LATEST NEWS & EVENTS

Georgetown University Press is proud to announce that we will be the US publishers of a new edition of Jan Karski’s Story of a Secret State. Jan Karski was recently posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work as a former officer in the Polish Underground during World War II, who was among the first to provide eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust to the world. When announcing the award, President Obama remarked, “We must tell our children about how this evil was allowed to happen—because so many people succumbed to their darkest instincts; because so many others stood silent. But let us also tell our children about the Righteous Among the Nations. Among them was Jan Karski—a young Polish Catholic—who witnessed Jews being put on cattle cars, who saw the killings, and who told the truth, all the way to President Roosevelt himself.”

With the publication of his book Story of a Secret State in 1944, Jan Karski became known as one of the first people who tried to warn the West about the Holocaust. The book was a bestseller with over 400,000 copies sold. Today, Karski’s remarkable account of wartime resistance and the activities of the Polish underground government still stands as a major contribution to history and literature. We at Georgetown University Press feel honored to have the privilege to contribute to Karski’s legacy by making this important story available once again to an American audience.

Georgetown University Press is pleased to announce the appointment of John W. Warren as Marketing and Sales Director. Mr. Warren joins the press with nearly two decades of experience working in the publishing industry, specifically in marketing and digital publishing. In his new role, he will lead the marketing and sales strategies of the press, developing plans to promote and sell the press’s dynamic and academically rigorous list.

“We are delighted to welcome John to the Georgetown University Press team,” said Richard Brown, director of the press. “He has a distinguished career of innovation in digital publishing, and I am convinced he will grow our sales and revenue in the years ahead.”

Mr. Warren most recently spent twelve years serving as Marketing Director of RAND Corporation’s Publications department. There he developed a solid program of effective and diverse print and digital marketing tactics and spearheaded the e-book program by developing partnerships with vendors and distributors and creating strategies for their sale and marketing.

“It’s thrilling to join the talented staff of Georgetown University Press and to become a member of the distinguished institution of Georgetown University,” said Warren. “I look forward to collaborating with this brilliant team.”

Mr. Warren has delivered keynote presentations at several international conferences and has authored articles about the evolution of e-books, including “Innovation and the Future of E-Books” (2009) and “The Progression of Digital Publishing: Innovation and the E-volution of E-books,” (2010). He was the winner of the International Award for Excellence in the development of the book.

Mr. Warren has a Masters in International Management from the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at the University of California, San Diego. Before his time at RAND, he managed marketing efforts for Mexican publisher Fondo de Cultura Económica, Sage Publications, and Sylvan Learning, Inc.

Proposals for reform have dotted the federal management landscape in the United States for more than 50 years. Yet the results of these efforts have frequently failed to produce lasting results. The public management field’s prescriptions for reform have become too formulaic and have largely ignored lessons from the mediocre results that have been seen from many previous efforts. In her new book, Federal Management Reform in a World of Contradictions, renowned public administration scholar Beryl A. Radin reveals what may lie behind the failure of so many of these efforts at government management reform.

The book examines three basic sets of contradictions between the strategies of the reformers and the reality of the US federal system: contradictions in the shared powers structure, contradictions in values, and contradictions between politics and administration. Too often the prescriptions for reform have tried to directly apply techniques from the private sector or a parliamentary system that do not transfer well to the structure of the US federal system, to this country’s democratic traditions, or our complex political system. Radin then uses these contradictions to explore six types of reform efforts—contracting out, personnel policy, agency reorganization, budgeting, federalism policies and procedures, and performance management.

Carsten Greve, of Copenhagen Business School, calls Federal Management Reform in a World of Contradictions “essential reading for all who want to understand why public management reform does not always work as intended, but nevertheless continues to attract politicians’ and citizens’ attention. . . . A thoughtful and well-researched reminder of why politics and reform are bound together. This book places the public management reform agenda in its proper historical perspective.”

Mindful of the ineffectiveness of a “one-size-fits-all” approach, Radin does not propose a single path for reform, but calls instead for a truly honest assessment of past efforts as today’s reformers design a new conceptual and strategic roadmap for the future. Norma M. Riccucci, of Rutgers University, Newark, applauds the book, saying that it “challenges the way in which academics as well as practitioners have tackled the problems associated with public management reform. . . . [E]xtraordinarily insightful.”

At the American Society of Public Administration’s Annual Meeting this past weekend, Georgetown University Press book Public Administration: Traditions of Inquiry and Philosophies of Knowledge won the Best Book of 2012 Award from the Section on Public Administration Research. This book by Norma Riccucci examines the intellectual origins and identity of the discipline of public administration, its diverse research traditions, and how public administration research is conducted today.

Craig Thomas, of the University of Washington, has applauded the book calling it “a sweeping and inclusive examination of the epistemic foundations of public administration theory and methods.” He goes on saying, “Riccucci convincingly demonstrates that the field is better served when research questions drive methodological choices, rather than methodological commitments driving the questions we ask. Hence, this book should be a standard text for graduate seminars on the logic of inquiry and research design in public administration.”

We at the press are very proud of Dr. Riccucci’s achievement and pleased that ASPA recognized her truly excellent work!