she was one of the more visible academic supporters of US military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. She published over five hundred essays and authored and/or edited over twenty books, including Democracy on Trial, Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy, Augustine and the Limits of Politics, and Sovereignty: God, State, Self. In 2006, she was appointed by US President George W. Bush to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and also delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, joining such previous Gifford Lecturers as William James, Hannah Arendt, Karl Barth, and Reinhold Niebuhr. In 2008, Elshtain received a second presidential appointment to the President's Council on Bioethics. Elshtain contributed to national debates on the family, the roles of men and women, the state of American democracy, and international relations for more than thirty-five years. Analysis of major works Elshtain's importance to the United States stems both from her impact in political ethics, and also her position in society as a woman. Carlin Romano, author of America the Philosophical, explains in his work that Elshtain's aim "was not so much to lobby for specific policies as to push for good civic-minded 'individualism' over the egoism of 'bad individualism'". In one of her more popular titles, Women and War, Elshtain examines women's roles in war as contrasted against masculine roles and why these concepts are important to society. Beginning by examining America's societal interpretations of gender roles during wartime (man as a brave fighter and woman as a pacifist), Elshtain argues that men may make poor civic soldiers due to the fact that they are predisposed to a dangerous kind of eager adolescence on the battlefield, while women may be enthusiastically patriotic and possess a kind of necessary maturity, which is vital to successful combat. In one of her more famous works, Democracy on Trial, Elshtain reflects on democracy in America, discussing how socio-cultural insistence on "difference" or "separatism" have evolved since the ratification of the Constitution, and how it may be detrimental to the system. Elshtain does not deny the importance of difference, especially within a civic body. Rather, she recognizes that Americans are no longer acting as representative bodies in governments, which embrace separate interests and also work as a collective towards the betterment of the whole. Elshtain, like