Authored Books:
Scoundrels: Political Scandals in American History
"American history buffs will savor this detailed yet accessible roundup of political imbroglios." —Publishers Weekly
Political scandals have become an indelible feature of the American political system since the creation of the republic more than two centuries ago. In his previous book, Libertines: American Political Sex Scandals from Alexander Hamilton to Donald Trump, Michael Martinez explored why public figures sometimes take extraordinary risks, sullying their good names, humiliating their families, placing themselves in legal jeopardy, and potentially destroying their political careers as they seek to gratify their sexual desires. In Scoundrels, Martinez examines thirteen of the most famous (or infamous) and not-so-famous political scandals of other sorts in American history, including the Teapot Dome case from the 1920s, the Watergate break-in and cover-up in the 1970s, the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, and Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Combining riveting storytelling with insights into 200 years of American political corruption, Martinez has once again written a book that will enlighten all readers interested in human nature and political history.
Libertines: American Political Sex Scandals from Alexander Hamilton to Donald Trump
Libertines seeks to understand why public figures sometimes take extraordinary risks, sullying their good names, humiliating their families, placing themselves in legal jeopardy, and potentially destroying their political careers as they seek to gratify their sexual desires. From Hamilton to Trump and the many in between, each case of sexual misconduct in this book shows the seamy side of political lives, with calculations about covering discretions or portraying them favorably occurring only after the fact.
Congressional Pathfinders: "First" Members of Congress and How They Shaped American History
Congressional Pathfinders: “First” Members of Congress and How They Shaped American History discusses those men and women whose service in the United States Congress, as improbable as it was, marked a turning point in history. To be the first black American or the first woman to serve in a largely white, male-dominated institution requires a level of moral courage seldom found in ordinary people. To be openly gay, to subscribe to the Muslim faith in a nation often fearful and ignorant of Islam, or to navigate the hallways of power with physical disabilities is to be cognizant of one’s separateness. To be an “other” is to feel the stigma of that difference, and yet to persevere is to forge a path for later generations of others to follow. The service of these courageous men and women forever changed Congress and, by extension, the nation: they truly were congressional pathfinders. Nancy Pelosi, Daniel Inouye, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Ilhan Omar, and Hillary Clinton are among the many figures profiled in Congressional Pathfinders.
Congressional Giants: Influential Leaders of Congress and How They Shaped American History
The Congress of the United States operates in the shadow of the American presidency, which can make the legislative branch appear less important than the executive in our constitutional system of government. And yet Congress is a co-equal branch of government, deriving its powers from Article I of the United States Constitution. Love it or hate it, the institution is a source of incredible power. It behooves all Americans to learn more about Congress. Although a single slender volume cannot provide information on all there is to know about Congress, it can begin the journey. In Congressional Giants, political scientist J. Michael Martinez explores the careers and achievements of 14 influential leaders of Congress—men who either held formal positions within the chambers of Congress, such as speaker of the House of Representatives or Senate majority leader, or who served on important committees--to determine how they shaped the course of American history.
Congressional Lions: Trailblazing Members of Congress and How They Shaped American History
In some periods of American history, members of the legislative branch have been as influential, and sometimes more influential, than a particular president in crafting public policy and reacting to world events. Congressional Lions examines twelve influential members of Congress throughout American history to understand their role in shaping the life of the nation. The book does not focus exclusively on the biographical details of these lawmakers, although biography invariably plays a role in recalling their triumphs and tragedies. Instead, the book highlights members’ legislative accomplishments as well as the circumstances surrounding their congressional service.
Political Assassinations and Attempts in US History
In this book, J. Michael Martinez focuses on assassinations and attempts in the American republic. No other nation with a population of over 50 million people has witnessed as many political assassinations or attempts. These violent episodes trigger a series of important questions. First, why has the United States, a country constructed on a bedrock of the rule of law and firmly committed to due process, been so susceptible to political violence? Martinez addresses these questions as he examines twenty-five instances of violence against elected officials and public figures in American history.
Environmental Sustainability and American
Public Administration
Protecting the natural environment and promoting environmental sustainability have become important objectives for U.S. policymakers and public administrators at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Institutions of American government, especially at the federal level, and the public administrators who work inside of those institutions, play a crucial role in developing and implementing environmental sustainability policies.
A Long Dark Night: Race in America from Jim Crow to World War II
For a brief time following the end of the U.S. Civil War, American political leaders had an opportunity—slim, to be sure, but not beyond the realm of possibility—to remake society so that black Americans and other persons of color could enjoy equal opportunity in civil and political life. It was not to be. With each passing year after the war—and especially after Reconstruction ended during the 1870s—American society witnessed the evolution of a new white republic as national leaders abandoned the promise of Reconstruction and justified their racial biases based on political, economic, social, and religious values that supplanted the old North-South/slavery-abolitionist schism of the antebellum era.
The Safety of the Kingdom: Government Responses to Subversive Threats
The horrendous events of September 11, 2001, heightened awareness of terrorism unlike all but a handful of major catastrophes in American history. Like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, 9/11 is a date forever enshrined in our national memory.
But 9/11 once again raised the question: What should government do to eliminate or reduce the likelihood of a future attack? How should national leadership balance its responsibility to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens with its sworn duty to protect their lives?
In The Safety of the Kingdom, J. Michael Martinez takes up the question of how the United States government has responded to terrorist attacks and, in the absence of an attack, the fear of foreign and subversive elements that may harm the nation. In some cases, the government “overreaction” led to a series of abuses that amplified the severity of the original threat. Rather than selecting every instance of government reaction to threats, Martinez examines representative cases, from the alien and sedition acts in the eighteenth century to the post-9/11 “war on terror.”
Edward Snowden’s disclosure of classified information related to the NSA’s surveillance program brought to the fore an important debate about government scrutiny of its citizens. As J. Michael Martinez makes clear in this book, it is a debate that has been ongoing for centuries.
The Greatest Criminal Cases
Published by Praeger Books, March 2014
Landmark court cases often have dramatic background stories forgotten over time.
This fascinating book recounts the compelling stories behind 14 of the most important criminal procedure cases in American legal history.
Many constitutional protections that Americans take for granted today—the right to exclude illegally obtained evidence, the right to government-financed counsel, and the right to remain silent, among others—were not part of the original Bill of Rights, but were the result of criminal trials and judicial interpretations. The untold stories behind these cases reveal circumstances far more interesting than any legal dossier can evoke. Author J. Michael Martinez provides a brief introduction to the drama and intrigue behind 14 leading court cases in American law.
This engaging text presents a short summary of high-profile legal proceedings from the late 19th century through recent times and includes key landmark cases in which the court established the parameters of probable cause for searches, the features of due process, and the legality of electronic surveillance. The work offers concise explanations and analysis of the facts as well as the lasting significance of the cases to criminal procedure.
Features
• Includes 20 photographs of key participants and scenes
• Explains legal principles through engaging, jargon-free prose
• Connects the importance of the cases to constitutional criminal procedure
• Explores the impact of Supreme Court decisions
American Environmentalism: Philosophy, History, and Public Policy
This book provides readers with a foundation in American environmentalism with complete coverage of philosophical concepts, economics, history of the environmental movement, and modern environmental politics, agencies, stakeholders, and tenets of the sustainability movement. Tracing the environmental American trajectory with this fascinating, holistic, and thoughtful approach, the book concludes with a practical look to the main decision criteria for policy-makers and how to actually “operationalize” sustainability amidst the competing priorities of consumer needs, ethical ideals, lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians.
Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan
Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan recreates the history of one of Reconstruction’s most gripping and important confrontations, the federal government’s effort to contain the power and violence of the Ku Klux Klan in the Piedmont region of South Carolina. Centered on events of 1871 and 1872, Martinez’s account covers the major test of the federal Ku Klux Klan Enforcement Acts, criminal codes enacted by the Republican-controlled Congress to address the burgeoning threat of conservative conspiracy and violence in the former Confederacy. The failure of the most prominent South Carolina cases prosecuted under the Enforcement Acts anticipated the sweeping defeat of the government’s new powers in the federal judiciary and by the determined network of southern whites committed to shielding KKK perpetrators from Enforcement Act justice.
Terrorist Attacks on American Soil: From the Civil War Era to the Present
Understanding the context of terrorism requires a trek through history, in this case the history of terrorist activity in the United States since the Civil War era. Because the topic is large and complex, Terrorist Attacks on American Soil: From the Civil War Era to the Present does not claim to be an exhaustive history of terrorism or the definitive account of how and why terrorists do what they do. Instead, this book takes a representative sampling of the most horrific terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in an effort to understand the context in which they occurred and the lessons that can be learned from these events.
Coming for to Carry Me Home: Race in America from Abolitionism to Jim Crow
Published by Rowman & Littlefield, December 2011
Coming for to Carry Me Home examines the history of the politics surrounding U.S. race relations during the half century between the rise of the abolitionist movement in the 1830s and the dawn of the Jim Crow era in the 1880s. J. Michael Martinez argues that Lincoln and the Radical Republicans were the pivotal actors, albeit not the architects, that influenced this evolution. To understand how Lincoln and his contemporaries viewed race, Martinez first explains the origins of abolitionism and the tumultuous decade of the 1830s, when that generation of political leaders came of age. He then follows the trail through Reconstruction, Redemption, and the beginnings of legal segregation in the 1880s. The book addresses the central question of how and why the concept of race changed during this period.
Public Administration Ethics for the 21st Century
This volume establishes a foundation for a uniform code of professional ethics for public administrators in the United States.
The engineering, medical, and legal professions in the United States each have explicit codes of ethics in which all practitioners must be educated and by which they must abide. Yet of all fields, public administration remains without such a uniform code — despite the manifestly ethical nature of the way civil servants and non-profit administrators are asked to work and make decisions.
Public Administration Ethics for the 21st Century lays the ethical foundations for a uniform professional code of ethics for public administrators, civil servants, and non-profit administrators in the US. Martinez synthesizes five disparate schools of ethical thought as to how public administrators can come to know the good and behave in ways that advance the values of citizenship, equity, and public interest within their respective organizations. Using case studies, he teaches American administrators how to combine the approaches of all five schools to evaluate and resolve complex ethical dilemmas within the constraints of the U.S. democratic values set.
Martinez enunciates the common ethical principles that guide public administrators in their practice within the specific ethical parameters and organizational cultures of a myriad entities at the federal, state, and local levels of government in the United States, as well as in non-profit organizations. Along the way, Martinez addresses a number of crucial issues, including personal gain, conflict of interest, transparency, democratic impartiality, hiring, hierarchical discipline, media relations, partisan pressure, appointments by elected officials, and whistle-blowing. The striking, high-profile case studies — Nathan Bedford Forrest, Adolph Eichmann, Lieutenant William Calley, and Mary Ann Wright — illustrate ethical dilemmas where, for better or worse, the individual was at odds with the organization.
Features:
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• Four cases of ethical and unethical decision making in context — Nathan Bedford Forrest, William Calley, Adolf Eichmann, and Mary Anne Wright — who resigned in protest over the 2003 invasion of Iraq
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• Six figures depicting the process of ethical decision making within a public organization
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• An extensive bibliography listing of the major sources on administrative ethics in print and online
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• An index of key thinkers and theories involving administrative ethics
Highlights:
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• Fills a glaring gap in the literature on public administration by laying the groundwork for a profession-wide code of ethical conduct
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• Written in an authoritative but jargon-free way, to serve both academic and professional readers
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• Discusses the strengths and weaknesses of different schools of thought on administrative ethics
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• Looks at ethical questions in public administration in the overall context of modern ethical theory
Life and Death in Civil War Prisons
More than anything, Civil War soldiers feared becoming a prisoner of war. Among the deadliest prisons for Confederates was Rock Island Prison in Illinois. One of the most notorious for Northern prisoners was Georgia’s Camp Sumter – better known as Andersonville. Dysentery, starvation, exposure to harsh weather, and brutal mistreatment killed more men in prisons than were killed at Gettysburg, the war’s deadliest battle.
The gruesome reality of Civil War prison life is found in the personal stories of those who suffered it. Two such victims were Corporal John Wesley Minnich – a Southern teenager from Louisiana – and Sergeant Warren Lee Goss of Massachusetts. In Life and Death in Civil War Prisons, these two common soldiers become uncommon symbols of the largely untold under-life of the American Civil War. It is a penetrating, unforgettable portrait of the worst of the war – the military prisons of the North and the South. The book strips the war of its romance and pageantry. What is left is the hardship and horror of the war – and the extraordinary courage of American soldiers from both North and South.
Co-Authored/Co-Edited Books:
Administrative Ethics in the Twenty-first Century
After years of languishing in the long shadow of “values,” its 1960s-era substitute, public discussion and debate about virtues, vices, character, and ethics are occupying center stage once again. This book joins that debate in a way that is both practical and useful to undergraduate and graduate students who are being introduced to the full breadth of public administration in introductory courses, or specialized ones in administrative ethics. Intended as a supplement to major ethics texts, this book will help readers develop a thorough understanding of the principles of ethics so they will come away with a deeper appreciation of the challenges and complexities involved in negotiating the ethical dilemmas facing administrators in a twenty-first century democratic republic.
The Leviathan’s Choice: Capital Punishment in the Twenty-First Century
The death penalty is one of the most contentious issues of our time and has generated an astonishing amount of arguments both for and against capital punishment. Out of this debate, Martinez, Richardson, and Hornsby have crafted the broadest and most balanced account to date. The Leviathan’s Choice: Capital Punishment in the Twenty-First Century explores the death penalty from four distinct perspectives–philosophical, theological, social science, and legal–and includes scholarly essays on both sides of the debate. An ideal reader for students and policy makers, The Leviathan’s Choice is essential for everyone following the arguments surrounding the death penalty.
Confederate Symbols In The Contemporary South
This illustrated collection of essays examines the controversy surrounding the use and display of Confederate symbols in the modern South. Prominent scholars from many disciplines explore the battle between pro-Confederate-symbol forces (traditionalists) and anti-Confederate-symbol forces (reconstructionists) as they struggle to reconcile the values and customs of a racially conservative Old South and a racially liberal New South.
Should the Confederate battle flag continue to fly atop a state capitol dome, or does this “official” display violate the constitutional rights of some citizens? Should Confederate flags and monuments be removed completely from the landscape? Should public funds be used to maintain Confederate monuments on courthouse lawns, traffic islands, and public facilities? These are a few of the perplexing questions addressed in this collection.
Ethics and Character: The Pursuit of Democratic Virtues
This unique text examines the debate over the role of character and virtue in democratic leadership and their relationship to a healthy democracy. Contributors include James Q. Wilson, Martin Diamond, Alasdair MacIntyre, and other prominent scholars who focus on specific aspects of the critical question, “Who should lead and in what manner?” These scholars address this question from different perspectives and across several fields, including political science, philosophy, law, public administration, and public policy. Part I reviews the development and promotion of virtues and character in western thought. Part II examines the tension between law (public duties) and ethics (private duties) as well as the “unpopular and morally suspect” role of lawyers in the American regime. This examination leads to a discussion in Part III of the importance of virtue and character as leaders exercise discretion in governing modern regimes. Part IV concludes the book with an inquiry into the nature of leadership and virtue as well as their importance in balancing democratic and undemocratic elements of the regime.