Despite the donation of billions of dollars in the fight against AIDS, the disease remains without cure and continues to spread. Why has so little progress been made? Using abundant evidence drawn from the latest scientific research, Hanley and de Irala show that the most effective method of combating the AIDS crisis is through sexual abstinence and fidelity in marriage. Where this strategy has been employed, especially in African countries such as Uganda, the decline in AIDS has been remarkable. Yet this common-sense strategy is rejected by the leading advocates for the victims of AIDS and is ignored by public policy experts, the media, and governments. The problem, the authors note, is an ideological bias against methods that rely on self-control and behavior change. Despite the effectiveness of these methods, they remain outcasts in the struggle to contain one of the world’s most devastating diseases.

Hanley and de Irala turn the tables on this defeatist mentality, arguing that ideological commitments need to be set aside in favor of efforts to change human behavior. The big-money interests that control the vast amount of wealth directed to AIDS prevention will not want to read this volume, but the evidence lies with the teachings of the Catholic Church, which has been counseling self-control, abstinence, and fidelity in marriage throughout the millennia. In his foreword, Harvard professor Edward Green reiterates, through his own experience, the success of this method.

Flunked is the story of schools that are breaking the mediocre mold of American education by attaining superior results in college preparedness, test scores, and graduation rates. Discovering that one size truly does not fit all, these schools and their administrators, teachers, and students are finding different ways to make education work in their neighborhoods.  Narrated by Joe Mantegna.

Results of national and international tests show that our students are falling further and further behind. The average American student is no longer able to compete with foreign students, and in many cases, they’re failing to meet even basic academic standards. Success rates are plummeting, and remediation and dropout rates are skyrocketing.  Students entering the current American education system are in for a grim ride. It truly is a national scandal. One size does not fit all.

Complaining about the problem is easy, but it produces few productive results — especially when many schools nationwide are truly “getting it right.” Flunked is the story of these schools—their founders, leaders, and students—who are breaking the mediocre mold by attaining great results in terms of college preparation, high test scores, and graduating competent workers for tomorrow’s economy. Discovering that one size truly does not fit all, they are finding different ways to make it work in their area, with their students.

The main characters of Flunked are our “heroes,” men and women from all walks of life—parents, teachers, principals, business professionals—who are making a difference to our students.  These individuals have defied the odds, pressed the system, and succeeded in seemingly impossible situations.  Through it all, they have proven that solutions in education are available here and now, if we will only follow their examples.

The Freedom Foundation is a non-profit educational research organization based in the state of Washington.  The Freedom Foundation’s mission is to advance individual liberty, free enterprise, and limited, accountable government. We have a vision of a day when opportunity, responsible self-governance and free markets flourish in Washington State because its citizens understand and cherish the principles from which freedom is derived.

What They Are Saying:

“A half century ago, American education began a decline. Presidents lament the decline in their speeches. Politicians pontificate about it…but the problems persist. Now, here comes a movie that’s all about fixing it.”—J. Caldera, KOA Radio, Denver

“A fine film. Very informative, very challenging…”—Michael Medved, nationally syndicated radio show host, author, and film critic

Charters are by nature different not just from traditional public schools, but from one another. With their freedom and flexibility, some charter schools have opened doors and opportunities for many poor minority children who were previously trapped at failing campuses run by school district bureaucracies. These successful charter schools have perfected alternative models of organization, management, and discipline that shatter the status quo orthodoxy. In Free to Learn, successful charter principals and teachers – who often do things contrary to the public education establishment – offer hope and practical advice for the charter movement. After Hurricane Katrina, Free to Learn served as an inspiration and handbook for charter school administrators in New Orleans.

Published in 1998, Global Greens narrates the story of international environmental groups in world affairs. It examines how nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) work with the United Nations and other international organizations to promote environmentalist policies and treaties. To understand many of the current foreign policy controversies it is increasingly important to know how international environmental groups are involved.

Global Greens describes in detail NGO activity at some of the most significant UN environmental conferences through the end of the 20th century, including the global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan. Most of the story is serious, but some of it amuses. Inside the Kyoto conference hall, four men disguised as world leaders play soccer with a large inflatable balloon of the planet, activists blanketed the building with propaganda leaflets, and a group of grim-faced individuals stand solemnly around three ice carvings of penguins begging the little creatures to forgive mankind for permitting the global warming that causes them to melt.

As recent news developments have confirmed, environmental groups have been accomplishing–and continue to accomplish–their objectives gradually and under a cloak of secrecy. Few Americans know that nonprofit organizations, staffed by professionals, primarily Americans, and financed by a mix of private and public funds, exercise real power in the conduct of diplomacy and the creation of international policy. A global environmental movement is using international agencies to undermine national self-government, economic freedom, and personal liberty.  Global Greens exposes the behind-the-scenes efforts of this well-funded and ideologically driven force.

James M. Sheehan is an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He specializes in policies concerning international environmental regulation, trade, finance, and foreign aid. Sheehan speaks and writes about such international institutions as the United Nations, World Bank, NAFTA, and the World Trade Organization. He has presented his views on television programs for CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC, Fox News and America’s Voice. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, San Francisco Examiner, Washington Times, and Journal of Commerce. He has testified before Congress and is a frequent guest on radio programs across the country, including National Public Radio.

Sheehan holds a Master of Business Administration from Duke University and a BA in international politics from the Catholic University of America.

What They Are Saying:

“Mr. Sheehan does a masterful job of exposing yet another way the U.S. Constitution is undermined at taxpayer expense–by non-governmental organizations acting in concert with the United Nations.”–Hon. Ron Paul, U.S. House of Representatives (R-TX)

“James Sheehan presents the classic libertarian arguments against the international environmental movement. In his zealous attack on environmental organizations, Sheehan misses the boat on almost every subject but the World Bank.”–Brent Blackwelder, President, Friends of the Earth

“Sheehan meticulously documents how ideological advocacy groups use international organizations and treaties to shape public opinion and policy in this country. His book is a much-needed wake-up call–Americans must thoughtfully but unhesitatingly oppose the agendas of global governance if we are to preserve our system of self-government.”–Alan L. Keyes, former Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council

As the author says in his preface, Here, There  & Everywhere is a “grab bag of a book,” containing almost 100 pieces on a multiplicity of subjects. Paul Johnson calls Jay Nordingler “one of the most versatile and pungent writers in America. And Mark Steyn says that this collection is “a virtuoso display.”

In these pages, Nordlinger visits unusual towns, universities–even music camps. He delves into politics, then profiles a number of personalities: George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Naguib Mahfouz, Al Sharpton, Donald Rumsfeld, Rosie O’Donnell, Rodney Dangerfield…. He sends dispatches from Europe–East and West–and the Middle East. He writes on a favorite sport, golf, and a favorite art: music. We meet Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Luciano Pavarotti, Meredith Wilson (the composer of The Music Man), and many others.

The book closes with a selection of personal pieces, involving matters large and small. What we have here is a feast of a book, served in several appetizing courses. Mark Helprin says that reading these pieces is “like opening one present after another.” Rush Limbaugh says that the book is “witty, grabbing, and fun.”

And, out the author, Norman Podhoretz says, “The easy informality of his style never fails to engage and delight, the wide-ranging cultivation it reflects never fails to enlighten, and the energy that propels it never fails to amaze.” Readers are invited to experience this for themselves.

Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review. He contributes pieces on politics, foreign affairs, the arts, and many other subjects. He is music critic for The New Criterion and the New York Sun, as well as for National Review. For National Review Online, he writes a column called “Impromptus.” He has won awards for his work on human rights, in particular. A native Michigander, he lives in New York.

What They Are Saying:

“Jay Nordlinger is one of America’s most versatile and pungent writers. He is at home in geopolitics and sociology, sports and music and literature, and to all these topics he brings an inquiring mind, deep knowledge, and an engaging style. This collection shows him at his wide-ranging best.”–Paul Johnson

“Like all great reporters and essayists, Nordlinger seizes upon the essential details that give a story life in the present and years after. What is most striking about these essays is not their integrity, fearlessness, wit, superb craftsmanship, and the long view they reveal, but that Nordlinger is a man in full. When he writes, ‘For me, the personal transcends the national, historical, and political,’ you know immediately how is portrait of our age has transcended contemporary affairs to read like history. And though always written in pursuit of the enduring and the true, his pieces are so dense in fact and sparkling anecdote that to read them is like opening one present after another. A good man is hard to find: You have found him.”–Mark Helprin

“No matter the subject–and what subject has he not touched upon?–Jay Nordlinger writes like the great conversationalist he is. The easy informality of his style never fails to engage and delight, the wide-ranging cultivation it reflects never fails to enlighten, and the energy that propels it never fails to amaze.”–Norman Podhoretz

“Unlike most of us political pundits, Jay Nordingler has many other strings to his bow. In fact, most of us don’t even have a bow, but Jay does: You’re as likely to find him at Bayreuth or Salzburg as at a political convention. Or at Augusta National. He has what British politicians term a ‘hinterland’–a vast array of interests beyond politics that most normal people call ‘life.’ He writes brilliantly about music, and profoundly about golf, and very perceptively about those strange little linguistic tics that seem to pop up out of nowhere and catch the spirit of the age. For his fans, this long overdue Nordlinger reader is a virtuoso display of his rare versatility, on subjects from Rummy to Rosie, Cuba to comedy, ethnic cleansing in Iraq to ‘erotic vagrancy’ in Hollywood. He is a Jay of all trades and a master of . . . well, almost all (we have a few musical differences).”–Mark Steyn

“Jay Nordlinger is a Renaissance man, and this book proves it. It’s witty, grabbing, and fun. Nordlinger tackles an array of issues, big and small, with rare humor and insight. He also says nice things about me–which counts for a lot. I couldn’t put it down.”–Rush Limbaugh

Not as Good as You Think: The Myth of the Middle Class School shatters the myth that “good” schools are in “nice” neighborhoods. Using data on school performance and interviews with parents, students, principals, and school reformers, Not as Good as You Think confirms parents’ silent fear: that their financial sacrifice and investment in an expensive home in a “good” school district is not yielding the achievement results needed to get their kids into good colleges and good jobs.

The film takes audiences on a tour of America’s best neighborhoods to reveal that schools in America’s affluent and middle class neighborhoods are not adequately preparing kids for higher education, or worse, operating under widespread corruption. The film also contrasts the American public school system with that of Sweden’s, a socially progressive country that allows parents, at government expense, to choose any school that fits their children’s needs – private or public – no matter the parents’ income.

Parents know how important good schools are when they are deciding where to buy a new house. That’s why they are willing to stretch their budget for a home near a “good” school.  But they should not be fooled by the tree-lined streets and expensive real estate – the neighborhood schools may not be as good as they think, according to the findings in Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice. The book takes readers on a driving tour of some of California’s best neighborhoods and supposedly some of its best schools. Many parents have found out the hard way that despite what they have been told about their neighborhood schools, many of these students are not performing at grade level, let alone ready for college.

Rachel S. Chaney is a Senior Fellow in Education studies at the Pacific Research Institute. She is currently a doctoral student in American history at the University of California at Davis. She graduated with honors and distinction from Stanford University in American history and earned her Masters degree in Chinese history from Stanford University. After completion of her masters’ she taught high school in East Oakland, California for two years before coming to PRI.

What They Are Saying:

“Many parents across the country have found out the hard way that the quality of public schools in the more affluent neighborhoods is often not what it’s cracked up to be. This book by PRI reveals that the supposedly “good’ schools that these students attend are producing surprising – and often bad – results. Armed with the knowledge their schools are coming up short, middle-class parents must take action and start demanding school choice options in their communities.” – William J. Bennet, author of America: The Last Best Hope and Fellow at The Claremont Institute

“This book confronts the depth of the challenge confronting public education, in California and across the country, and makes it more difficult for the apologists of the status quo to continue to defend mediocrity.  It helps sow the seeds of what can become a much-needed American education revolution.”  – Eugene Hickok, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education during President George W. Bush’s first term

COMING IN APRIL 2012

Obama: The Dream and the Reality collects the National Review writings of one of today’s most provocative political commentators: Victor Davis Hanson. In pungent prose, Hanson skewers modern pieties with the eye of a realist who is deeply grounded in wide knowledge of human history—and human nature.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution, a professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson has written or edited seventeen books, including The Western Way of War, The Wars of the Ancient Greeks, The Soul of Battle, Carnage and Culture, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, and his new novel, The End of Sparta. The National Review Online columnist lives on a forty-acre tree-and-vine farm near Selma, California, where he was born in 1953.

The State of Texas has considered school choice as a tool for enhancing educational opportunity on a number of occasions over the past two decades. Those efforts have inevitably met with determined political opposition. In this report, we address two questions:

(1)    Who are the main actors funding opposition to school choice in Texas today?

(2)    In general, why do groups such as these oppose school choice?

Dr. Jeffrey Cain, principal of American Philanthropic, is a leading executive in the nonprofit, educational, philanthropic, and development community. Prior to founding American Philanthropic, he served the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), a national educational nonprofit committed to advancing a traditional liberal arts curriculum and the study of Western civilization, in various senior management positions, including vice president for institutional advancement, senior vice president for education and advancement, and executive vice president. Prior to serving ISI, Cain taught in the English department at Washington State University (where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature), founded a research nonprofit (the Columbia Public Interest Policy Institute), worked on various political campaigns in his native Washington State, and served honorably in the United States Marine Corps. He also has worked as an independent fundraising consultant and as a philanthropic advisor to leading nonprofits and foundations. He has taught a range of college-level humanities courses and published in leading academic and literary journals. Presently, Cain is president of the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation in Santa Barbara, California and a trustee of the Lillian S. Wells Foundation in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Dr. Jeremy Beer, principal of American Philanthropic, has more than a decade of experience working as an executive, manager, and editor in the publishing and nonprofit fields. He is a former vice president at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, where he served as the executive in charge of the publications and information systems divisions and as editor-in-chief of the institute’s award-winning press, ISI Books. Beer has published dozens of essays and articles on literary, social, and cultural issues in various academic and popular journals, including Perspectives on Political Science, First Things, Touchstone, The American Conservative, and Utne Reader. He was project director or editor-in-chief for four editions of a critically acclaimed essay-style college guide, Choosing the Right College, and the coeditor of American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. He has lectured on topics related to culture, modernity, and religion at Georgetown University, Calvin College, national meetings of the American Political Science Association, and elsewhere. Beer holds a doctorate in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin, where he held a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Ilan Wurman has been a consultant with American Philanthropic since 2009. Currently a student at Stanford Law School, Wurman graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a degree in government and physics. His writing has appeared in Commentary and The Weekly Standard. Ilan is an associate editor at the Stanford Law and Policy Review and serves as a member of the board of the Stanford Federalist Society.