Books like Paradigms and Sand Castles by Barbara Geddes

Matthew enters a beach contest and creates an extraordinary sand castle that astonishes everyone.

David Graeber examines democracy’s history and its failure to represent ordinary citizens, urging a radical rethinking of the democratic process that could address America’s growing crises.

Francis Fukuyama traces how societies build strong, impersonal, and accountable political institutions from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring, analyzing corruption, colonial legacies, and the future of democracy.

Theda Skocpol shows how all three combine to explain the origins and accomplishments of social-revolutionary transformations.

"In this updated and expanded edition of his book Democracies, Arend Lijphart offers a broader and deeper analysis of worldwide democratic institutions than ever before. Examining thirty-six democracies during the half-century from 1945 to 1996, Lijphart arrives at important - and unexpected - conclusions about what type of democracy works best. Although conventional wisdom suggests that majoritarian democracies like those in the United States and Great Britain are superior to consensual systems like those in Switzerland and Israel, Lijphart shows this is not so. In fact, consensual systems stimulate economic growth, control inflation and unemployment, and limit budget deficits just as well as majoritarian democracies do. And consensus democracies clearly outperform majoritarian systems on measures of political equality, women's representation, citizen participation in elections, and proximity between government policies and voter preferences."--BOOK JACKET.