Friday, January 30, 2009

Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization or Lincoln and the Civil War

Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization

Author: Jason Brownle

Far from sweeping the globe uniformly, the 'third wave of democratization' left burgeoning republics and resilient dictatorships in its wake. Applying more than a year of original fieldwork in Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, and the Philippines, Jason Brownlee shows that the mixed record of recent democratization is best deciphered through a historical and institutional approach to authoritarian rule. Exposing the internal organizations that structure elite conflict, Brownlee demonstrates why the critical soft-liners needed for democratic transitions have been dormant in Egypt and Malaysia but outspoken in Iran and the Philippines. By establishing how ruling parties originated and why they impede change, Brownlee illuminates the problem of contemporary authoritarianism and informs the promotion of durable democracy.



Interesting textbook: Advanced VBScript for Microsoft Windows Administrators or Joel Whitburn Presents Songs and Artists

Lincoln and the Civil War

Author: John M Hay

A unique document by an extraordinary man about one of the giants of American history, this edition features a new forward by Henry Steele Commager, who sheds new light on the Lincoln-Hay relationship.



Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Best Damn Cybercrime and Forensics Book Period or Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy

The Best Damn Cybercrime and Forensics Book Period

Author: Jack Wiles

Electronic discovery refers to a process in which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a legal case. Computer forensics is the application of computer investigation and analysis techniques to perform an investigation to find out exactly what happened on a computer and who was responsible. IDC estimates that the U.S. market for computer forensics will be grow from $252 million in 2004 to $630 million by 2009. Business is strong outside the United States, as well. By 2011, the estimated international market will be $1.8 billion dollars. The Techno Forensics Conference has increased in size by almost 50% in its second year; another example of the rapid growth in the market.

This book is the first to combine cybercrime and digital forensic topics to provides law enforcement and IT security professionals with the information needed to manage a digital investigation. Everything needed for analyzing forensic data and recovering digital evidence can be found in one place, including instructions for building a digital forensics lab.

* Digital investigation and forensics is a growing industry
* Corporate I.T. departments needing to investigate incidents related to corporate espionage or other criminal activities are learning as they go and need a comprehensive step-by-step guide to e-discovery
* Appeals to law enforcement agencies with limited budgets



Table of Contents:

Email Forensics Developing a Digital Investigative/Electronic Discovery Capability Digital Forensics in a Multi Operating System Environment Digital Forensic Investigation Operations Balancing Records & Information Cyber Crime Investigations Windows and DVD Forensics Alternate Data Storage Forensics Buidling a Digital Forensics Lab

Book review: Digital Communications or Latin Journey

Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen

Author: Susan Griffin

What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States? In this compelling and personal work, Susan Griffin—cultural historian, poet, public intellectual—blends history, cultural critique, and memoir to discover the essence of our democracy. From the Declaration of Independence to the war in Iraq, from Thomas Jefferson to John Muir to Jelly Roll Morton, Griffin charts the rise and fall of the American vision of freedom and equality.

Within the American psyche, Griffin explains, there is an enduring battle between the "psychology of empire," characterized by a desire for safety, order, and control, and the "psychology of democracy," characterized by equality, empathy, and truth-telling. "As a social body," she writes, " we are caught between conflicting desires, between the wish for freedom and the desire for order and safety, between the psychology of subjects and the psychology of citizens." Griffin's probing exploration of the history of American democracy is interwoven with sections of memoir exploring her own upbringing and political awakenings as the daughter of working-class parents in 1950s California.

Throughout this unique work—which gives special emphasis to the inner lives of pivotal historical figures—Griffin demonstrates that ultimately democracy is not only a system of governance, but, in its fullest form, represents a revolution in consciousness, one that is still unfolding today. We are still wrestling with the promise of democracy and, as American citizens, are deeply affected by the ongoing struggle between tyranny and freedom.

Bob Nardini Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - School Library Journal

Griffin began her "social autobiography" with A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War(1992), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and continued with What Her Body Thought. She now delivers a third volume, in which autobiographical fragments blend with reflections on the lives of Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, Jelly Roll Morton, and other Americans and with diary entries recording Griffin's thoughts on current events such as Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. She aims to trace intersections between the growth of a sense of freedom in individuals and the evolution of democratic consciousness in the nation. "It is the inner states that generate and are generated by democracy that interest me," she writes. Griffin, also a poet and playwright, has written many books, and no doubt her latest will find its readers. Yet those who have not encountered Griffin may consider many passages, such as "I was more in touch with myself than ever before," self-absorbed and trite. Optional for public and academic libraries.



Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Hearing the Other Side or Ikes Final Battle

Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative Versus Participatory Democracy

Author: Diana C Mutz

'Religion and politics', as the old saying goes, 'should never be discussed in mixed company.'And yet fostering discussions that cross lines of political difference has long been a central concern of political theorists. More recently, it has also become a cause célèbre for pundits and civic-minded citizens wanting to improve the health of American democracy. But only recently have scholars begun empirical investigations of where and with what consequences people interact with those whose political views differ from their own. Hearing the Other Side examines this theme in the context of the contemporary United States. It is unique in its effort to link political theory with empirical research. Drawing on her empirical work, Mutz suggests that it is doubtful that an extremely activist political culture can also be a heavily deliberative one.



Table of Contents:

1. Hearing the other side, in theory and in practice;
2. Encountering mixed political company: with whom and in what context?;
3. Benefits of hearing the other side;
4. The dark side of mixed political company;
5. The social citizen.

Interesting textbook: Barbecue Biscuits and Beans or Outdoor Tables and Tales

Ike's Final Battle: The Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality

Author: Kasey S Pipes

He called it one of the hardest things he ever did - as difficult as leading the D-Day invasion. When Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to integrate Central High School in September 1957, he couldn't know that he was fighting the last great battle of his career...one that would change forever both him and his country. This is the story of how one of America's greatest leaders confronted America's greatest sin. This is the unlikely tale of how Ike became a civil rights president.

Ike's Last Battle represents a revolution in scholarship on Eisenhower and civil rights. Though not uncritical, the book credits his steady personal advance on the issue as well as his accomplishments in the military and as president.

Drawing on thousands of primary documents (including newly released material), Ike's Last Battle builds to its climax at Little Rock - one of the most pivotal events of the civil rights movement. Little Rock is at the epicenter, but the book will also look at the cause, and the aftermath.

  • * With the 50th Anniversary of Little Rock approaching in 2007, the timing is perfect. This is the last priceless nugget of civil rights history.
  • * The book draws on thousands of newly released documents, many never before made public.
  • * This is the first book on the subject in 25 years. It disproves the claim that that Ike didn't care about civil rights.

Wall Street Journal - Fred Barnes

Mr. Pipes is not a professional historian. He is a public-relations consultant and speechwriter who worked in the Bush White House from 2002 to 2005. But he has written a highly readable and credible account of Eisenhower's struggle with race and civil rights. While sympathetic, he doesn't sugarcoat Eisenhower's qualms about desegregation or excuse his unwillingness to move decisively before Little Rock.



Tuesday, January 27, 2009

American Spy or The Dismal Science

American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond

Author: E Howard Hunt

Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon: His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more, His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA, The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroad, The motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished, The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies, A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in, Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up. Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate.

Publishers Weekly

Career spy, Watergate conspirator and prolific suspense novelist Hunt (Guilty Knowledge) collaborated with journalist Aunapu (Without a Trace) on this breezy, unrepentant memoir. Hunt (who died recently at 88) recalls the highlights of a long career, from WWII service with the fabled Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—predecessor of the CIA—to a career with the agency itself and a stint as a consultant to the Nixon White House. As a White House operative, Hunt specialized in dirty tricks and break-ins—including the Democratic National Committee's headquarters—and served 33 months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. He claims to have been a magnet for women, especially models, and shamelessly drops the names of the rich and powerful. He also played a key role in the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation. As for his role in Watergate, he blames his "bulldog loyalty" and concedes only that he and his fellow conspirators did "the wrong things for the right reasons." In a postscript, Hunt urges reforming the beleaguered CIA in the image of the wartime OSS and its "daring amateurs." Hunt's nostalgic memoir breaks scant new ground in an already crowded field. (Apr.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information



Table of Contents:
Foreword   William F. Buckley Jr.     ix
Introduction     1
World War II     3
OSS     8
China Station     21
The End of War     28
The Marshall Plan     34
The CIA     44
Mexico     52
The Balkans and Operation PB/Success     68
Japan     85
"Play It Again, Sam"     97
Bay of Pigs     113
The Assassination of President Kennedy     126
The Great Propaganda Machine     148
Inside the White House     173
Gemstone     191
Colson and McCord     198
Watergate     210
Watergate Redux     227
Fallout     236
Disaster Strikes Twice     252
After the Crash     269
Sentencing     279
The Web Unweaves     294
The Memo Bites Back     311
The Problem with Langley     323
Index     333

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The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community

Author: Stephen A Marglin

See "Stephen Marglin on the Future of Capitalism" at FORA.tv.

Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However, as Stephen Marglin argues, market relationships erode community. In the past, for example, when a farm family experienced a setback—say the barn burned down—neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns, not to his neighbors, but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising, but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations.

Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last four centuries, this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered.

Danny Lang - Irish Times

Marglin's demonstration of the relationship between mainstream economics and the destruction of communities is seductive, convincing, and well documented.

Tikkun

Stephen Marglin makes a powerful and convincing argument for how thinking like an economist undermines community. Suddenly, the choices of those who reject global capitalism seem far more reasonable, because the globalization of capital brings with it the economistic thinking that destroys local values, forcing us to choose between material prosperity and spiritual health. Yet this tension is made invisible by a pseudo-universal ideology about human nature. Marglin thus provides a persuasive foundation for the Politics of Meaning.



Monday, January 26, 2009

Adventures with Ed or Diplomats Dictionary

Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey

Author: Jack Loeffler

No writer has had a greater influence on the American West than Edward Abbey (1927-89), author of twenty-one books of fiction and nonfiction. This long-awaited biographical memoir by one of Abbey's closest friends is a tribute to the gadfly anarchist who popularized environmental activism in his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang and articulated the spirit of the arid West in Desert Solitaire and scores of other essays and articles. In the course of a twenty-year friendship Ed Abbey and Jack Loeffler shared hundreds of campfires, hiked thousands of miles, and talked endlessly about the meaning of life. To read Loeffler's account of his best pal's life and work is to join in their friendship.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Abbey came west to attend the University of New Mexico on the G.I. Bill. His natural inclination toward anarchism led him to study philosophy, but after earning an M.A. he rejected academic life and worked off and on for years as a backcountry ranger and fire lookout around the Southwest. His 1956 novel The Brave Cowboy launched his literary career, and by the 1970s he was recognized as an important, uniquely American voice. Abbey used his talents to protest against the mining and development of the American West. By the time of his death he had become an idol to environmentalists, writers, and free spirits all over the West.

"Ed Abbey and Jack Loeffler were like Don Quijote and Sancho Panza. Loeffler delivers his friend, warts and all on a platter full of reverence and irreverence and carefully researched factual information, interspersed with hearty laughter and much serious consideration of all life's Great Questions. Jack's story elucidates anddemythifies the Abbey legend, giving us powerful flesh and blood instead."—John Nichols

The New York Times

"Adventures With Ed . . . is witheringly precise when it comes to finding [Abbey's] living spirit.

Outside

. . . look to Loeffler to see why this serial husband, womanizer, and heavy drinker was beloved, even worshiped, by a wide circle of admirers.

Booklist

Loeffler's intimate, incisive, and loving portrait of Abbey replaces the old, brittle caricature with an indelible body-and-soul vision of a true American original.

Southwest BookViews

. . . Loeffler uses his own journals of their escapades and the narrative becomes very personal.

Weekly Alibi

. . . Loeffler's Adventures with Ed probably comes closest to the way Abbey would have liked to be remembered. . . . very entertaining reading . . . because Abbey himself continues to be so endlessly fascinating.

Inside Tucson Business

. . . Abbey was above all else a man who placed paramount importance on friendship. And in the final analysis this is a book about friendship, about two compadres sharing the same trail.

Library Journal

Hard on the heels of James Cahalan's Edward Abbey: A Life (LJ 10/15/01) comes this more personal reminiscence by one of author and environmental activist Abbey's closest friends. The book is part biography and part memoir, and it is the latter aspect that makes it of special interest. Loeffler and Abbey (1927-89) spent countless days together, hiking, camping, drinking beer, and talking about the natural beauty of the West and how it was being despoiled by industry and government. It is these long conversations, and the friends' adventures in Mexico and the Western landscape, that energize the second half of the book. Moments of high hilarity alternate with moving scenes from Abbey's life and final days, ending with Loeffler's secret burial of Abbey in the desert they both loved so much. Readers will want to skip the countless sections on anarchism and the diatribes against the industrial-military complex. Though Loeffler's portrait lacks the shades of gray found in Cahalan's biography, this book is highly recommended for Abbey's fans and for larger public library collections. Morris Hounion, N.Y.C. Technical Coll. Lib., CUNY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.



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Diplomat's Dictionary

Author: Chas W Freeman

Diplomacy obviously means very different things to different people. In this entertaining and informative collection, career diplomat Chas Freeman brings together keen observations, witty insights, shrewd advice, and classic words of wisdom on the art and practice of diplomacy. In so doing, this wide-ranging compendium draws on many cultures, ancient and modern.

This revised edition adds about eighty new entries to the text. Like the first edition, it should be useful to "anyone who may be called upon to deal with complex and challenging situations in cross-cultural circumstances."



Saturday, January 24, 2009

Why Unions Matter or Nuclear Weapons

Why Unions Matter

Author: Michael D Yates

"A comprehensive, readable introduction to the history, structure, functioning, and yes, the problems of U.S. unions. For labor and political activists just coming on the scene or veterans looking for that missing overview, this is the best place to start."

--Kim Moody, author of Workers in a Lean World

With historical sidebars ranging from the Industrial Workers of the World to Cesar Chavez and a generous sprinkling of photos and cartoons, Why Unions Matter is a clear and simple introduction to the labor movement's purpose and promise.


Library Journal

Yates, an economics professor and labor educator whose earlier books focused on workers legal rights (Power on the Job, South End, 1994), here seeks to cover a much broader canvas: how labor unions work, the victories they have won on the battlefields of sexism and racism, and an argument for unions as the sole means by which working people can obtain dignity, equity, and power. Written in a personal, anecdotal style, yet well documented, this book is particularly successful in the chapters that focus on the nuts and bolts of union activities (collective bargaining, structures, organizing), an area largely ignored by current business and political literature. For this reason alone it is a valuable addition to large public and academic libraries.Donna L. Schulman, Cornell Univ. Libs., Ithaca, NY

Booknews

Uses statistics and analysis to prove that unionized workers in every part of the economy get more pay and better benefits than employees who do comparable work but do not belong to a union. Argues that unions' power to inspire dignity and solidarity in workers is just as significant as their material gains, and calls for a more independent and politically progressive labor movement. Provides advice on what makes a collective bargaining campaign effective and what approach unions should take in electoral politics. Includes b&w photos. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

What People Are Saying

Kim Moody
A comprehensive, readable introduction to the history, structure, functioning, and yes, the problems of U.S. unions. For labor and political activists just coming on the scene or veterans looking for that missing overview, this is the best place to start.
—Kim Moody, author of Workers in a Lean World




Table of Contents:
Introduction1
1Why Unions?8
Strength in Numbers10
The First U.S. Unions13
Do Unions Work?15
Unions and Dignity18
2How Unions Form24
A Little History27
How Unions Form30
Successful Union Organizing34
3Union Structures and Democracy39
Locals and Internationals41
Union Structure and the Law45
An Example of Union Democracy47
A Local Union Meeting50
4Collective Bargaining53
The IWW's Case against Collective Bargaining55
Strategies of the Contract Campaign57
Bargaining in Wartime64
At the Table66
The Agreement71
Politics and Collective Bargaining79
5Unions and Politics: Local, National, Global81
Why U.S. Labor Politics Are Different84
Labor Politics in the 1930s86
The AFL-CIO and Politics Today88
The Missouri Victory Against Right-to-Work94
Workers of the World Suppressed95
The American Institute for Free Labor Development98
The Time is Ripe100
6Unions, Racism, and Sexism104
Unions, Racism, and Justice108
The United Packinghouse Workers112
Black and Latino Unionism113
Unions and Women116
Women in Struggle119
Intersection of Race and Gender122
Gay and Lesbian Workers125
What Collective Bargaining Has Won126
Politics of Liberation128
7The Tasks Ahead130
The Difficulties Labor Faces132
Reasons for Labor's Decline: External Forces135
Reasons for Labor's Decline: Internal Forces140
The "New Voice"143
An International Labor Movement?147
Still to Come148
Appendix153
Notes157
Index176

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Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Joseph M Siracusa

Despite not having been used in anger since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons are still the biggest threat that faces us in the 21st century. Indeed, for all the effort to reduce nuclear stockpiles to zero and to keep other nations (such as Iran) from developing nuclear capability, it seems that the Bomb is here to stay. In this gripping Very Short Introduction, Joseph M. Siracusa, an internationally respected authority on nuclear arms, provides a comprehensive, accessible, and at times chilling overview of the most deadly weapon ever invented. Siracusa explains the history of the arms race and the politics of the bomb, ranging from the technology of nuclear weapons, to the revolutionary implications of the H-bomb and the politics of nuclear deterrence. The issues are set against a backdrop of the changing international landscape, from the early days of development, through the Cold War, to the present-day controversy over George W. Bush's National Missile Defense, and the role of nuclear weapons in an Age of Terror. Providing an accessible and eye-opening backdrop to one of the most unsettling aspects of the modern world, this compact introduction is must reading.



Friday, January 23, 2009

The War for Righteousness or The World Economy

The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation

Author: Richard M Gambl

"They died to save their country and they only saved the world."

This line, the final one in G. K. Chesterton's poem, "The English Graves," serves for Richard Gamble as an interpretive key to a peculiarly important moment in American history: the time of the First World War, when progressive Christian leaders in America transformed themselves from principled pacifists to crusading interventionists. The consequence of this momentous shift, says Gamble was the triumph of the idea that America has been destined by divine Providence to bring salvation to the less enlightened nations of the world.

In The War for Righteousness, Gamble reconstructs the inner world of the social gospel clergy, tracing the evolution of the clergy's interventionist ideology from its roots in earlier efforts to promote a modern, activist Christianity. He shows how these clergy eventually came to see their task as world evangelization for the new creed of democracy and internationalism, and ultimately for the redemption of civilization itself through the agency of total war. World War I thus became a transcendent moment of fulfillment. In the eyes of the progressive clergy, the years from 1914 to 1918 presented an unprecedented opportunity to achieve their vision of a world transformed--the ancient dream of a universal and everlasting kingdom of peace, justice, and righteousness. American sacrifice was necessary not only to save the country, but to save the entire world.

Vividly narrating how the progressive clergy played a surprising role in molding the public consensus in favor of total war, Gamble engages the broader question of religion's role in shaping the modern American mind and the development, at the deepest levels, of the logic of messianic interventionism both at home and abroad. This timely book not only fills a significant gap in our collective memory of the Great War, it also helps demonstrate how and why that war heralded the advent of a different American self-understanding.



Book about: Der Exekutivguide zur Strategischen Planung

The World Economy: Trade and Finance (with Economic Applications Printed Ac

Author: Beth V Yarbrough

The connection between international economics and your daily life is greater than you might think. THE WORLD ECONOMY: TRADE AND FINANCE is the most accurate, balanced, and user-friendly textbook available. And, at the end of every chapter you'll see at least three examples of how economic issues are impacting your life as a student and a citizen. Whether you need a great grade in the class or an economics textbook you'll use again and again, make THE WORLD ECONOMY: TRADE AND FINANCE your choice to help you succeed.



Thursday, January 22, 2009

Reagan in His Own Voice or The American Supreme Court

Reagan in His Own Voice

Author: Ronald Reagan

Reagan In His Own Voice features Ronald Reagan's radio addresses from the late 1970s. Edited by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, they are introduced by George Shultz and feature additional introductions by Nancy Reagan, Richard V. Allen, Judge William Clark, Michael Deaver, Peter Hannaford, Edwin Meese III and Harry O'Connor.

From 1975 to 1979 Ronald Reagan gave more than 1,000 daily radio broadcasts, the great majority of which he wrote himself. This program represents the opening of a major archive of pre-presidential material from the Reagan Library and the Hoover Institution Archives. These addresses transform our image of Ronald Reagan, and enhance and revise our understanding of the late 1970s -- a time when Reagan held no political office, but was nonetheless mapping out a strategy to transform the economy, end the cold war, and create a vision of America that would propel him to the presidency.

These radio programs demonstrate that Reagan had carefully considered nearly every issue he would face as president. Reagan's radio broadcasts will change his reputation even among his closest allies and friends. Here, in his own voice, Reagan the thinker is finally fully revealed.

Library Journal

Between his campaign against President Gerald Ford in 1975-76 and his entry into the race that resulted in his election victory over President Jimmy Carter in 1980, Reagan delivered more than 1000 radio broadcasts, running about three minutes apiece, writing nearly all of them himself. A major archive of these recordings and other prepresidential material has now been opened by the Reagan Library and the Hoover Institution Archives, and the impact is breathtaking. Anyone who listens to these, except for the most dazed mind captivated by one anti-Reagan ide fixe or another, will find it virtually impossible to dismiss Reagan as a shallow thinker, captive of handlers and inattentive to detail. Instead, we encounter a man who is master of a wide array of public policy issues, his facts researched and at hand, his overall philosophy shaping his interpretation of those facts, and his orderly mind arranging them into powerful and lucid verbal deliveries to a vast audience. Most of the themes of his presidency are represented here: the Soviet Union, the failures of big government, and foreign policy particulars, as well as more personal commentary on marriage, religion, holidays, war, and death. Along the way we hear the voices of the editors, and also Nancy Reagan, Michael Deaver, Richard V. Allen, and various other Reagan-era notables as they introduce particular segments. On these tapes we find the Great Communicator in full flower at a crucial moment in his political history, and any audio library representative of the recent historical past should view these as a necessary purchase. Don Wismer, Cary Memorial Lib., Wayne, ME Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.



New interesting book: Democracy Governance and Growth or The Regional Multinationals

The American Supreme Court (The Chicago History of American Civilization Series)

Author: Robert G McCloskey

First published more than forty years ago, Robert G. McCloskey's classic work on the Supreme Court's role in constructing the U.S. Constitution has introduced generations of students to the workings of our nation's highest court. In this fourth edition, Sanford Levinson extends McCloskey's magisterial treatment to address the Court's most recent decisions, including its controversial ruling in Bush v. Gore and its expansion of sexual privacy in Lawrence v. Texas. The book's chronology of important Supreme Court decisions and itsannotated bibliographical essay have also been updated.
As in previous editions, McCloskey's original text remains unchanged. He argues that the Court's strength has always been its sensitivity to the changing political scene, as well as its reluctance to stray too far from the main currents of public sentiment. Levinson's two new chapters show how McCloskey's approach continues to illuminate recent developments, such as the Court's seeming return to its pre-1937 role as "umpire" of the federal system. It is in Bush v. Gore, however, where the implications of McCloskey's interpretation stand out most clearly.
The best and most concise account of the Supreme Court and its place in American politics, McCloskey's wonderfully readable book is an essential guide to its past, present, and future prospects of this institution.

Booknews

Provides a chronological overview of the history of the US Supreme Court and the Court's role within the American political system. This second edition of the classic which first appeared in 1960 contains two new chapters by Sanford Levinson, a student of McCloskey's, on the Court's role as protector of civil rights, and its present functions as monitor of the new American welfare state, and includes a new epilogue in addition to the original. Paper edition (unseen), $12.95. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)



Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Ark of the Liberties or Warmans Political Collectibles

Ark of the Liberties: America and the World

Author: Ted Widmer

THE UNITED STATES stands at a historis crossroads, essential to the world yet unapreciated. America's decline in popularity over the last eight years has been nothing short of astonishing. With wit, brilliance, and deep affection, Ted Widmer, a scholar and a former presidential speechwriter, reminds everyone why this great nation had so far to fall. In a sweeping history of centuries, Ark of the Liberties recounts America's ambition to be the world's guarantor of liberty. It is a success story that America, and the world, forgets at its peril.

From the Declarion of Indepence to the Gettysburg Address to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United States, for all its short comings, has been by far the world's greatest advocate for freedom. Generations of founders imbued America with a surprisingly global ambition that a series of remarkable presidents, often Democratic, advanced through the confident wielding of miltary and economic power. Ark of the Liberties brims with new insights about America's centuries- long favorable relationship with the Middle East; why Wilson's presidency deserves reappraisal; Bill Clinton's underappreciated achievements; and how America's long history of foreign policy immediately touches on the choices we face today. Fully addressing the diastrous occupation of Iraq, Ark of the Liberties colorfully narrates America's long and laudable history of expanding world liberty.

Publishers Weekly

From the colonial period through our current age, Widmer traces the legacy of American liberty with all its respect, contradictions and misapplications. His narrative explains the significance of the U.S.'s fall from international popularity in the last decade. Widmer's admiration for his country doesn't prevent him from recognizing its faults and, at times, the country's inability to hold true to the ark of liberty set forth in the national narrative. Widmer's writing is wonderfully nuanced, extrapolating large ideas and themes from the smallest of actions and symbols. William Hughes's narration doesn't do the book justice. His delivery lacks that subtlety, specificity and energy that Widmer's impressive and witty text needs. A Hill & Wang hardcover (reviewed online). (July)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

William D. Pederson - Library Journal

In this historical overview of U.S. foreign policy, Widmer (director, John Carter Brown Lib., Brown Univ.; Martin Van Buren) argues that the United States has more often been internationalist than isolationist. A former speechwriter for Bill Clinton, he elaborates on the rhetorical dimensions of his topic. FDR clearly emerges as his foreign policy hero for championing human rights and the end of colonialism during World War II, even as British prime minister Winston Churchill fixated on preserving the British Empire. Widmer also praises Woodrow Wilson's idealism abroad without commenting on his racism at home and Jimmy Carter's human rights record without acknowledging his limited political experience, which undermined his domestic and foreign policies. In failing to note the shortcomings in temperament of some of the Presidents, Widmer fails to explain why some become crusaders and others pragmatists. The lack of footnotes will limit scholars' use of the book, but its readability will appeal to a broader if partisan public. Recommended for libraries with patrons interested in foreign policy.

Kirkus Reviews

Diplomatic history of the United States, emphasizing its spiritual underpinnings as much as wars and treaties. Though Widmer (Martin Van Buren, 2004, etc.) does not ignore the traditional subjects within the field, his theological analysis takes him to places where other scholars don't always tread. The former Clinton speechwriter sees the country's longtime focus on spreading liberty throughout the world as a net positive, when done properly. He begins with a long examination of the nation's founding, spending considerable time on the nation's Puritan roots and showing how John Winthrop's idea of a "city upon a hill" has inspired politicians of both parties ever since. Widmer is harder on Republican presidents, especially Reagan and the Bushes, whom he argues didn't follow their lofty moralistic rhetoric with equally just policies. He describes the architects of the current administration's foreign policy as "wolves in Wilsonian clothing." One of the author's key points is that Woodrow Wilson was more than a sentimental idealist, and his foreign policy was underrated. "By giving voice to what had been airy aspirations, and mobilizing the world's peoples, and taking his plan far toward completion," he writes, "Wilson proved to be a realist indeed." Widmer covers many subjects at a brisk pace while synthesizing a vast array of primary and secondary sources. Occasionally the volume of information becomes overwhelming, but the author makes solid use of poetry and fiction to back up his arguments-the title comes from Herman Melville's 1850 novel White-Jacket, which uses the phrase "ark of the liberties" to describe America's role as a moral exemplar. An unusual and engaging tour of thehorizon of American diplomacy that should appeal to both scholarly and general audiences.



Look this: Whats Normal or Healing from within with CHI Nei Tsang

Warman's Political Collectibles: Identification and Price Guide

Author: Enoch L Nappen

Today, collecting campaign memorabilia is much more involved than election buttons; although buttons remain a top contender. Inside this thoroughly illustrated color price guide and identification reference, you will discover history about the tools used in political jostling of the past, including local, state and presidential races. Among the collectible items you'll find are: buttons, bumper stickers, posters, letters, magazines, invitations, coins, yard signs, flashers, medals, photos and more.



Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Shinsengumi or The Unfinished Journey

Shinsengumi: Shogun's Last Samurai Corps

Author: Romulus Hillsborough

The Tokugawa Shogunate, a group of military governors who ruled Japan until the late 1800s, stayed in power for more than two centuries. Their fall was one of the most important events in Asian history.

Also known as the Meiji Restoration, the shogun's ouster began as a reaction against the elite's willingness to "collaborate" with the West. The samurai took the shogun's position as a sign of weakness.

The samurai plotted to overthrow the shogun. Murder, assassination, and intimidation soon followed. By the end of 1862, hordes of renegade samurai had transformed the streets of Japan's capital streets into a sea of blood.

This vivid historical narrative captures one of the most enthralling and bloodied eras in Japanese history.



Books about: Ikes Spies or In Pursuit of Reason

The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II

Author: William H Chaf

This is a package of two of Oxford's most popular American history texts: An Unfinished Journey, a text on post-World War II America written by William H. Chafe, and A History of Our Time, edited by Chafe and Harvard Sitkoff, which is a collection of documents covering the same time period. Professors who elect to use both books will be able to purchase both together at a discounted price.



Monday, January 19, 2009

Community Policing and Problem Solving or Andrew Johnson

Community Policing and Problem Solving

Author: Kenneth J Peak

This fourth edition of Community Policing and Problem Solving: Strategies and Practices analyzes community-oriented policing and problem solving (COPPS) from an applied perspective. To do so—and continuing to distinguish this book from others—it showcases more than 50 exhibits (and provides dozens of additional case studies and examples) of problem solving in the field.

While providing updated information about crime in the United States, with particular emphasis placed on terrorism, new sections have also been added concerning rave parties, school bullying, street racing, burglar alarms, and 911 calls. Also newly addressed are adult- and problem-based learning. Chapter sections on such major problems as racial profiling and hate crimes have also been updated, and the chapter on the future has received a major revision.

COPPS is now in its third generation (as discussed in Chapter 1), enjoying widespread public acceptance and the attention of academicians who are publishing widely on the topic. While there is still some "devil's advocate" dialogue about COPPS (see Chapter 11), this fourth edition assumes that COPPS has "arrived" and applies this strategy to the real world with its thorough presentation of problems and solutions.



Table of Contents:

 1. The Evolution of Policing: Past Wisdom and Future Directions.


 2. A Nation in Flux: Changing People, Crime, and Policing.


 3. Attending to the “Customer”: Community Oriented Government.


 4. Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving: “COPPS.”


 5. Crime Prevention: For Safe Communities.


 6. Planning and Implementation: Translating Ideas Into Action.


 7. From Recruit to Chief: Changing the Agency Culture.


 8. Training for COPPS: Approaches and Challenges.


 9. Police in a Diverse Society.


10. New Strategies for Old Problems: COPPS on the Beat.


11. The “Devil's Advocate”: Addressing Concerns with COPPS.


12. Evaluating COPPS Initiatives.


13. Selected American Approaches.


14. In Foreign Venues: COPPS Abroad.


15. Looking Forward While Looking Back: The Future.


Appendix A: Award-winning Problem Solving Case Studies.


Appendix B: A Community Survey in Fort Collins, Colorado.


Appendix C: A Strategic Plan Survey in Portland, Oregon.


Index.

New interesting textbook: CCNP BSCI Portable Command Guide or Expert Oracle Database Architecture

Andrew Johnson, Vol. 17

Author: Don Nardo

Vice President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee was suddenly thrust into the presidency by the death of Abraham Lincoln. He was a Democrat, not a Republican like Lincoln and the majority of Congress. He was the only high-ranking Southerner in a government where only Northern states were represented. Soon he was at war with Congress. He hoped to readmit Southern states to the Union quickly, but Congress passed a harsher plan for military occupation of the South Refusing to compromise. Johnson vetoed bill after bill. Congress overrode his vetoes and restricted his power. When Johnson dismissed his secretary of war without Senate approval. Congress impeached him. After the frial, the Senate fell just one vote short of the required two-thirds majority to convict Johnson and remove him from office. He served out his term, but had lost the power and popular support to govern.



Surrender Is Not an Option or Kofi Annan

Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad

Author: John R Bolton

The Straight-Talking Former Ambassador Takes Listeners Behind the Scenes at the State Department and the U.N.

A veteran of three Republican administrations and a nominee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, John Bolton reveals how the U.S. can lead the way to a more realistic global security arrangement for the twenty-first century and identifies the next generation of threats to America.

With no-holds-barred candor, he recounts his appointment in 2005 as Ambassador to the United Nations, his headline-making Senate confirmation battle, and his sixteen-month tenure at the United Nations. Bolton offers keen insight into such international crises as North Korea's nuclear test, Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and much more. Recounting both his successes and frustrations he also exposes the operational inadequacies that hinder the U.N.'s effectiveness in international diplomacy and its bias against Israel and the United States. At home, he criticizes the pernicious bureaucratic inertia in the U.S. State Department that can undermine presidential policy.

A fascinating chronicle of the career of a distinguished lawyer and diplomat, Surrender Is Not An Option is sure to become a staple for everyone interested in international affairs.



Table of Contents:
Early Days     1
The Reagan Revolution and the Bush 41 Thermidor     18
Cutting Gulliver Loose: Protecting American Sovereignty in Good Deals and Bad     47
Following the Yellow Cake Road on North Korea     99
Leaving the Driving to the EU: Negotiations Uber Alles with Iran     130
Why Do I Want This Job?     165
Arriving at the UN: Fear and Loathing in New York     194
Sisyphus in the Twilight Zone: Fixing the Broken Institution, or Trying To     220
As Good as It Gets: The Security Council     246
Electing the New Secretary General: Ban Ki-moon Is Coming to Town     273
Security Council Successes on North Korea     291
Iran in the Security Council: The EU-3 Find New Ways to Give In     314
Darfur and the Weakness of UN Peacekeeping in Africa     341
Israel and Lebanon: Surrender as a Matter of High Principle at the UN     371
Recessional     413
Free at Last: Back to the Firing Line     429
Index     437

Go to: Venas Abiertas de América Latina:Cinco Siglos del Pillaje de un Continente

Kofi Annan: A Man of Peace in a World of War

Author: Stanley Meisler

"Absorbing."
Booklist

"Comprehensive and well written. . . . Anyone genuinely interested in the affairs of this all-important world body, ultimate guarantor of peace and stability, should definitely read it."
The Irish Times

"Stanley Meisler has made the U.N. story come alive as a flesh-and-blood drama of outsized egos clashing over high-stakes issues."
—Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief, Los Angeles Times

Rarely does a prominent world figure cooperate with a biographer who offers no say over the book's contents, no prepublication examination of the manuscript, and no guarantee that the final product will present its subject in a positive light. In Kofi Annan, former Los Angeles Times foreign and diplomatic correspondent Stanley Meisler traces Annan's unconventional rise from optimistic student to striving personnel and budget specialist in the United Nations bureaucracy to full-time manager of the world's crises.

Kofi Annan presents a unique portrait of this widely admired leader—with his own view of events tempered and augmented by those of his allies and opponents, defenders and detractors. It is a must-read for anyone interested in diplomacy, international affairs, war and peace, and the daunting task of saving the world from the ravages of war.



Sunday, January 18, 2009

Alexis de Tocqueville or War on Human Trafficking

Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide (Eminent Lives Series)

Author: Joseph Epstein

Alexis de Tocqueville was among the first foreigners to recognize and trumpet the grandness of the American project. His two-volume classic, Democracy in America, published in 1835, not only offered a vivid account of what was then a new nation but famously predicted what that nation would become. His startling prescience, as well as the endurance of his political ideas, has firmly established Tocqueville's place in American history; his chronicle of our infancy is a fixture on every American history syllabus. Nearly all of his clairvoyant predictions about American political life, from the influence of Evangelical Christianity to the advent of our "consumer society," have come true—and on the schedule he set.

Yet in his own time, Tocqueville had little evidence for the truth of his ideas. Introspective, sickly, prone to self-doubt, he was an unlikely visionary. Joseph Epstein, America's most versatile essayist, proves an ideal guide to his predecessor. In wry, elegant prose, he engages Tocqueville's intellectual contributions, illuminates the development of his thought, and provides a referendum on his various prophecies. (His record was far from perfect—he thought the federal government would wither away as the states rose in power.) Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy's Guide is an altogether human portrait of the Frenchman who would become an American icon.

The New York Times - Christopher Caldwell

"Joseph Epstein's brief Alexis de Tocqueville ... is a brisk and admirably accessible account of how Tocqueville gave a name to certain misgivings about democracy that are with us still."

Publishers Weekly

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), whose Democracy in America is more quoted than read, is the subject of the latest installment in the excellent Eminent Lives series. Tocqueville is fortunate enough to have Epstein (Snobbery: The American Version), another man of letters lighting the way. Epstein provides a penetrating examination of the man, his works, his influence, his times and what we can learn from Democracy in America. Epstein performs sterling service in marshaling the vast amount of material available on this enigmatic 19th-century Frenchman, and gives readers a clear understanding of the immense complexities involved: Tocqueville is much more than a source of useful epigrams and half-remembered misquotes. Was he a conservative, a liberal, a Christian, an agnostic, a historian, a sociologist, a reactionary aristocrat or a radical bourgeois? The answer, Epstein concludes, was that he was all and none; each era has its own understanding of the man, refracted through the particular concerns of the time, lending Tocqueville an aura of timelessness. His exquisite literary sensibility also helps to keep him fresh for each new generation. As an introduction to the man and a primer for his works, Epstein's book is admirable. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Essayist Epstein (Friendship, 2006, etc.) presents his take on America's most quoted, least vexing Frenchman in this latest addition to the Eminent Lives series. In 1831, 26-year-old Count Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Tocqueville, aristocratic in blood and mien, sailed to the new United States on a voyage of discovery. In less than a year, Tocqueville and his friend Beaumont traveled from Niagara to Nashville, Boston to Pittsburgh, studying America's penal system. The visitors met an emergent middle class, venal politicians, doomed Native Americans, the humble and the eminent. They saw a central government and a federation of states joined in a new form of government. What Tocqueville discovered was equality. Back home, not yet 30, he embarked on his masterwork, Democracy in America. The two-volume work, published in 1835 and 1840, was a sociological prototype and a triumph of political thought. Epstein provides samples of its frequently prescient analysis. A democratic people, Tocqueville noted, would always find two things difficult: "to start a war and to finish it." Were despotism to gain a foothold in democratic nations, he remarked, "it would be more extensive and more mild, and it would degrade men without tormenting them." Expressed in lucid, remarkably nimble prose, his political philosophy has been accessed by liberals and conservatives, democrats and gentry. As Epstein reminds us, Tocqueville's causes were always liberty and human dignity. Though he served as a deputy in the government of Louis-Philippe, he witnessed and reported with measured sympathy on the upheavals of 1848. The Old Regime was published in three years before his death in 1859, but he never completed hisassessment of the French Revolution or Napoleon. A cogent and satisfying primer on the mind of the perspicacious Gallic theorist who discerned a new form of government in America. Agent: Georges Borchardt/Georges Borchardt Inc.



Interesting book: Busy Peoples Super Simple 30 Minute Menus or Toasts for All Occasions

War on Human Trafficking: U. S. Policy Assessed

Author: Anthony M DeStefano

The United States has taken the lead in efforts to end international human trafficking-the movement of peoples from one country to another, usually involving fraud, for the purpose of exploiting their labor. Examples that have captured the headlines include the 300 Chinese immigrants that were smuggled to the United States on the ship Golden Venture and the young Mexican women smuggled by the Cadena family to Florida where they were forced into prostitution and confined in trailers.

The public's understanding of human trafficking is comprised of terrible stories like these, which the media covers in dramatic, but usually short-lived bursts. The more complicated, long-term story of how policy on trafficking has evolved has been largely ignored. In The War on Human Trafficking, Anthony M. DeStefano covers a decade of reporting on the policy battles that have surrounded efforts to abolish such practices, helping readers to understand the forced labor of immigrants as a major global human rights story.

DeStefano details the events leading up to the creation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the federal law that first addressed the phenomenon of trafficking in persons. He assesses the effectiveness of the 2000 law and its progeny, showing the difficulties encountered by federal prosecutors in building criminal cases against traffickers. The book also describes the tensions created as the Bush Administration tried to use the trafficking laws to attack prostitution and shows how the American response to these criminal activities was impacted by the events of September 11th and the War in Iraq.

Parsing politics from practice, this important book gets beyondsensational stories of sexual servitude to show that human trafficking has a much broader scope and is inextricable from the powerful economic conditions that impel immigrants to put themselves at risk.



Political Liberalism or Empire

Political Liberalism (Columbia Classics in Philosophy Series)

Author: John Rawls

This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in A Theory of Justice but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines -- religious, philosophical, and moral -- coexist within the framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines?

This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls' plans to revise Political Liberalism, which were cut short by his death.

"An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on A Theory of Justice...a decisive turn towards political philosophy."

-- Times Literary Supplement

Times Literary Supplement

An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on A Theory of Justice. . . . a decisive turn towards political philosophy, as opposed to normative philosophizing on public affairs.

Library Journal

This expanded edition of Rawls's 1993 text includes a new essay, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited, completed before his death. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Booknews

Rawls (philosophy, Harvard) presents eight lectures on the basic elements of political liberalism, its three main ideas, and the institutional framework, continuing and revising the idea of justice as fairness as presented in his earlier work, A Theory of Justice (1971). He redefines a well-ordered society, no longer seeing it as united in its basic moral beliefs, but in its political conception of justice. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)



Table of Contents:
Pt. 1Political liberalism : basic elements1
Lecture IFundamental ideas3
Lecture IIThe powers of citizens and their representation47
Lecture IIIPolitical constructivism89
Pt. 2Political liberalism : three main ideas131
Lecture IVThe idea of an overlapping consensus133
Lecture VPriority of right and ideas of the good173
Lecture VIThe idea of public reason212
Pt. 3Institutional framework255
Lecture VIIThe basic structure as subject257
Lecture VIIIThe basic liberties and their priority289
Lecture IXReply to Habermas372
Pt. 4The idea of public reason revisited435
Introduction to "The idea of public reason revisited"437
The idea of public reason revisited (1997)440

Look this: Jesus the Village Psychiatrist or There Are No Secrets

Empire

Author: Michael Hardt

Imperialism as we knew it may be no more, but Empire is alive and well. It is, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri demonstrate in this bold work, the new political order of globalization. It is easy to recognize the contemporary economic, cultural, and legal transformations taking place across the globe but difficult to understand them. Hardt and Negri contend that they should be seen in line with our historical understanding of Empire as a universal order that accepts no boundaries or limits. Their book shows how this emerging Empire is fundamentally different from the imperialism of European dominance and capitalist expansion in previous eras. Rather, today's Empire draws on elements of U.S. constitutionalism, with its tradition of hybrid identities and expanding frontiers.

Empire identifies a radical shift in concepts that form the philosophical basis of modern politics, concepts such as sovereignty, nation, and people. Hardt and Negri link this philosophical transformation to cultural and economic changes in postmodern society-to new forms of racism, new conceptions of identity and difference, new networks of communication and control, and new paths of migration. They also show how the power of transnational corporations and the increasing predominance of postindustrial forms of labor and production help to define the new imperial global order.

More than analysis, Empire is also an unabashedly utopian work of political philosophy, a new Communist Manifesto. Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterize today's world order, it seeks an alternative political paradigm-the basis for a truly democratic global society. Michael Hardt is Assistant Professor in the Literature Program at Duke University. Antonio Negri is an independent researcher and writer and an inmate at Rebibbia Prison, Rome. He has been a Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Paris and a Professor of Political Science at the University of Padua.

The Nation - Stanley Aronowitz

Empire...is a bold move away from established doctrine.

Time - Michael Elliott

Globalization's positive side is, intriguingly, a message of a hot new book.

The Observer [UK] - Ed Vulliamy

How often [is a] book...swept off the shelves until you can't find [copies] in N.Y. for love nor money?

New York Times - Emily Eakin

[This] book is full of...bravura passages...[F]or the moment, Empire is filling a void in the humanities.

Sunday Times [UK]

Empire presents a philosophical vision that some have greeted as the 'next big thing' in the field of the humanities.

Stanley Aronowitz

...a bold move away from established doctrine. Hardt and Negri's insistence that there really is a new world is promulgated with energy and conviction. Especially striking is their renunciation of the tendency of many writers on globalization to focus exclusively on the top, leaving the impression that what happens down below, to ordinary people, follows automatically from what the great powers do.Nation

Sueddeutsche Zeitung - Slavoj Zizek

Today, in the midst of a difficult revolution of the forces of production, one attempts to revive the old ignominious and half-forgotten Marxist dialectic of forces of production and relations of production. How does the digitalization and the globalization of our lives influence not only the conditions of production in the narrow sense, but also our social existence, our customs and our (ideological) experience of social interaction? Marx readily paralleled revolutionary changes in production processes with a political revolution. His leitmotif was that the steam engine and other technical innovations of the 18th Century contributed considerably more to the revolution of the social quality of life than spectacular political events. Considering the unimaginable changes in production that are being accompanied by a sort of lethargy in today's political realm, isn't this guiding idea more relevant then ever? Because we are located in the midst of a radical transformation of society, of which we cannot clearly recognize the final consequences, many radical thinkers despair at the impossibility of taking adequate political measures.

Furthermore, the concepts that we use to describe the new constellation of forces of production and relations of production (post-industrial society, information society) continue to lack the form of true concepts. They remain theoretical emergency solutions: Instead of enabling us to reflect on historical reality (which these concepts create), they actually relieve us of our duty to think, even prevent us from thinking. The standard answer of postmodern trendsetters from Alvin Toffler to Jean Baudrillard is that we cannot think in this "new" way because we are stuck in the old industrial "paradigm." One would like to state against this commonplace that exactly the opposite is true: don't these attempts to overcome or to efface the concept of material production, in which one classifies the current transformation as a transition from production to information, in the end allow one to avoid the difficulty of reflecting on how this transformation itself is connected to the structure of collective production? In other words, isn't it actually the task at hand to, wherever possible, introduce the new developments into the concept of collective material production?

This is exactly what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri try to do in their new book Empire (Harvard University Press, Cambridge)--a book that attempts to write the communist manifesto anew for the 21st Century. Hardt and Negri describe globalization as an ambiguous "deterritorialization": victorious global capitalism penetrates into every pore of our social lives, into the most intimate of spheres, and installs a never-present dynamic, which no longer is based on patriarchal or other hierarchic structures of dominance. Instead, it creates a flowing, hybrid identity. On the other hand, this fundamental corrosion of all important social connections lets the genie out of the bottle: it sets in motion potential centrifugal forces that the capitalist system is no longer able to fully control. It is exactly because of the global triumph of the capitalist system that that system is today more vulnerable than ever. The old formula of Marx is still valid: Capitalism digs its own grave. Hardt and Negri describe this process as the transition from the nation-state to global empire, a transnational space which is comparable to Rome, where hybrid masses of scattered identities develop.

These postmodern politics concentrate on "cultural wars" and fight for their own recognition: their foundation is sexual, ethnic and religious tolerance--they preach the multicultural gospel. When one reads these authors work, it is often difficult to ward off the impression that we would exploit Turks and other immigrants because we are unable to tolerate their "otherness." Cultural and sexual intolerance serves as the key for economic tensions, not vice versa as it used to be explained in the good old days of orthodox Marxism. Thus, Hardt and Negri deserve much praise, since they enlighten us about the contradictory nature of today's turbocapitalism and attempt to identify the dynamic of the progressive powers at work. Their heroic attempt sets itself against the standard view of the left, who are struggling to limit the destructive powers of globalization and to rescue what there remains to rescue of the welfare state. This standard left wing view is imbued with a, perhaps too deeply, conservative mistrust of the dynamics of globalization and digitalization, which is quite contrary to the Marxist belief in the powers of progress.

Nevertheless, one immediately gets a foretaste, as a result of the authors' style, of the boundaries of Hardt and Negri's analysis. In their socio-economic analysis there is simply a lack of concrete, precise insight which is concealed in the Deleuzean jargon of multiplicity, deterritorialization, etc. It is no wonder that the three "practical" suggestions with which this book ends seem anticlimactic. The authors propose the political struggle for three global rights: The right to global citizenship, the right to social income, and the re-appropriation of the new means of production" (i.e. the access to and control of education, information, and communication). It is paradoxical that Hardt and Negri, the poets of mobility, multiplicity, hybridization, etc. call for three demands that are phrased in the current terminology of universal "human rights."

The problem with these demands is that they fluctuate between formal emptiness and impossible radicalization. Let's take the right to global citizenship: with that, one can in principle only agree-nevertheless, if this demand were meant to be taken more seriously than a celebratory formal declaration in typical UN style, then it would mean the total "destruction" of the carrying out of global laws and even the abolition of state borders. Under the present conditions, such steps would trigger an invasion of the USA and western Europe by cheap labor from India, China and Africa, which would result in a people's revolt against immigrants with figures like Haider appearing as their example for multicultural tolerance. The same is true with regards to the other two demands: for instance, the universal right to social income--naturally, why not? But how should one create the necessary socio-economic conditions for such a transformation?

This critique is not only aimed at secondary empirical details. The main problem with "Empire", is that the book falls short in its fundamental analysis of how (if at all) the present global socio-economic process will create the needed space for such radical measures like the ones that Marx tried to develop in his explanation of how the proletarian revolution would eliminate the basic antagonism of the capitalist means of production. In this respect, Empire remains a pre-Marxist book.

Bad Subjects - Aaron Shuman

[T]he real value of Empire, besides its restoration of people power to the center of Marxist historiography, lies in the intellectual credence and weight it gives the forms of political organizing and protest emerging now. When they hit you with Victorian novels like Das Kapital, you hit them with Empire.

What People Are Saying

Leslie Marmon Silko
By way of Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Marx, the Vietnam War, and even Bill Gates, Empire offers an irresistible, iconoclastic analysis of the 'globalized' world. Revolutionary, even visionary, Empire identifies the imminent new power of the multitude to free themselves from capitalist bondage.
— (Leslie Marmon Silko, author of Almanac of the Dead)


Stanley Aronowitz
Michael Hardt and Tony Negri have given us an original, suggestive and provocative assessment of the international economic and political moment we have entered. Abandoning many of the propositions of conventional marxism such as imperialism, the centrality of the national contexts of social struggle and a cardboard notion of the working class, the authors nonetheless show the salience of the marxist framework as a tool of explanation. This book is bound to stimulate a new debate about globalization and the possibilities for social transformation in the 21st century.
— (Stanley Aronowitz, author of False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness)


Saskia Sassen
An extraordinary book, with enormous intellectual depth and a keen sense of the history-making transformation that is beginning to take shape--a new system of rule Hardt and Negri name Empire imperialism.
— (Saskia Sassen, author of Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization)


Slavoj Zizek
After reading Empire, one cannot escape the impression that if this book were not written, it would have to be invented. What Hardt and Negri offer is nothing less than a rewriting of The Communist Manifesto for our time: Empire conclusively demonstrates how global capitalism generates antagonisms that will finally explode its form. This book rings the death-bell not only for the complacent liberal advocates of the 'end of history,' but also for pseudo-radical Cultural Studies which avoid the full confrontation with today's capitalism.
— (Slavoj Zizek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology)


Etienne Balibar
The new book by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire, is an amazing tour de force. Written with communicative enthusiasm, extensive historical knowledge, systematic organization, it basically combines a kojevian notion of global market as post-history (in this sense akin to Fukuyama's eschatology) with a foucauldian and deleuzian notion of bio-politics (in this sense crossing the road of a Sloterdijk who also poses the question of a coming techniques of the production of the human species). But it clearly outbids its rivals in philosophical skill. And, above all, it reverses their grim prospects of political stagnation or the return to zoology. By identifying the new advances of technology and the division of labor that underlies the globalization of the market and the corresponding de-centered structure of sovereignty with a deep tructure of power located within the multitude's intellectual and affective corporeity, it seeks to identify the indestructible sources of resistance and constitution that frame our future. It claims to lay the foundations for a teleology of class struggles and militancy even more substantially "communist" than the classical Marxist one. This will no doubt trigger a lasting and passionate discussion among philosophers, political scientists and socialists. Whatever their conclusions, the benefits will be enormous for intelligence.
— (Etienne Balibar, author of Spinoza and Politics)


Lawrence Grossberg
Empire is a stunningly original attempt to come to grips with the cultural, political, and economic transformations of the contemporary world. While refusing to ignore history, Hardt and Negri question the adequacy of existing theoretical categories, and offer new concepts for approaching the practices and regimes of power of the emergent world order. Whether one agrees with it or not, it is an all too rare effort to engage with the most basic and pressing questions facing political intellectuals today.
— (Lawrence Grossberg, author of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture)


Dipesh Chakrabarty
Empire is one of the most brilliant, erudite, and yet incisively political interpretations available to date of the phenomenon called 'globalization.' Engaging critically with postcolonial and postmodern theories, and mindful throughout of the plural histories of modernity and capitalism, Hardt and Negri rework Marxism to develop a vision of politics that is both original and timely. This very impressive book will be debated and discussed for a long time.
— (Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of Provincializing Europe




Saturday, January 17, 2009

Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City or How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life

Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer

Author: Wendell E Pritchett

From his role as FDR’s “negro advisor” to his appointment, under Lyndon Johnson, as the first secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Robert Clifton Weaver was one of the most influential domestic policy makers and civil rights advocates of the twentieth century. This volume, the first biography of the first African American to hold a cabinet position in the federal government, rescues from obscurity the story of a man whose legacy continues to impact American race relations and the cities in which they largely play out. Tracing Weaver’s career through the creation, expansion, and contraction of New Deal liberalism, Wendell Pritchett illuminates his instrumental role in the birth of almost every urban initiative of the period, from public housing and urban renewal to affirmative action and rent control. Beyond these policy achievements, Weaver also founded racial liberalism, a new approach to race relations that propelled him through a series of high-level positions in public and private agencies working to promote racial cooperation in American cities. But Pritchett shows that despite Weaver’s efforts to make race irrelevant, white and black Americans continued to call on him to mediate between the races—a position that grew increasingly untenable as Weaver remained caught between the white power structure to which he pledged his allegiance and the African Americans whose lives he devoted his career to improving.        A crucial and largely unknown chapter in the history of American liberalism, this long-overdue biography adds a new dimension to our understanding of racial and urban struggles, as well as thecomplex role of the black elite in modern U.S. history.  

Publishers Weekly

Weaver (1907-1997), the first black cabinet secretary (Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1966-1968) has become "a marginal figure in our public discussion today," but "for almost half of the century," Pritchett asserts, Weaver "shaped the development of American racial and urban policy." Pritchett follows Weaver from the Roosevelt to the Johnson administrations, guiding the reader safely through the mine field of acronymic government agencies, various foundations and academic institutions (he was the first president of Baruch College) in which Weaver played a role. Weaver's targets were racially restrictive covenants and the entrenchment of segregation in both public housing policy and government supported loans; compromises involving the latter made him a controversial figure as the civil rights movement burgeoned. Pritchett's biography is an exhaustive but well-paced account of a life more absorbed by political process and research than by social or political drama. Yet, as Pritchett shows, Weaver "was instrumental in the implementation of every major urban initiative, including public housing, urban renewal, affirmative action, rent control, and fair housing." (Oct.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.



Table of Contents:

Introduction 1

1 Preparing the Talented Tenth: The Weaver Family and the Black Elite 8

2 Fighting for a Better Deal 31

3 A Liberal Experiment: Race and Housing in the New Deal 53

4 Creating a New Order: Black Politics in the New Deal Era 66

5 World War II and Black Labor 88

6 Chicago and the Science of Race Relations 116

7 Searching for a Place to Call Home 135

8 New York City and the Institutions of Liberal Reform 151

9 The First Cabinet Job 171

10 The Path to Power 193

11 The Kennedy Years: A Reluctant New Frontier 211

12 Fighting for Civil Rights from the Inside 233

13 The Great Society and the City 246

14 HUD, Robert Weaver, and the Ambiguities of Race 262

15 Power and Its Limitations 279

16 The Great Society, High and Low 301

17 An Elder Statesman in a Period of Turmoil 325

Abbreviations Used in Notes 353

Figure Credits 419

Index 421

Illustrations follow page 210

New interesting textbook: Hes Not Autistic but or Food Allergy

How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life

Author: Peter Robinson

As a young speechwriter in the Reagan White House, Peter Robinson was responsible for the celebrated "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech. He was also one of a core group of writers who became informal experts on Reagan -- watching his every move, absorbing not just his political positions, but his personality, manner, and the way he carried himself. In How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, Robinson draws on journal entries from his days at the White House, as well as interviews with those who knew the president best, to reveal ten life lessons he learned from the fortieth president -- a great yet ordinary man who touched the individuals around him as surely as he did his millions of admirers around the world.

Publishers Weekly

Conservatives, exult! Robinson's self-help/memoir/Reagan hagiography is an All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten for right-wingers. The former White House speechwriter and author of It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP and Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA illuminates 10 life lessons in a love letter to the Gipper ("How," Robinson asks, "did such a nice guy get to be President?"). By looking at both the historical (supply-side economics, the Cold War, Iran-contra) and the personal (Reagan's beliefs, his relationship with his family), Robinson unearths maxims such as "Do your work" and "Say your prayers." The stories are engaging, and he tosses in dashes of philosophy, such as the nature of good and evil, based on Reagan's ideas. The writing style, though, is repetitive, and occasionally Robinson makes leaps in his assumptions of Reagan's motivations; none of this, however, dilutes the message. Each lesson is related to Robinson's own life either in contrast or to show how he's made Reagan's lessons "scalable" for his own use. Interviews with and stories about many of the major players of the Reagan administration, like Ed Meese and Colin Powell, lend an insider's feel. Behind-the-scenes details, such as how the famous "Tear Down the Wall" speech was composed, give a fresh perspective. And while Robinson's respect for the former president verges on deification, especially as he glosses over Reagan's shortcomings ("Now, I myself was never able to get worked up over the deficits," Robinson says), this book provides solid, if somewhat obvious, lessons that will appeal to the legions of Reagan fans. (Aug. 5) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Robinson (It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP) began as a speechwriter for the Regan administration in 1982, when he was an impressionable 25 year old just home from Oxford. He relies on journal entries from those years to summarize his observations of the President's character, work style, interpersonal relations, and personal commitment to marriage and to show how he was influenced by the President. The book is anecdotally rich and enhanced by interviews with family members and Reagan administration figures. Robinson wrote the famous "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" speech, and his description of the speech's evolution is fascinating and entertaining. The author admires Reagan and makes no effort to discredit him or his administration, but he admits that a few events, such as the Iran-Contra scandal, tarnished the nearly perfect polish on Reagan's White House. Peggy Noonan's When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan is a more comprehensive memoir and tribute to Reagan's influence and character, but readers who admire the former President will find Robinson's book inspiring. For larger public libraries.-Jill Ortner, SUNY at Buffalo Libs. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.



The Sorrows of Empire or One World

The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

Author: Chalmers Johnson

"Impressive . . . a powerful indictment of U.S. military and foreign policy."


-Los Angeles Times Book Review, front page


In the years after the Soviet Union imploded, the United States was described first as the globe's "lone superpower," then as a "reluctant sheriff," next as the "indispensable nation," and in the wake of 9/11, as a "New Rome." In this important national bestseller, Chalmers Johnson thoroughly explores the new militarism that is transforming America and compelling us to pick up the burden of empire.

Recalling the classic warnings against militarism-from George Washington's Farewell Address to Dwight Eisenhower's denunciation of the military-industrial complex-Johnson uncovers its roots deep in our past. Turning to the present, he maps America's expanding empire of military bases and the vast web of services that support them. He offers a vivid look at the new caste of professional militarists who have infiltrated multiple branches of government, who classify as "secret" everything they do, and for whom the manipulation of the military budget is of vital interest.

Among Johnson's provocative conclusions is that American militarism is already putting an end to the age of globalization and bankrupting the United States, even as it creates the conditions for a new century of virulent blowback. The Sorrows of Empire suggests that the former American republic has already crossed its Rubicon-with the Pentagon in the lead.

The New York Times

This book is a cry from the heart of an intelligent person who fears the basic values of our republic are in danger. It conveys a sense of impending doom rooted in a belief that the United States has entered a perpetual state of war that will drain our economy and destroy our constitutional freedoms. — Ronald D. Asmus

The Washington Post

The role of the prophet is an honorable one. When a nation falls into sinful ways, angry words and dire prognostications may be necessary to reawaken the people to the truth. In Chalmers Johnson the American empire has found its Jeremiah. He deserves to be heard; but the proper response to his gloomy message is not despair, but thought followed by action. — Andrew J. Bacevich

Kirkus Reviews

A Ciceronian indictment of our nation's transformation from lone superpower to imperial bully. "Like other empires of the past century," writes Japan Research Policy Institute president Johnson (Blowback, 2000, etc.), "the United States has chosen to live not prudently, in peace and prosperity, but as a massive military power athwart an angry, resistant globe." In the absence of rivals such as the Soviet Union and with the ascendance of an administration driven by crony capitalism, which spells an end to the cherished ideals of free enterprise and the leveling influence of the free market, the American state has become an analogue to ancient Rome. It employs, Chalmers writes, "well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations," extending Fortress America's reach to every corner of the globe and, not coincidentally, enriching civilian enterprises that have been favored by insider trading within the Pentagon and State Department (think Halliburton) with fabulously lucrative contracts. Indeed, writes Johnson, there are something like 725 American bases abroad-probably many more, for that number is only what the Department of Defense acknowledges-with more added as client states in Central Asia and Eastern Europe join the American fold. What does this all mean? Perhaps a permanent military dictatorship one day, to extend the Roman model even farther. Certainly increased alienation between the US and the rest of the world, which is unlikely to shed tears when future iterations of 9/11 occur. What can be done? "There is one development that could conceivably stop this process of overreaching: the people could retake control ofthe Congress, reform it along with the corrupted elections laws that have made it into a forum for special interests, turn it into a genuine assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the secret intelligence agencies." Fat chance. And so, Johnson concludes this deeply unsettling essay, "the United States is probably lost to militarism." Agent: Sandra Dijkstra/Sandra Dijkstra Agency



Interesting textbook: Das Auspressen der Orange: Wie man Kreativität in einen Starken Geschäftsvorteil verwandelt

One World (Terry Lectures Series): The Ethics of Globalization

Author: Peter Singer

One of the world's most influential philosophers here considers the ethical issues surrounding globalization, showing how a global ethic rather than a nationalistic approach can provide illuminating answers to important problems. In a new preface, Peter Singer discusses how the recent Iraq war and its aftermath have changed the prospects for the ethical approach he advocates.Q: What was your original idea for the book? A: When people talk about globalization, they usually mean the lowering of barriers to free trade and the flow of investment. And they usually don't see these as ethical questions. I wanted to bring together several different issues that are also part of living in a more globalized world and show that they are, at their core, ethical questions. So as well as trade issues, I cover climate change, intervention across national borders to protect human rights, and aid from rich nations to poor ones. Q: Have world events in the past three years further shaped that idea and your arguments? A: Definitely. The attacks on 9/11 showed that even the mightiest power the world has never known is vulnerable to being attacked. But more significantly, the crisis over Iraq posed a choice between taking the path of international cooperation, and that of unilateral action. It was also a choice between the rule of law and the rule of force. Unfortunately, the United States made the wrong choice. Q: What do you hope the book will accomplish? A: I hope it will contribute to people seeing these questions as ethical issues and to looking at ethics from a more global-and therefore less national-perspective.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

SINGER: ...[V]aluable reading for anyone interested in seeing whether globalization can be made to work for the benefit of many.

Foreign Affairs

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, what are the obligations of nation-states to people? Famed bioethicist Singer argues that the dangers and inequalities generated by globalization demand that we rethink the privileged rights of state sovereignty and devise new ethical principles of international conduct. In his view, the search for widely acceptable principles of global fairness is not simply an intellectual exercise but an imperative that even rich and powerful countries ignore at their peril; we cannot address the vulnerabilities that globalization creates without a shared belief around the world that the system is legitimate and just. Singer then looks for practical ethical principles in the thorny areas of global warming, trade, humanitarian intervention, and foreign aid. His willingness to delve into the prosaic details of agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and the World Trade Organization is one of the book's biggest strengths. In the end, he acknowledges that he does not know whether economic globalization has ultimately helped the world's poor. But he argues that the forces of integration require that we introduce more accountability in the ways that global decisions are made -- and look for a common understanding of fairness and justice.



Table of Contents:
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface
1A Changing World1
2One Atmosphere14
3One Economy51
4One Law106
5One Community150
6A Better World?196
Notes203
Index227