Why did eleven slave states secede from the Union in 1860-61? Why did the eighteen free states loyal to the Union deny the legitimacy of secession, and take concrete steps after Fort Sumter to subdue what President Abraham Lincoln deemed treasonous rebellion? At the Precipice seeks to answer these and related questions by focusing on the different ways in which Americans, North and South, black and white, understood their interests, rights, and honor during the late antebellum years. Rather than give a narrative account of the crisis, Shearer Davis Bowman takes readers into the minds of the leading actors, examining the lives and thoughts of such key figures as Abraham Lincoln, James Buchanan, Jefferson Davis, John Tyler, and Martin Van Buren. Bowman also provides an especially vivid glimpse into what less famous men and women in both sections thought about themselves and the political, social, and cultural worlds in which they lived, and how their thoughts informed their actions in the secession period. Intriguingly, secessionists and Unionists alike glorified the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, yet they interpreted those sacred documents in markedly different ways and held very different notions of what constituted "American" values.

The new normal -- The old normal, or politics as usual -- What we leave behind -- Mourning a mountain -- Climate of faith -- No way back -- Red flag winter -- Running dry -- 'Hot drought' and dry rivers -- 'It's not doomsville yet'.

After forty years as an electronics engineer, Jim Snell had a stroke that ended his career but not his life. In 2007, Jim suffered the fate of many Americans who do not eat nutritiously and who live a sedentary lifehe had a stroke. Although it nearly took his life, it served as a new beginning. Reeling from the physical challenges presented by the stroke, Jim also had to learn to manage the underlying medical condition that had developedtype 2 diabetes. At the Precipice is the story of one mans journey back to health. After three years of doing everything he was told to domonitor his blood glucose, make better food choices, take his medications properly, and moreJim gained control over his disease. But like many, he was frustrated by what he perceived as a chasm between what his doctors knew and what they were sharing with him. Like many new diabetics, he found himself lost in a sea of conflicting information, vague advice, advertisements for miracle cures, and the promise of impossible advances in non-medical supplements. Though overwhelmed, Jim applied his engineers mind to the task, and this memoir details his experiences. Living with diabetes is no longer the death sentence it was once thought to be. Jim Snell is proof of that, and his story was written to inspire others who have developed this increasingly common disease.

In 1959 an earthquake in central Vancouver Island devastated the lakeside community of Pyrite Ridge. The seismic event triggered landslides that isolated the town and killed sixteen people, while a geological phenomenon known as a segue caused the lake to drop an astonishing 150 metres. Perched on the precipice of a yawning abyss and cut off from the world by tons of rubble, Pyrite Ridge became a place of myth and lore. After finding a newspaper attached to a red balloon that supposedly came from the town, Travis Sivart, an Air Force officer struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, sets out to investigate the legend of Pyrite Ridge. After an arduous journey he stumbles upon the community, now known as The Segway, which is inhabited by an eclectic group of thirty people. Travis spends a week in the town, learning of its remarkable history and interacting with the unforgettable residents. Everyone has their own compelling tale of how they came to The Segway, creating an extraordinary tapestry that causes Travis to question his own sanity. Is there a connection between his personal demons and the tragic events of 1959? Life at the Precipice seamlessly blends fact, fiction, and popular science in a unique combination of drama and humor that will have readers wondering if the mysterious town of The Segway actually exists.

This is the story of life in a street in Croydon in 1907. It is also the story of a young man's dream - to leave that street with all its violence, drunkenness and poverty behind, and to give his parents a better life.

Philosophy and Politics at the Precipice maintains that political philosopher Alexandre Kojève (1901–68) has been both famously misunderstood and famous for being misunderstood. Kojève was famously understood by interpreters for seeing an "end of history" (an end that would display universal free democracies and even freer markets) as critical to his thought. He became famously misunderstood when interpreters, at the end of the twentieth century, placed such an end at the center of his thought. This book reads Kojève again – as a thinker of time, not its end. It presents Kojève as a philosopher and precisely as a time phenomenologist, rather than as a New Age guru. The book shows how Kojève’s time is inherently political, and indeed tyrannical, for being about his understanding of human relation. However, Kojève’s views on time and tyranny prove his undoing for making rule impossible because of what the book terms the "time-tyrant problem." Kojève’s entire political corpus is best understood as an attempt to rectify this problem. So understood, Philosophy and Politics at the Precipice provides fresh perspective on the true nature of Kojèvian irony, Kojève’s aims in the Strauss–Kojève exchange, and how Kojève at his best captures a philosophical, phenomenological time, one that marks some of the most dynamic and unique events of the twentieth century. Headlines have largely erased the notion that history has ended. Philosophy and Politics at the Precipice, on the other hand, provides the philosophical justification for arguing that the end of the last millennium was not an end and that, for his view of time, Kojève remains a thinker for the times ahead.

In 1850, America hovered on the brink of disunion. Tensions between slave-holders and abolitionists mounted, as the debate over slavery grew rancorous. An influx of new territory prompted Northern politicians to demand that new states remain free; in response, Southerners baldly threatened to secede from the Union. Only Henry Clay could keep the nation together.At the Edge of the Precipiceis historian Robert V. Remini’s fascinating recounting of the Compromise of 1850, a titanic act of political will that only a skillful statesman like Clay could broker. Although the Compromise would collapse ten years later, plunging the nation into civil war, Clay’s victory in 1850 ultimately saved the Union by giving the North an extra decade to industrialize and prepare.A masterful narrative by an eminent historian,At the Edge of the Precipicealso offers a timely reminder of the importance of bipartisanship in a bellicose age.

Human history has often been described as a progressive relinquishment from environmental constraints. Now, it seems, we have come full circle. The ecological irrationalities associated with industrial societies have a lengthy history, and our purpose in the proposed book is not to catalogue this litany of wrongs. Rather, this book is about political responses to global environmental crisis at a crucial turning point in history, by focusing on the political discourses surrounding the tar sands in Alberta, Canada.

This book examines the intersections between international law and national policies, and nuclear proliferation and disarmament, offering a way out if policy makers of leading countries can summon the vision and political will to move away from the nuclear precipice and ensure humanity's future.

Researched over the course of nearly two years, Rein In at the Brink of the Precipice draws extensively on the U.S.-PRC negotiating record and numerous interviews with key former U.S. officials to give a textured sense of U.S. Taiwan policyand its relation to overall Sino-American relationsfrom the Nixon Administration through the present. It argues that U.S. leaders have on occasion been either inattentive toor unaware ofthe commitments undertaken with the Peoples Republic of China regarding Taiwan and, because of this, have unwittingly generated crisesand could do so again.