Bücher von J. Michael Martinez

Historian Michael Martinez surveys political sex scandals in American history, from the earliest years of the Republic to today, to explore how these events impacted the politics of the day and the legacy they left for future generations of American leaders.

Congressional Giants examines the lives and achievements of 14 influential leaders of Congress from the nineteenth century to the present day. These "giants" shaped American history in myriad ways that continue to reverberate well into the twenty-first century.

Congressional Lions examines twelve trailblazing members of Congress throughout American history to understand their role in shaping the life of the nation. The book focuses on historical figures stretching from the founding of the nation into the twenty-first century.

¿Scandal,¿ defined as an action or event causing public outrage and regarded as morally or legally reprehensible by the standards and mores of the time, has been a part of the US political landscape since the founding of the republic. Americans prefer to think that their public officials¿ misbehavior as the exception rather than the rule, but the record of political corruption and coverups, spanning the entire history of the United States, is too lengthy to suggest that these actions are uncommon occurrences, merely freakish outliers to be discounted as ¿black swan¿ events.Strongly associated with the concept of scandal is a ¿scoundrel,¿ defined as a dishonest or disreputable person. According to this definition, a scoundrel is someone who engages in dishonest behavior, eventually leading to the loss of a good reputation.Scoundrels: Political Scandals in American History is about scoundrels who were caught in scandals, specifically political scandals. Often the original behavior was outrageous, but the subsequent cover-up is worse. The 1972 Watergate break-in, for example, may have been a ¿third-rate burglary¿¿although that point is debatable¿but the Nixon administration¿s attempted coverup led to impeachment proceedings and the president¿s resignation.Political corruption almost always stems from calculations of self-interest before, during, and after the fact. The calculations may be legally and ethically misguided, factually inaccurate, and/or blind to political realities, but nonetheless they are almost always deliberate and premeditated. Political corruption can involve lone individuals acting on their own accord or they can implicate systemic corruption with a large group, sometimes within a presidential administration.Scoundrels: Political Scandals in American History examines 13 of the most famous (or infamous) and not-so-famous scandals in American history, including the Teapot Dome case from the 1920s, the Watergate break-in and cover-up in the 1970s, the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, and Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

In his award-winning first book, J. Michael Martinez reenvisions Latino poetics and its current conceptions of cultural identity. In Heredities, he opens a historically ravaged continental body through a metaphysical dissection into Being and silence.

This fascinating book recounts the compelling stories behind 14 of the most important criminal procedure cases in American legal history.

Protecting the natural environment and promoting environmental sustainability have become important objectives for U.S. policymakers and public administrators at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Institutions of American government, especially at the federal level, and the public administrators who work inside of those institutions, play a crucial role in developing and implementing environmental sustainability policies.This book explores these salient issues logically. First, it explores fundamental concepts such as what it means to be environmentally sustainable, how economic issues affect environmental policy, and the philosophical schools of thought about what policies ought to be considered sustainable. From there, it focuses on processes and institutions affecting public administration and its role in the policy process. Accordingly, it summarizes the rise of the administrative state in the United States and then reviews the development of federal environmental laws and policies with an emphasis on late twentieth century developments. This book also discusses the evolution of American environmentalism by outlining the history of the environmental movement and the growth of the environmental lobby. Finally, this book synthesizes the information to discuss how public administration can promote environmental sustainability.

Public Administration Ethics for the 21st Century lays the ethical foundations for a uniform professional code of ethics for public administrators, civil servants, and non-profit administrators in the US. Martinez synthesizes five disparate schools of ethical thought as to how public administrators can come to know the good and behave in ways that advance the values of citizenship, equity, and public interest within their respective organizations. Using case studies, he teaches American administrators how to combine the approaches of all five schools to evaluate and resolve complex ethical dilemmas within the constraints of the U.S. democratic values set.Martinez enunciates the common ethical principles that guide public administrators in their practice within the specific ethical parameters and organizational cultures of a myriad entities at the federal, state, and local levels of government in the United States, as well as in non-profit organizations. Along the way, Martinez addresses a number of crucial issues, including personal gain, conflict of interest, transparency, democratic impartiality, hiring, hierarchical discipline, media relations, partisan pressure, appointments by elected officials, and whistle-blowing. The striking, high-profile case studies-Nathan Bedford Forrest, Adolph Eichmann, Lieutenant William Calley, and Mary Ann Wright-illustrate ethical dilemmas where, for better or worse, the individual was at odds with the organization.