Taking Our Country Back presents the previously untold history of the uptake of new media in Democratic electoral campaigning over the last decade. Drawing on interviews with more than sixty political staffers, fieldwork during the 2008 primaries and general election, and archival research, Daniel Kreiss shows how a group of young, technically-skilled Internet staffers came together on the Howard Dean campaign and created a series of innovations in organization, tools, and practice that have changed the elections game. He charts how these individuals carried their innovations across Democratic politics, contributing to a number of electoral victories, including Barack Obama's historic bid for the presidency. In revealing this history, the book provides a rich empirical look at the communication tools, practices, and infrastructure that shape contemporary online campaigning. Taking Our Country Back is a serious and vital analysis, both on-the-ground and theoretical, of how a small group of visionary people transformed what campaigning means today and how technical and cultural work coordinates collective action.

Taking Our Country Back presents the previously untold history of the uptake of new media in Democratic electoral campaigning over the last decade. Drawing on open-ended interviews with more than fifty political staffers, fieldwork during the 2008 primaries and general election, and archival research, Daniel Kreiss shows how a group of young, technically-skilled internet staffers came together on the Howard Dean campaign and created a series of innovations in organization, tools, and practice that have changed the campaign game. After the election, these individuals founded an array of consulting firms and training organizations and staffed prominent Democratic campaigns. In the process, they carried their innovations across Democratic politics and contributed to a number of electoral victories, including Barack Obama's historic bid for the presidency. In revealing this history, the book provides a rich empirical look at the communication tools, practices, and infrastructure that shape contemporary online campaigning. Through a detailed history of new media and political campaigning, Taking Our Country Back contributes to an interdisciplinary body of scholarship from communication, sociology, and political science. The book theorizes processes of innovation in online electoral politics and gives readers a new understanding of how the internet and its use by the Dean campaign have fundamentally changed the field of political campaigning. Kreiss shows how these innovations, exemplified by the Dean and Obama campaigns, were the product of the movement of staffers between industries and within organizational structures. Such movement provided a space for technical development and incentives for experimentation. Taking Our Country Back is a serious and vital analysis, both on-the-ground and theoretical, of how a small group of internet staffers transformed what campaigning means today and how cultural work mobilizes and motivates supporters to participate in collective action.

America is still the greatest country in the world, but it is Plagued with many challenges that have been ignored or exacerbated by our leaders. The American people are fed up, tired, and angry. It is time for the people to rise up and take our country back! With the national debt hovering above $19 trillion and rising; the middle class still decimated by the Great Recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008; millions of Americans either unemployed or severely underemployed as more U.S. companies replace American workers with lower wage staff by either relocating their businesses overseas or employing illegal immigrants and foreigners with worker visas here at home; and the constant fear of terrorism at home and abroad - all while seeing President Obama and Hillary Clinton work tirelessly to diminish American exceptionalism - it is clear that America is in dire need of new, fresh leadership that will reset the direction of the country. This must be done before the U.S. economy fully collapses, Iran secures a nuclear weapon, North Korea succeeds in launching one, and a resurgent Russia further expands its dominance in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. For the People gives an American citizen's voice to the people's dissatisfaction with how our leaders in Washington have managed, or, more accurately, mismanaged the people's affairs. Americans are exhausted with the constant bickering between Congress and the Executive branch of our government that has resulted in years of stagnation. The turmoil has caused far too many citizens to lament the demise of the American dream of prosperity and upward mobility. This book is a wakeup call to all Americans to ignore the rhetoric of all candidates and cast their crucial vote for the candidate who is best qualified to protect and secure the future of the United States of America.

Unless we take action now, our nation may confront a situation similar to the Great Depression. This book is a dynamic plan to stimulate discussion and debate to create the plan that best serves the American people. Covered inside are needed reforms, an American that pays its way and prospers, that heals and leads the world.

The maverick leader of the fastest-growing union in the United States proposes a revolutionary paradigm for America and labor--in which workers and management and all Americans can thrive in the global economy.

A dedicated young Conservative, Jonathan Krohn presents Conservative philosophy's basic tenets in this remarkably earnest and impeccably reasoned primer. This book, clear and informative, is a history lesson, a manifesto, and a roadmap for the future. Anyone interested in the basic differences between Conservative and Liberal thought will find Krohn's writing at once compelling, informative, intelligent, and--for those who do not agree with him--in some respects controversial.

I Want My Country Back is a provocative book meant to entice the reader into thinking beyond what is apparent in our society today and begin once more to think in terms beyond one. This book will probe you to get beneath the surface of our everyday crises to reconnect to our past, envision a growing future and start to live in the present as a United States again. The first two thirds of the book disclose major hardship topics severely affecting our society today and exposing the reader to the draining causes of where we, as a nation have gone astray and ended up. A common underlying theme points to the root cause triggering many of the dilemmas we find ourselves straddled with today and offers some alternatives towards stemming the tide of where we are heading so we may garner new hope and vision that will lead to long term growth manufactured out of substance rather than spun out of hype. The final third of this reading introduces some opportunity and suggestions for the challenges we face to brighten our future and ignite a passion to pass on a legacy that restores the American Dream that our forefathers afforded us. The message being conveyed here attempts to rekindle our society to dare facing ourselves and where our true allegiance lies as a people so that we can renew the perpetual fight for independence with that eternal spirit that ushered in our freedom.