Becoming King or Democracys Good Name

Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

Author: Troy Jackson

In Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader, Troy Jackson chronicles King's emergence and effectiveness as a civil rights leader by examining his relationship with the people of Montgomery, Alabama. Using the sharp lens of Montgomery's struggle for racial equality to investigate King's burgeoning leadership. Drawing on countless interviews and archival sources and comparing King's sermons and religious writings before, during, and after the Montgomery bus boycott, Jackson demonstrates how King's voice and message evolved to reflect the shared struggles, challenges, experiences, and hopes of the people with whom he worked.

Library Journal

Jackson (senior pastor, University Christian Church, Cincinnati; editor, The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr. Vol. 6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948-March 1963 ) has written a convincing reinterpretation of the role of King in the Montgomery, AL, bus boycott of 1955-56. Jackson grants that King's inspirational oratory and ability to communicate to African Americans across class lines made him a powerful symbol and chief spokesman of the movement there. However, the black community in Montgomery had laid the groundwork through its organizing activities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Local activists, white and black, including NAACP leader E.D. Nixon and Women's Political Council president Jo Ann Robinson, as well as civil rights lawyers Virginia and Clifford Durr and librarian Juliette Morgan, planted the seeds that flowered in the boycott. Jackson concludes that in many ways, King did not make the boycott movement; the blacks of Montgomery made him. Highly recommended for all major libraries.-Anthony Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN

See also: Cocidos Ollas y Pucheros or Mmmm

Democracy's Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World's Most Popular Form of Government

Author: Michael Mandelbaum

The last thirty years have witnessed a remarkably rapid rise of democracies around the world. In 1975, only thirty countries were democracies. Today, 119 of the world’s 190 countries are democratic. How did democracy establish itself so quickly and so widely? Why do some important countries and regions remain undemocratic?
In Democracy’s Good Name, Michael Mandelbaum, one of America’s leading foreign policy thinkers, answers these questions. He discusses the relationship between democracy, on the one hand, and war and terrorism, on the other, and assesses the prospects for the establishment of democracy in Russia, China, and the Arab world. And he explains why the United States has found it so difficult to foster democratic governments in other countries.

Publishers Weekly

Democracy, until recently, was an anomaly in a landscape of monarchies, dictatorships and empires; its critics-including America's founding fathers-associated it with mob rule and demagogic tyranny. In this engaging treatise, Mandelbaum (The Ideas That Conquered the World) explains how the modern democratic fusion of popular sovereignty-i.e., majority rule-with individual liberty came to dominate the world's polities. His first reason is straightforward: democracy works. Democratic nations, he notes, especially the flagship democracies of Britain and the U.S., are wealthier, stronger and more stable and inspire other countries to emulate them. His second, more provocative explanation, is that the modern spread of free markets provides a "school for democracy" by establishing private property (the fundamental liberty), respect for law, civil society, organized economic interests as the forerunners of political parties, and the habit of settling differences by negotiation and compromise rather than violence. Mandelbaum's market rhetoric-he calls democracy the "leading brand of political system" among "knowledgeable political consumers"-can be a bit simpleminded. But readers will find a lucid, accessible blend of history, political science and sociology, with a wealth of fresh insights into the making of the contemporary world. (Aug.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     xi
The Origins of Democracy     1
The Triumph of Democracy     1
The Two Traditions     7
The Odd Couple     16
The Career of Popular Sovereignty     27
The Trials of Liberty     37
Democracy from Without: The Course of Modern History     47
The Leading Brand     47
English Exceptionalism     52
The Two World Wars     66
The Contest of Systems     72
The American Era     82
Democracy from Within: The Magic of the Market     93
The Constant Companion     93
The Wealth Effect     100
Civil Society     104
The School for Democracy     110
Market Failures     121
Democracy and Peace     137
Modernity and Peace     137
Popular Sovereignty and Peace     146
Liberty and Peace     151
Democracy Versus Peace     159
Democracy and Terrorism     169
The Future of Democracy     179
Democracy-Promotion     179
Democracy in Russia     190
Democracy in China     205
Democracy in the Arab World     218
Democracy in the Democracies     235
Notes     245
Index     299