic forces abroad. In the end, Traub argues that democracy matters—for human rights, for reconciliation among ethnic and religious groups, for political stability and equitable development—but the United States must exercise caution in its efforts to spread it, matching its deeds to its words, both abroad and at home.

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

A man who had won the Nobel Peace Prize, who was widely counted one of the greatest UN Secretary Generals, was nearly hounded from office by scandal. Indeed, both Annan and the institution he incarnates were so deeply shaken after the Bush Administration went to war in Iraq in the face of opposition from the Security Council that critics, and even some friends, began asking whether this sixty-year-old experiment in global policing has outlived its usefulness. Do its failures arise from its own structure and culture, or from a clash with an American administration determined to go its own way in defiance of world opinion? James Traub, a New York Times Magazine contributor who has spent years writing about the UN and about foreign affairs, delves into these questions as no one else has done before. Traub enjoyed unprecedented access to Annan and his top aides throughout much of this traumatic period. He describes the despair over the Oil-for-Food scandal, the deep divide between those who wished to accommodate American critics and those who wished to confront them, the failed attempt to goad the Security Council to act decisively against state-sponsored ethnic cleansing in Sudan. And he recounts Annan’s effort to respond to criticism with sweeping reform—an effort which ultimately shattered on the resistance of U.S. Ambassador John Bolton. In The Best Intentions, Traub recounts the dramatically entwined history of Kofi Annan and the UN from 1992 to the present. In Annan he sees a conscientious idealist given too little credit for advancing causes like humanitarian intervention and an honest broker crushed between American conservatives and Third World opponents—but also a UN careerist who has absorbed that culture and can not, in the end, escape its limitations.

As Times Square turns 100, New York Times Magazine contributing writer James Traub tells the story of how this mercurial district became one of the most famous and exciting places in the world. The Devil’s Playground is classic and colorful American history, from the first years of the twentieth century through the Runyonesque heyday of nightclubs and theaters in the 1920s and ’30s, to the district’s decline in the 1960s and its glittering corporate revival in the 1990s. First, Traub gives us the great impresarios, wits, tunesmiths, newspaper columnists, and nocturnal creatures who shaped Times Square over the century since the place first got its name: Oscar Hammerstein, Florenz Ziegfeld, George S. Kaufman, Damon Runyon, Walter Winchell, and “the Queen of the Nightclubs,” Texas Guinan; bards like A. J. Liebling, Joe Mitchell, and the Beats, who celebrated the drug dealers and pimps of 42nd Street. He describes Times Square’s notorious collapse into pathology and the fierce debates over how best to restore it to life. Traub then goes on to scrutinize today’s Times Square as no author has yet done. He writes about the new 42nd Street, the giant Toys “R” Us store with its flashing Ferris wheel, the new world of corporate theater, and the sex shops trying to leave their history behind. More than sixty years ago, Liebling called Times Square “the heart of the world”—not just the center of the world, though this crossroads in Midtown Manhattan was indeed that, but its heart. From the dawn of the twentieth century through the 1950s, Times Square was the whirling dynamo of American popular culture and, increasingly, an urban sanctuary for the eccentric and the untamed. The name itself became emblematic of the tremendous life force of cities everywhere. Today, Times Square is once again an awe-inspiring place, but the dark and strange corners have been filled with blazing light. The most famous street character on Broadway, “the Naked Cowboy,” has his own website, and Toys “R” Us calls its flagship store in Times Square “the toy center of the universe.” For the giant entertainment corporations that have moved to this safe, clean, and self-consciously gaudy spot, Times Square is still very much the center of the world. But is it still the heart?

The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

History

Americas

Random House]

Random House Publishing Group

Chronicles the story of Wedtech--the Reagan administration's support of the company from day one, the lawyers, bankers, accountants, lobbyists, politicians, federal bureaucrats, and military brass involved in the scandal

Too Good to Be True: The Outrageous Stor

True Crime

DOUBLEDAY

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Traub, James. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Traub, James

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Traub, James. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

City On A Hill: Testing The America Dream At City College

City On A Hill: Testing The American Dream At City College

Judah Benjamin: Counselor to the Confederacy (Jewish Lives)

The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power

The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did)

The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did)

The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power

The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

Too Good to Be True: The Outrageous Stor