A List
9/10/07

SLU LIBRARIES CELEBRATE BOOK BY GOVERNMENT PROFS

CANTON - The Friends of Owen D. Young and Launders Libraries will hold an event on Friday, September 21, at 4 p.m. in the Josephine Young Room of Owen D. Young Library celebrating the publication of the book The Good Society: An Introduction to Comparative Politics by Professor of Government Alan L. Draper and Emeritus Professor of Government J. Ansil Ramsay. Draper and Ramsay will speak at the event, which is open to the public, free of charge.

What constitutes "the good society?" Draper and Ramsay examine that question in the textbook, called by publishers Longman Press "a bold departure." The volume is a thematic introduction to comparative politics, framed around and driven by the concept of "the good society," emphasizing institutions, drawing on the United States for some of its comparisons, and including a unique assortment of case studies - touching on a range of countries from rich democracies to less-developed states - to make abstract concepts concrete.

Draper is also the author of A Rope of Sand: The AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education, 1955-68; Conflict of Interests: Labor and the Civil Rights Movement; and The Politics of Power: A Critical Introduction to American Government. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and holds two master's degrees and the Ph.D. from Columbia, and won St. Lawrence's J. Calvin Keene Award in 1996.

Ramsay retired from the faculty in 2005, after a 35-year teaching career at the University. He is a graduate of Florida State University, and earned the Ph.D. at Cornell University. He is an expert on the government and economy of Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, and has been awarded a number of grants to conduct research there. In 1984, he was the recipient of a Fulbright grant to study economic difficulties in Southeast Asia. Ramsay is the author of several books on related topics and in 2003, delivered the Piskor Faculty Lecture on campus, on the topic "Good Societies and How to Get Them: The Political Economy of Development."

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