Peter Levine - Böcker

A. G. Spalding was a key figure in the professionalization and commercialization of American sports. Co-founder of baseball's National League, owner of the Chicago White Stockings (later Cubs), and founder of a sporting goods business that made him a millionaire, Spalding not only willed baseball to be our national pastime but also contributed to making sport a significant part of American life.This biography captures the zest, flamboyance, andcreativity of Albert Goodwell Spalding, a man of insatiable ego, a showman and entrepreneur, whose life illuminated the hopes and fears of 19th-century Americans. It is also a vivid evocation of thevanished world of 19th-century baseball, recreating a time when it was transformed from a game played on unkempt fields to modern style.

There has been a general perception that Jewish tradition has not been positive about sports activity. In this first general study of Jewish participation in American sports, Peter Levine shows how the reality has been otherwise, focusing in particular on baseball, boxing, and basketball.

An exploration into the experience of Jewish immigrants in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Asks the question: What part did sport play in the process by which these people became Americans? It is based on the experience of other imigrant groups and minority people especially the rich culture of everyday life created by East European Jewish imigrants, particularly their children.

A broad theory of civic life that asks the question "What should we do?" and shows how to ask it well for civic engagement. People who want to improve the world must ask the fundamental civic question: "What should we do?" Although the specific issues and challenges people face are enormously diverse, they often encounter problems of collective action (how to get many individuals to act in concert), of discourse (how to talk and think productively about contentious matters), and of exclusion. To get things done, they must form or join and sustain functional groups, and through them, develop skills and virtues that help them to be effective and responsible civic actors.In What Should We Do?, Peter Levine, one of America's leading scholars and practitioners of civic engagement, identifies the general challenges that confront people who ask the citizens' question and explores solutions. Ultimately, his goal is to provide a unified theoretical foundation for effective civic engagement and citizen action. Levine draws from three rich traditions: research on collective action by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues, work on deliberation and discourse by Jürgen Habermas, and the nonviolent social movements led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Using real-world examples, he develops a theory of citizen action that can effectively wrestle with these problems so that they don't destabilize movements. A broad theory of civic life, What Should We Do? turns from the question of what makes a society just to the question of how to relate to our fellow human beings in a context of injustice. And it offers pragmatic guidance for people who seek to improve the world.

America's most serious social problems require citizen action. Traditional civic organizations have shrunk and weakened; the government ignores and sometimes frustrates constructive civic engagement. But Americans have been experimenting with new forms of active citizenship, mostly at the grassroots level. Their experiments are deliberative, convening diverse citizens to discuss goals and strategies without ideological constraints. They are collaborative, involving actual work that builds and sustains public institutions and creates public goods. And by talking and working together, these citizens build civic relationships, which are marked by virtues such as loyalty, respect, and hope.Peter Levine is a philosopher who has been engaged with such civic renewal efforts for twenty years as a theorist, an empirical researcher and evaluator, and a participant. In this book, he offers an original theory of civic engagement, informed by political philosophy and practical experiments. He critically examines public policies that have discounted citizenship and corrupted the relationship between citizens and the state. He assembles evidence that recent efforts to renew citizenship have engaged at least one million Americans and have made tangible improvements in communities and institutions. He ends with a strategy to turn the scattered efforts at civic engagement into a broad movement for civic renewal that will tackle America's most serious social problems.

A critique of Nietzsche's theory of culture that proposes an alternative paradigm allowing a defense of the humanities against such Nietzschians as Leo Strauss and DerridaLevine argues that Strauss and Derrida have much in common, including an idealist, reified concept of culture that both inherited from Nietzsche. Levine interprets all of Nietzsche's basic doctrines in terms of this concept. Nietzsche's definition of culture produced epistemological and moral dilemmas for him and his followers, and encouraged them to devise alternatives to mainstream humanities. Levine, however, offers an alternative paradigm of culture that better fits the data and allows us to understand and defend the humanities as a source of value.

A critique of Nietzsche's theory of culture that proposes an alternative paradigm allowing a defense of the humanities against such Nietzschians as Leo Strauss and DerridaLevine argues that Strauss and Derrida have much in common, including an idealist, reified concept of culture that both inherited from Nietzsche. Levine interprets all of Nietzsche's basic doctrines in terms of this concept. Nietzsche's definition of culture produced epistemological and moral dilemmas for him and his followers, and encouraged them to devise alternatives to mainstream humanities. Levine, however, offers an alternative paradigm of culture that better fits the data and allows us to understand and defend the humanities as a source of value.

Drawing on implications from ethics, theology, law, politics, and education, this book argues that we can decide what is right by describing particular cases in detail, without the aid of ethical theories and principles.Living Without Philosophy argues that we do not need ethical theories, rules, and principles to decide what is right. Instead, particular cases can be judged by a detailed description of the relevant circumstances. When our judgments differ, we can decide how to act by deliberating under fair conditions. The author provides both a philosophical argument for this position and readings of literary texts in which moral theorists are portrayed as concrete characters. These works include Plato's Protagoras, selections from the Gospels and Dante, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, the debate between Erasmus and Luther, Erasmus's Praise of Folly, Shakespeare's King Lear, Nabokov's Lolita, and Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Thus, Levine offers essentially a moral argument for the humanities, discussing the implications not only for ethics, but also for theology, law, politics, and education.

Now in its third edition, Stronger After Stroke puts the power of recovery in the reader's hands by providing simple-to-follow instructions for reaching the highest possible level of recovery. The book’s neuroplastic recovery model stresses repetition of task-specific practice, proper scheduling of practice, setting goals, and measuring progress to achieve optimal results. Researcher Peter G. Levine breaks down the science and gives survivors evidence-based tools to retrain the brain and take charge of recovery.In easy-to-read sections, Stronger After Stroke introduces readers to leading-edge stroke recovery information while simplifying the process to attain specific benchmarks. Also included is a sample recovery schedule, a helpful glossary of frequently used stroke recovery terms, and a list of resources for readers to research emerging stroke recovery options.The new Third Edition of Stronger After Stroke features:Complete update of all chapters to reflect new knowledge about maximizing recoveryThe latest research insights applied to individual recovery programsSteps to cope with challenges at each stage of recovery and achieve successDIY strategies to save time and moneyNew chapters on using electrical stimulation, reducing post-stroke pain, and understanding spasticity

The myth of generations of disengaged youth has been shattered by increases in youth turnout in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 primaries. Young Americans are responsive to effective outreach efforts, and this collection addresses how to best provide opportunities for enhancing civic learning and forming lasting civic identities. The thirteen original essays are based on research in schools and in settings beyond the schoolyard where civic life is experienced. One focus is on programs for those schools in poor communities that tend to overlook civic education. Another chapter reports on how two city governments - Hampton, Virginia, and San Francisco - have invited youth to participate on boards and in agencies. A cluster of chapters focuses on the civic education programs in Canada and Western Europe, where, as in the United States, immigration and income inequality raise challenges to civic life.

The myth of generations of disengaged youth has been shattered by increases in youth turnout in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 primaries. Young Americans are responsive to effective outreach efforts, and this collection addresses how to best provide opportunities for enhancing civic learning and forming lasting civic identities. The thirteen original essays are based on research in schools and in settings beyond the schoolyard where civic life is experienced. One focus is on programs for those schools in poor communities that tend to overlook civic education. Another chapter reports on how two city governments - Hampton, Virginia, and San Francisco - have invited youth to participate on boards and in agencies. A cluster of chapters focuses on the civic education programs in Canada and Western Europe, where, as in the United States, immigration and income inequality raise challenges to civic life.

A century ago, Americans launched a period of civic renewal and political reform. Today, amid deep dissatisfaction with our major institutions, there are signs that a new movement may revive the spirit of the original Progressive Era. Peter Levine draws inspiration from the great Progressive leader Robert M. La Follete, Sr., and his circle, which included John Dewey, Jane Addams, and Louis Brandeis. He discusses the shortcomings of this group as well as their successes, but he argues that their ideal of a fair and deliberative democracy is right for our time. Combining their philosophy and experience with the best contemporary proposals, Levine advocates campaign finance reform, an entirely different approach to regulation, new styles of journalism and civic education, and fundamental changes in the tax system. Combining philosophical arguments, historical background, empirical data, and concrete proposals, The New Progressive Era offers today’s most comprehensive plan for civic renewal and political reform.

The Deliberative Democracy Handbook is a terrific resource for democratic practitioners and theorists alike. It combines rich case material from many cities and types of institutional settings with careful reflection on core principles. It generates hope for a renewed democracy, tempered with critical scholarship and political realism. Most important, this handbook opens a spacious window on the innovativeness of citizens in the U.S. (and around the world) and shows how the varied practices of deliberative democracy are part of a larger civic renewal movement.

Pentagon spending has been the target of decades of criticism and reform efforts. Billions of dollars are spent on weapons programs that are later abandoned. State-of-the-art data centers are underutilized and overstaffed. New business systems are built at great expense but fail to meet the needs of their users. Every Secretary of Defense for the last five Administrations has made it a priority to address perceived bloat and inefficiency by making management reform a major priority. The congressional defense committees have been just as active, enacting hundreds of legislative provisions. Yet few of these initiatives produce significant results, and the Pentagon appears to go on, as wasteful as ever.In this book, Peter Levine addresses why, despite a long history of attempted reform, the Pentagon continues to struggle to reduce waste and inefficiency. The heart of Defense Management Reform is three case studies covering civilian personnel, acquisitions, and financial management. Narrated with the insight of an insider, the result is a clear understanding of what went wrong in the past and a set of concrete guidelines to plot a better future.

Pentagon spending has been the target of decades of criticism and reform efforts. Billions of dollars are spent on weapons programs that are later abandoned. State-of-the-art data centers are underutilized and overstaffed. New business systems are built at great expense but fail to meet the needs of their users. Every Secretary of Defense for the last five Administrations has made it a priority to address perceived bloat and inefficiency by making management reform a major priority. The congressional defense committees have been just as active, enacting hundreds of legislative provisions. Yet few of these initiatives produce significant results, and the Pentagon appears to go on, as wasteful as ever.In this book, Peter Levine addresses why, despite a long history of attempted reform, the Pentagon continues to struggle to reduce waste and inefficiency. The heart of Defense Management Reform is three case studies covering civilian personnel, acquisitions, and financial management. Narrated with the insight of an insider, the result is a clear understanding of what went wrong in the past and a set of concrete guidelines to plot a better future.