The Many Faces of Political Islam or Foxbats Over Dimona

The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World

Author: Mohammed Ayoob

Analysts and pundits from across the American political spectrum describe Islamic fundamentalism as one of the greatest threats to modern, Western-style democracy. Yet very few non-Muslims would be able to venture an accurate definition of political Islam. Mohammed Ayoob's The Many Faces of Political Islam thoroughly describes the myriad manifestations of this rising ideology and analyzes its impact on global relations.
 
"In this beautifully crafted and utterly compelling book, Mohammed Ayoob accomplishes admirably the difficult task of offering a readily accessible yet nuanced and comprehensive analysis of an issue of enormous political importance. Both students and specialists will learn a great deal from this absolutely first-rate book."
---Peter J. Katzenstein, Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Teaching Fellow, Cornell University
 
"Dr. Ayoob addresses the nuances and complexities of political Islam---be it mainstream, radical, or militant---and offers a road map of the pivotal players and issues that define the movement. There is no one as qualified as Mohammed Ayoob to write a synthesis of various manifestations of political Islam. His complex narrative highlights the changes and shifts that have taken place within the Islamist universe and their implications for internal Muslim politics and relations between the world of Islam and the Christian world."
---Fawaz A. Gerges, Carnegie Scholar, and holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies, Sarah Lawrence College
 
"Let's hope that many readers---not only academics butpolicymakers as well---will use this invaluable book."
---François Burgat, Director, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Institute for Research and Study on the Arab and Muslim World (IREMAM), Aix-en-Provence, France
 
"This is a wonderful, concise book by an accomplished and sophisticated political scientist who nonetheless manages to convey his interpretation of complex issues and movements to even those who have little background on the subject. It is impressive in its clarity, providing a badly needed text on political Islam that's accessible to college students and the general public alike."
---Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland, and Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
 
Mohammed Ayoob is University Distinguished Professor of International Relations with a joint appointment in James Madison College and the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. He is also Coordinator of the Muslim Studies Program at Michigan State University.

Interesting book: Southern Cooking to Remember or Innocent Smoothie Recipe Book

Foxbats Over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War

Author: Isabella Ginor

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez’s groundbreaking history of the Six-Day War in 1967 radically changes our understanding of that conflict, casting it as a crucial arena of Cold War intrigue that has shaped the Middle East to this day. The authors, award-winning Israeli journalists and historians, have investigated newly available documents and testimonies from the former Soviet Union, cross-checked them against Israeli and Western sources, and arrived at fresh and startling conclusions.

Contrary to previous interpretations, Ginor and Remez’s book shows that the Six-Day War was the result of a joint Soviet-Arab gambit to provoke Israel into a preemptive attack. The authors reveal how the Soviets received a secret Israeli message indicating that Israel, despite its official ambiguity, was about to acquire nuclear weapons. Determined to destroy Israel’s nuclear program before it could produce an atomic bomb, the Soviets then began preparing for war--well before Moscow accused Israel of offensive intent, the overt trigger of the crisis.

Ginor and Remez’s startling account details how the Soviet-Arab onslaught was to be unleashed once Israel had been drawn into action and was branded as the aggressor. The Soviets had submarine-based nuclear missiles poised for use against Israel in case it already possessed and tried to use an atomic device, and the USSR prepared and actually began a marine landing on Israel’s shores backed by strategic bombers and fighter squadrons. They sent their most advanced, still-secret aircraft, the MiG-25 Foxbat, on provocative sorties over Israel’s Dimona nuclear complex to prepare the planned attack on it, and to scareIsrael into making the first strike. It was only the unpredicted devastation of Israel’s response that narrowly thwarted the Soviet design.

 

Foreign Affairs

The revisionist label is too often used to describe a reinterpretation of past events from an unorthodox political perspective. Here is a book that is truly revisionist, challenging what we thought we knew about the origins and conduct of the Six-Day War, Israel's crushing victory over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria 40 years ago. The exact role played by the Soviet Union has always been murky. The authors work their way through the murk, meticulously using every snippet of relevant information from an extraordinary range of sources, most effectively Soviet military personnel who can recall what they were up to in 1967. Where there are gaps, they make a careful case for conjecture and inference. They demonstrate how anxiety about Israel's imminent nuclear capability and an unwarranted confidence in Arab military strength led Moscow to develop a plot to provoke the Israelis into striking first before being overwhelmed by a devastating riposte, in which Soviet forces would participate. The plan never recovered from the quality of Israel's first strike, although bits of it were implemented as Israel appeared to be marching on Damascus. By its nature, this is an impossible case to prove, but Ginor and Remez have succeeded to the point where the onus is now on others to show why they are wrong.<

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     ix
Maps     xii
Historiography as Investigative Journalism     1
Threat or Bluster     10
Antecedents and Motivations     15
The Nuclear Context     28
The Spymaster and the Communist: A Disclosure in December 1965     36
A Nuclear Umbrella for Egypt     49
Converging Timelines: Syrian Coup and Party Congress     58
The "Conqueror" and "Victor" Plans: Soviet Signatures     68
The Naval and Aerial Buildup     78
Mid-May: Disinformation or Directive?     88
Escalation and Denial: 14-26 May     104
The Badran Talks: Restraining an Ally     113
Foxbats over Dimona     121
Poised for a Desant: 5 June     138
Un-Finnished Business: Preemptive Diplomacy     153
Debates, Delays, and Ditherings: 6-8 June     164
The Liberty Incident: Soviet Fingerprints     180
Offense Becomes Deterrence: 10 June     191
Aftermath     207
Notes     219
Works Cited     265
Index     275

Blinded by the Right or The Separation of Church and State

Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative

Author: David Brock

In a powerful and deeply personal memoir in the tradition of Arthur Koestler's The God That Failed, David Brock, the original right-wing scandal reporter, chronicles his rise to the pinnacle of the conservative movement and his painful break with it.

David Brock pilloried Anita Hill in a bestseller. His reporting in The American Spectator as part of the infamous "Arkansas Project" triggered the course of events that led to the historic impeachment trial of President Clinton. Brock was at the center of the right-wing dirty tricks operation of the Gingrich era—and a true believer—until he could no longer deny that the political force he was advancing was built on little more than lies, hate, and hypocrisy.

In Blinded By the Right, Brock, who came out of the closet at the height of his conservative renown, tells his riveting story from the beginning, giving us the first insider's view of what Hillary Rodham Clinton called "the vast right-wing conspiracy." Whether dealing with the right-wing press, the richly endowed think tanks, Republican political operatives, or the Paula Jones case, Brock names names from Clarence Thomas on down, uncovers hidden links, and demonstrates how the Republican Right's zeal for power created the poisonous political climate that culminated in George W. Bush's election.

Already making national headlines, David Brock writes with stunning candor about a fascinating but deeply disturbing period of American politics. Blinded By the Right is a classic political memoir of our times.

Los Angeles Times - Todd Gitlin

Anyone wishing to understand America in the 1990s will have to read his book.

Tribune Media Services - Bill Press

If you're looking for proof of corruption and immoral behavior among the nation's most famous conservatives -- read this book.

If you want to learn all about organized crime -- for God's sake, read this book.

David Brock's Blinded by the Right reads like the memoirs of a mafia hit man. But it's the personal story of a former Republican hit man, instead.

New Yorker - Hendrik Hertzberg

Blinded by the Right is a valuable book. It is not an apologia. It is something rarer, and it is something that is owed not only from its author but also from the political cadre he has so spectacularly served and forsaken: an apology.

New York Times - Frank Rich

....literary antecedent for Blinded by the Right is less The God That Failed than Julia Phillips's scorched-earth memoir of Hollywood, You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. But Brock, unlike Phillips, can write, and he seems to have expelled much of the bile that marked his past writing. In his portrayal, there are some honorable and principled conservatives who cross his path -- John O'Sullivan of The National Review (which had the guts to pan The Real Anita Hill), Tod Lindberg of The Washington Times, the writer Christopher Caldwell -- and there's a humanity to some (though not all) of the gargoyles and lunatics who outnumber them.

NYPress - Michelangelo Signorile

...illuminating and at times enraging ....[the] cast of hypocrites, vipers and freaks doesn't get any more perverse than those in Blinded.

The Nation - Michael Tomasky

....the writing has about it the tenor of veracity and candor. Brock comes clean on things he has no contemporary motive to come clean on...

Chicago Sun Times - Steve Neal

Brock draws vivid portraits of his contemporaries in the conservative movement, from the hypocritical Newt Gingrich to the sloppy Matt Drudge and socialite Arianne Huffington, who padded her syndicated column by writing down the thoughts of others at cocktail parties.

Philadelphia City Paper - Andrew Milner

Blinded by the Right is a terrific personal account of the seamier side of American political life.

New York Observer - Joe Conason

By journalistic standards, then, Mr. Brock is a credible person; more credible, certainly, than those who tried to deny the existence of the Arkansas Project and, more broadly, the "right-wing conspiracy" to undermine the Clinton Presidency. But there are elements of his story that are perhaps more compelling than the dry corroboration of names, dates and bank accounts.

Boston Globe - John Aloysius Farrell

Blinded by the Right is terrific. It's bitchy. Audacious. Malevolent. An indulging, mesmerizing treat....No one on the right comes off looking clean in this book. Not the hypocritical House Republicans who investigated Clinton's sex life while nursing their own adulteries. Not the closeted conservative columnists and office holders who chased and pawed Brock at parties, clubs, and dance floors while their party preached the depravity of gay life. Not the high-ranking Republican legal establishment, whose rage at the left's tactics in the confirmation battles over Robert Bork and Thomas was such that they abandoned time-tested conservative principles such as truth, fair play, and patriotism.

USA Today - Clara Frenk

.... fascinating look into the murky world of the politics of personal destruction that led to a $70 million impeachment inquiry. Most important, in a town where everyone from journalists to political appointees does everything to avoid admitting past transgressions, Brock not only says he was wrong -- he tries to make amends.

Library Journal

When Brock (The Real Anita Hill; The Seduction of Hillary Rodham) was a freshman at the University of California at Berkeley in 1981, his political idol was Bobby Kennedy. Four years later, he was a committed conservative who idolized Oliver North and Robert Bork. In this book, Brock chronicles the political round trip back to his more liberal roots. Along the way, he earned the adoration of the extreme right, even after he acknowledged that he was gay, because he worked feverishly as a writer for conservative publications such as the Washington Times and American Spectator, promoting and validating conservative causes. An American Spectator article in early 1994 broke the "Troopergate" scandal and laid the groundwork for the Paula Jones suits against President Clinton, but Brock says he was troubled by the relentless investigations of the Clintons and came to regret his part in them. Eventually, the shallowness of his relationship with the conservatives forced him to make a final break in 1997. Although readers may doubt the sincerity of Brock's latest conversion, the book offers a revealing inside look at the conservative media and provides a careful chronicling of the investigations of the Clintons. Recommended for media studies and political science collections and for larger public libraries. Jill Ortner, SUNY at Buffalo Libs. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Table of Contents:

	Prologue
Ch. 1	The Making of a Conservative	1
Ch. 2	The Third Generation	21
Ch. 3	Leninists of the Right	48
Ch. 4	"A Counter-Intelligentsia"	71
Ch. 5	The Real Anita Hill	87
Ch. 6	Holy War	121
Ch. 7	Troopergate	134
Ch. 8	Out of the Closet	160
Ch. 9	"A Woman Named Paula"	176
Ch. 10	The Arkansas Project	193
Ch. 11	The Best and the Rightist	215
Ch. 12	Strange Lies	237
Ch. 13	The Seduction of Hillary Rodham	249
Ch. 14	The Gary Aldrich Affair	264
Ch. 15	Breaking Ranks	273
Ch. 16	Monica, Sidney, and Me	299
	Epilogue	330

Read also Understanding Management or Second Nature

The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America's Founders

Author: Forrest Church

A primer of essential writings about one of the cornerstones of our democracy

Certain basic issues will always be debated in our country, even without a presidential election at stake. One of the most important of these is the separation of church and state. On this issue, Americans constantly interpret and reinterpret the intentions of America's founders. Now, they will have a collection of the most eloquent writings of the founders to help them understand the original reasoning behind this separation.

Forrest Church, well-known writer and religious leader, son of former senator Frank Church, has used his considerable knowledge about this subject to bring together these writings for modern readers. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, George Washington, Patrick Henry—these are just some of the leaders who wrote movingly about the need to separate religion and government. This concise primer will get past the rhetoric that surrounds the current debate and deliver instead specific writings by the original authors of the Constitution.

Edited and introduced by Church, this volume will inform readers about the founders' original vision and will stand as a timely reminder of how important this fundamental separation is to our way of life.

After Fidel or Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

After Fidel: Raul Castro and the Future of Cuba's Revolution

Author: Brian Latell

This is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of the extraordinary Castro brothers and the impending dynastic succession of Fidel's younger brother Raul. Brian Latell, the CIA analyst who has followed Castro since the sixties, gives an unprecedented view into Fidel and Raul's remarkable relationship, revealing how they have collaborated in policy making, divided responsibilities, and resolved disagreements for more than forty years--a challenge to the notion that Fidel always acts alone. Latell has had more access to the brothers than anyone else in this country, and his briefs to the CIA informed much of U.S. policy. Based on his knowledge of Raul Castro, Latell makes projections on what kind of leader Raul would be and how the shift in power might influence U.S.-Cuban relations.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     xi
Prologue     1
Introduction: More Radical Than Me     5
A Peasant from Biran     23
The Victim of Exploitation     41
We Will All Be Heroes     61
My True Destiny     79
So We Can Seize Power     101
He Is Our Father     121
My Job Is To Talk     143
I Detest Solitude     161
The Moral and Political Duty     181
The Corpse of Imperialism     193
My Brother Twice Over     207
More Than Enough Cannons     231
Afterword     251
Notes     265
Index     283

See also: Fun Meals for Fathers Sons or Wonder Bread Cookbook

Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

Author: John Rawls

This last book by the late John Rawls, derived from written lectures and notes for his long-running course on modern political philosophy, offers readers an account of the liberal political tradition from a scholar viewed by many as the greatest contemporary exponent of the philosophy behind that tradition.

Rawls's goal in the lectures was, he wrote, "to identify the more central features of liberalism as expressing a political conception of justice when liberalism is viewed from within the tradition of democratic constitutionalism." He does this by looking at several strands that make up the liberal and democratic constitutional traditions, and at the historical figures who best represent these strands—among them the contractarians Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau; the utilitarians Hume, Sidgwick, and J. S. Mill; and Marx regarded as a critic of liberalism. Rawls's lectures on Bishop Joseph Butler also are included in an appendix. Constantly revised and refined over three decades, Rawls's lectures on these figures reflect his developing and changing views on the history of liberalism and democracy—as well as how he saw his own work in relation to those traditions.

With its clear and careful analyses of the doctrine of the social contract, utilitarianism, and socialism—and of their most influential proponents—this volume has a critical place in the traditions it expounds. Marked by Rawls's characteristic patience and curiosity, and scrupulously edited by his student and teaching assistant, Samuel Freeman, these lectures are a fitting final addition to his oeuvre, and to the history of political philosophy as well.

D. Schultz - Choice

John Rawls is perhaps the most influential Western political philosopher of the twentieth century. The late Harvard philosopher's 1971 A Theory of Justice is often credited with bestowing that title upon him. In that book he drew on the works of John Locke and Immanuel Kant, among others, to criticize utilitarian theory and defend an egalitarian version of political liberalism. This volume draws together his Harvard lectures on political philosophy and liberalism, providing his insights and interpretations of Locke and Kant, as well as Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others. In these lectures Rawls reveals how he interpreted these philosophers both in light of their historical circumstances and problems they were trying to address, and also in light of contemporary political debates.

Charles Larmore - The New Republic

A definitive and magnificent version of Rawls's teachings on the history of political philosophy...The distinction between the rational and the reasonable runs through these lectures, and through all of Rawls's writings. Its importance signals one essential task that political philosophy should assume even in a democratic age: democracies cannot long endure, however high-sounding the principles they profess, unless their citizens learn to love and to practice the civic virtues of fairness and open discussion that alone can make these principles a reality...Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy shows us a Rawls keenly aware of the historical underpinnings of his own theoretical constructions...His Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy complement more systematic works such as A Theory of Justice. They make plain how the careful analysis of the insights and the limitations of his predecessors helped him to fashion many of the elements of his own political thought...Rawls's writing is at its most powerful when he thus casts aside his contractual scaffolding and speaks directly to our political conscience. Then he impels us to see more clearly than before the moral substance of the democratic ideal. He shows us in an exemplary way how philosophy can be democratic.

John Dunn - Times Higher Education Supplement

Rawls was a dedicated and remarkably winning teacher, deeply admired by generations of grateful Harvard University pupils. Reading Lectures you can see why. The tone throughout is unassuming but assured, the purpose consistently to make clear, to get into steady common view what he took to be the key issues in the grand texts that he chose to explore. There is something soothing and encouraging about being guided through the works of Hobbes and Locke, Hume and J. S. Mill, Henry Sidgwick and Bishop Butler--and even Karl Marx--in these calm and measured tones...There is much quiet pleasure to be drawn from these pages, as well as a great deal of instruction about the terms in which Rawls came to frame his own ethical conceptions and the secular liberalism he believed them to imply. Anyone seriously interested in the development of Rawls's thinking and his sense of the relations between his approach and those of major predecessors in the history of Anglophone liberalism will find the insight it provides on numerous points indispensable.

Steven B. Smith - New York Sun

While many contemporary philosophers have deliberately shunned the history of political philosophy as irrelevant to "doing" philosophy, Rawls shows himself to be a conscientious and painstaking reader of the great works of the philosophical tradition of which he was a part. He regarded his own work as both indebted to and as culminating the great tradition that he interprets for his readers.

David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., OH</P> - Library Journal

After the publication of A Theory of Justicein 1971, Rawls (1921–2002) became the most influential moral and political philosopher in the Western world. As such, the issuing of this posthumous volume, carefully edited by Freeman (philosophy & law, Univ. of Pennsylvania), a former student and teaching assistant from Rawls's courses at Harvard University, is a major event. Rawls discusses Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, J.S. Mill, and Karl Marx (appendixes treat Henry Sidgwick and Joseph Butler as well). He is especially concerned with how each thinker views the fair terms of social cooperation. He distinguishes between being rational (i.e., efficient in pursuit of one's ends) and being reasonable (i.e., willing to cooperate on fair terms with others)—Hobbes did not make this distinction, but it is useful in explaining Locke and Rousseau. Rawls finds in Rousseau the notion of public reason, the key concept of his Political Liberalism. He devotes much attention to the utilitarian tradition, the principal rival of his own approach. An unexpected feature is a sympathetic discussion of Marx. Highly recommended for all philosophy collections.

Information Warfare or Peace Time

Information Warfare: Principles and Operations

Author: Edward L Waltz

Here's a systems engineering-level introduction to the growing field of Information Warfare (IW) — the battlefield where information is both target and weapon. This comprehensive book provides engineers, system operators, and information technology users with an understandable overview of rapidly emerging threats to commercial, civil, and military information systems — and shows how these threats can be identified and systems protected.

Authored by a leading expert in advanced information-based technologies, this is the first book to detail the component principles, technologies, and tactics critical to success in the three key areas of IW: Information Dominance, Information Defense, and Information Offense. The author explains the quantification of information, describes the deductive, inductive and abductive processes that create knowledge, and provides essential technical background on:

• The knowledge creation processes of data fusion and data mining

• Information security technologies, including: encryption, authentication, authorization, and attack detection

• Information attack technologies, including: physical, infrastructure, and perceptual methods

Adding to the book's value are extensive citations to relevant unclassified literature, numerous examples of practical defense-related systems, clear explanations of basic IW theory, and much deeper and broader coverage of security issues than found in typical Internet security books.

Booknews

Presents the author's conception of the use of information in warfare, based on seminars that he has presented in the US and Europe since 1995. Topics include the role of technology in information-based warfare, information superiority through dominant battlespace awareness and knowledge, information warfare policy, the weapons of information warfare, cryptographic encryption measures, and physical-level system security. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
1	Concepts of Information in Warfare	1
2	The Role of Information Science in Warfare	49
3	The Role of Technology in Information-Based Warfare	83
4	Achieving Information Superiority Through Dominant Battlespace Awareness and Knowledge	107
5	Information Warfare Policy, Strategy, and Operations	139
6	The Elements of Information Operations	171
7	An Operational Concept (CONOPS) for Information Operations	229
8	Offensive Information Operations	251
9	Defensive Information Operations	301
10	The Technologies of Information Warfare	357
	About the Author	383
	Index	385

New interesting book: The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton or Seven Fires

Peace Time: Cease-Fire Agreements and the Durability of Peace

Author: Virginia Page Fortna

Why do cease-fire agreements sometimes last for years while others flounder barely long enough to be announced? How to maintain peace in the aftermath of war is arguably one of the most important questions of the post--Cold War era. And yet it is one of the least explored issues in the study of war and peace. Here, Page Fortna offers the first comprehensive analysis of why cease-fires between states succeed or fail. She develops cooperation theory to argue that mechanisms within these agreements can help maintain peace by altering the incentives for war and peace, reducing uncertainty, and helping to prevent or manage accidents that could lead to war.

To test this theory, the book first explores factors, such as decisive victory and prior history of conflict, that affect the baseline prospects for peace. It then considers whether stronger cease-fires are likely to be implemented in the hardest or the easiest cases. Next, through both quantitative and qualitative testing of the effects of cease-fire agreements, firm evidence emerges that agreements do matter. Durable peace is harder to achieve after some wars than others, but when most difficult, states usually invest more in peace building. These efforts work. Strong agreements markedly lessen the risk of further war. Mechanisms such as demilitarized zones, dispute resolution commissions, peacekeeping, and external guarantees can help maintain peace between even the deadliest of foes.

Retirement Plans or Tom Paine and Revolutionary America

Retirement Plans: 401(k)s, IRAs and Other Deferred Compensation Approaches

Author: Allen

Retirement Plans (formerly titled Pension Planning through the ninth edition) is a classic, the book relied upon by generations of faculty and thousands of professionals throughout the world. It reliably provides the reader with the features, costs, investment opportunities, and regulatory issues governing all the various types of retirement and other deferred compensation plans. The 10th edition keeps the book once again at the forefront of the discipline, with extensive coverage of the new Pension Protection Act, defined contribution plans, ethical plan administration, and much more.

Table of Contents:

Part I. Environmental Influences on Private Pension Plans

1.
The Dynamic Ongoing Evolution of Private Retirement Plans

2.
Strategic Plan Design

3.
Defined Contribution versus Defined Benefit Plans

4.
Risk Management through Retirement Planning

Part II. Defined Contribution Plan Types

5.
Overview of Defined Contribution Plan Types and Their Use in Comprehensive Retirement Plan Design

6.
Profit Sharing Plans and Money Purchase Pension Plans

7.
Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs)

8.
Cash or Deferred Plans Under Section 401(k)

9.
Section 403(b) Plans

10.
Section 457 Plans

11. Behavioral Finance and Defined Contribution Plan Design

Part III. Special Purpose Retirement Planning Structures

12.
Individual Retirement Arrangements

13.
Keogh Plans, SEPs and SIMPLE Plans

14.
Executive Retirement Arrangements

15.
Employee Stock Compensation Plans

16. Managing Retirement Assets in Multiple Plan Structures

Part IV. Defined Benefit Plans and Hybrid Retirement Plans

17.
Defined Benefit Plan Features

18.
Cost and Funding Considerations

19.
Budgeting Pension Costs

20.
Insured Funding Instruments and Trust Fund Plans

21. Cash Balance and Other Hybrid Retirement Plans

22. Plan Termination Insurance for Single-Employer Pension Plans

23.
Employers’ Accounting for Pensions

24. Defined Benefit Plan Management

Part V. Tax and Legal Requirements

25.
Tax Qualification Requirements

26.
Tax QualificationRequirements (Continued)

27. Other Legal Requirements

28. Fiduciary Oversight and Plan Governance

Part VI. Wealth Management and Distribution Planning

29.
Investing Retirement Assets

30.
Retirement Asset Wealth Management

31.
Retirement Asset Distribution Planning

Appendix 1. Social Security and Medicare

New interesting textbook: Nature of Computation or Enterprise Modeling with UML

Tom Paine and Revolutionary America

Author: Eric Foner

Since its publication in 1976, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America has been recognized as a classic study of the career of the foremost political pamphleteer of the Age of Revolution, and a model of how to integrate the political, intellectual, and social history of the struggle for American independence.
Foner skillfully brings together an account of Paine's remarkable career with a careful examination of the social worlds within which he operated, in Great Britain, France, and especially the United States. He explores Paine's political and social ideas and the way he popularized them by pioneering a new form of political writing, using simple, direct language and addressing himself to a reading public far broader than previous writers had commanded. He shows which of Paine's views remained essentially fixed throughout his career, while directing attention to the ways his stance on social questions evolved under the pressure of events. This enduring work makes clear the tremendous impact Paine's writing exerted on the American Revolution, and suggests why he failed to have a similar impact during his career in revolutionary France. It also offers new insights into the nature and internal tensions of the republican outlook that helped to shape the Revolution.
In a new preface, Foner discusses the origins of this book and the influences of the 1960s and 1970s on its writing. He also looks at how Paine has been adopted by scholars and politicians of many stripes, and has even been called the patron saint of the Internet.

Promises Kept or The Case for Impeachment

Promises Kept: A Memoir

Author: Sidney S McMath

Sidney Sanders McMath is a pivotal figure in the history of Arkansas, of the Democratic Party, and of American law. Still vibrant and engaged in his nineties, he sets out his story in full for the first time in this powerful and engaging memoir of his youth and his extensive military service, his rise and fall in public office, and his long career as a lawyer seeking justice for ordinary people. He has divided his life story into four parts. In the first, he shows how his early life in rural Arkansas sparked his commitment to people. Then he describes his service to democracy in the military, including his commission in the U.S. Marines, a battlefield promotion in the Pacific and other honors, and his subsequent advancement to the rank of major general. The revealing third section details McMath's extraordinary life in politics, starting with his explosive debut in 1945, when he and other veterans dethroned the state's most powerful and corrupt political machine. Later, as a two-term governor, he fulfilled his promise of reform and modernization: he brought the first roads and electricity to rural areas, fought the poll tax, and built the state's first medical center. McMath describes how he worked with President Truman to keep the segregationist Dixiecrats from taking over the Democratic Party -- and the presidency. He also helped change the party's rules so that black citizens could vote in primaries.

But here his story takes a dramatic turn: political opponents alleged bribery in the highway program, and although no indictments were handed down, McMath's political career ended. Arguing his case for the first time in fifty years, he sets the facts straight. McMath turned to the practice of law to fight for the people he had represented as governor. In the concluding section of the book he describes some of his most important cases, examples of how he put his life's experience, knowledge, and integrity in the service of those who had few resources. Sid McMath's memoir shows us the excitement and the hard choices of real democracy, offering compelling human stories, new information on past conflicts, and the crucial perspective of a man at the center of history.

Table of Contents:

	List of Illustrations	ix
	Dateline	xiii
	Foreword	xvii
	Acknowledgments	xxiii
	Prologue	xxv
Part 1.	Roots
I.	The Old McMath Homeplace	3
II.	John Ray Sanders	9
III.	Papa Rudd	15
IV.	The Confederacy and Reconstruction	21
V.	"Mother Mae"	25
VI.	"Old Judd"	29
VII.	"Pap"	33
VIII.	The Jack Parham Place	37
IX.	"Uncle Spooks"	39
X.	Bussey	41
XI.	Foreman and Taylor	47
XII.	Home Again	51
Part 2.	Duty Calls
I.	Hot Springs	63
II.	Elaine Broughton	75
III.	"The Old Breed"	81
IV.	My Hometown	87
V.	The Pull of the Corps	91
VI.	American Samoa	99
VII.	In the Mood	107
VIII.	New Zealand	109
IX.	Guadalcanal--The Solomon Islands	113
X.	Bougainville	127
XI.	Coconut Grove	155
XII.	Anne Phillips	159
Part 3.	Politics and After
I.	The GI Revolt	167
II.	Prosecuting Attorney	181
III.	My Race for Governor of Arkansas	191
IV.	The Governor's Mansion	213
V.	My First Term	225
VI.	My Second Term	245
VII.	Power Versus the People	267
VIII.	A Race for the Senate	295
IX.	Little Rock Central High School, 1957	301
X.	Vietnam	307
XI.	A People's Law Firm	319
XII.	Betty Dortch Russell	325
Part 4.	Conclusion	331
	"A Nation's Prayer"	337
Appendixes	Cases That Made a Difference
I.	Get the Facts	341
II.	Let the Jury Decide	349
III.	Sauce for the Goose	357
IV.	A Subsequent Shock Shows How: Admissibility	363
V.	Guns Don't Kill: Fleeing Fugitives Do	369
VI.	Advertisements That Prey: Negligent Inducement	373
VII.	Justice Weeps: A Petition for Redress	383
VIII.	A Scream in the Night	389
IX.	Death Takes a Holiday	397
X.	Poisoning a Neighbor's Well	403
XI.	Willful, Wanton, Reckless Disregard for Safety--A Policy Decision	415
XII.	Insult and Outrage--Defamation--Projecting an Innocent Person in a False Light	423
XIII.	Gee, Dad, That's a Lot of Tomatoes	431
XIV.	The Wrong Road Taken	449
XV.	Seek Justice, Plead for the Widow, Champion the Fatherless, Relieve the Oppressed--And Put the Money in Trust	459
	Index	465

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The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office

Author: Dave Lindorff

It's time to act--and this is the guide.

Now in paperback to meet a rising public demand, here is a hard-hitting argument for the impeachment of George W. Bush--and top members of his administration. Events since the book's hardcover release--including court decisions regarding war crimes and violations of the FISA law on wiretapping--have only heightened the urgency.

Methodically detailing the Bush regime's offenses and refuting its lies and deceptions, investigative reporter Dave Lindorff and constitutional rights specialist Barbara Olshansky explain why the president and his inner circle should be removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors. Among the most grievous harms:

• misleading the nation into war
• authorizing and encouraging the use of torture
• failing in almost every way to defend the homeland and our borders
• undermining habeas corpus and other traditional rights
• illegal NSA wiretapping, mail opening, and other assaults on the Bill of Rights
• the catastrophic federal failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina

Against the Terror of Neoliberalism or Fundamentals of Fire Fighter Skills

Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics beyond the Age of Greed

Author: Henry A Giroux

With its dream worlds of power, commercialization, and profit making, neoliberalism has ushered in new Gilded Age in which the logic of the market now governs every aspect of media, culture, and social life—from schooling to health care to old age. As the social contract becomes a distant memory, the new 'corporate state' distances itself from workers and minority groups, who become more disposable in a new age of uncertainty and manufactured fear.

This is the only book to connect the history, ideology, and consequences of neoliberal policies to education and cultural issues that pervade almost every aspect of daily life.

A significantly revised and updated new version of Giroux's 2003 book, The Terror of Neoliberalism, this book points to ways in which neoliberal ideology can be resisted, and how new forms of citizenship and collective struggles can be forged, to reclaim the meaning both of a substantive politics and of a democratic society.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction: Slouching Toward Bethlehem     1
The Emerging Authoritarianism in the United States: Political Culture Under the Bush/Cheney Administration     15
Spectacles of Race and Pedagogies of Denial     60
Disabling the Future: Youth in the Age of Market Fundamentalism     84
Neoliberalism as Public Pedagogy     112
The Politics of Hope in Dangerous Times     130
Against Neoliberal Common Sense: Rethinking Cultural Politics and Public Pedagogy in Dark Times     147
Notes     181
Index     218
About the Author     226

Look this: Gestão de Segurança Eficaz

Fundamentals of Fire Fighter Skills

Author: National Fire Protection Association

The Second Edition features a laser-like focus on fire fighter injury prevention, including a dedicated chapter on safety. Reducing fire fighter injuries and deaths requires the dedicated efforts of every fire fighter, of every fire department, and of the entire fire community working together. It is with this goal in mind that we have integrated the 16 Fire Fighter Life Safety Initiatives developed by the National Fallen Fire Fighter Foundation into Chapter 2, Fire Fighter Safety. In most of the chapters, actual National Fire Fighter Near-Miss Reporting System cases are discussed to drive home important points about safety and the lessons learned from those real-life incidents. It is our profound hope that this textbook will contribute to the goal of reducing line-of-duty deaths by 25 percent in the next 5 years.

El Laberinto de la Soledad y Otras Obras or The Age of Napoleon

El Laberinto de la Soledad y Otras Obras

Author: Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz has written one of the most enduring and powerful works ever created on Mexico and its people, character, and culture. Compared to Ortega y GassetЖs The Revolt of the Masses for its trenchant analysis, this collection contains Octavio PazЖ most famous work, The Labyrinth of Solitude, a beautifully written and deeply felt discourse on MexicoЖs quest for identity that gives us an unequaled look at the country hidden behind the mask. Also included are Postscript, Return to the Labyrinth of Solitude, and Mexico and the United States, all of which develop the themes of the title essay and extend his penetrating commentary to the United States and Latin America.

Read also Roosevelt and the Holocaust or Understanding the Presidency

The Age of Napoleon

Author: J Christopher Herold

THE AGE OF NAPOLEON is the biography of an enigmatic and legendary personality as well as the portrait of an entire age. J. Christopher Herold tells the fascinating story of the Napoleonic world in all its aspects — political, cultural, military, commercial, and social. Napoleon's rise from common origins to enormous political and military power, as well as his ultimate defeat, influenced our modern age in thousands of ways, from the map of Europe to the metric system, from styles of dress and dictators to new conventions of personal behavior.

Refugee Rights or International Ethics

Refugee Rights: Ethics, Advocacy, and Africa

Author: David Hollenbach

There are over 33 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world today, and a disproportionate number of those are in Africa. Most have been driven from their homes by the armed strife of both interstate and intratstate conflicts. Such coerced migration violates people's freedom; many have been displaced into settings which call into question standards of basic human dignity. Such displacement violates people's most basic human rights in multiple ways. This book, stemming from David Hollenbach's work as founder and director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Boston College, provides an analytic framework for vigorous and effective advocacy on behalf of refugees and internally displaced persons, with the aim of generating more effective responses to their suffering. While Hollenbach's work and center reflect a Catholic natural law context, contributors represent both religious and secular perspectives from ethics, human rights, and migration studies. This is a wide-ranging yet integrated collection of chapters from scholars and practitioners and refugee advocates--all of whom have spent time in Africa "on the ground." Part I deals with rights in the face of pluralism, and features a poignant narrative by an Ethiopian refugee, Abebe Feyissa, who has spent the past 15 years living in a refugee camp from hell. Part II addresses the right to the freedom of movement that is denied many refugees. Part III explores gender and the rights of women as criteria for a more adequate response to the struggles of refugees and the internally displaced. Part IV analyzes war as the principal cause of displacement, and how a human rights perspective can helpframe a response to it. Part V, the conclusion, identifies key ethical issues in the practices and policies of refugee-serving NGOs and churches.

See also: Economics and Sociology or Handbook of Career Counseling for Women

International Ethics: Concepts, Theories, and Cases in Global Politics

Author: Mark R Amstutz

The role of ethics in international relations is a long overlooked and now hotly debated issue. Realists say there is little room for ethics in a world dominated by security risks and national self-interest. Cultural pluralists contend that ethics and morality are relative, depending on the traditions of the society. Idealists are sobered by the complexity of ethical considerations posed by contemporary international challenges. Nonetheless, ethical dilemmas swirl around the globe and moral norms and actions are embraced. This text presents the concepts, theories, methods, and traditions of ethical analysis and then applies them to case studies in the areas of human rights, military force, foreign intervention, economic statecraft, and global political justice. Although rooted in political philosophy, this clearly-written study will be of special interest to students and practitioners of international affairs who are concerned with the role of political morality and ethical judgment in global affairs.

The End of Laissez Faire and the Economic Consequences of the Peace or The Necklace

The End of Laissez-Faire and the Economic Consequences of the Peace

Author: John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was one of the most influential economists of the first half of the twentieth century. In The End of Laissez-Faire (1926), Keynes presents a brief historical review of laissez-faire economic policy.

Interesting textbook: 100 Foods That Heal Your Body or Nutrition and Sport

The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment That Transformed Their Lives

Author: Cheryl Jarvis

The true story of thirteen women who took a risk on an expensive diamond necklace and, in the process, changed not only themselves but a community.

Four years ago, in Ventura, California, Jonell McLain saw a diamond necklace in a local jewelry store display window. The necklace aroused desire first, then a provocative question: Why are personal luxuries so plentiful yet accessible to so few? What if we shared what we desired? Several weeks, dozens of phone calls, and a leap of faith later, Jonell bought the necklace with twelve other women, with the goal of sharing it.

Part charm, part metaphor, part mirror, the necklace weaves in and out of each woman’s life, reflecting her past, defining her present, making promises for her future. Lending sparkle in surprising and unexpected ways, the necklace comes to mean something dramatically different to each of the thirteen women.
With vastly dissimilar histories and lives, the women show us how they transcended their individual personalities and politics to join together in an uncommon journey. What started as a quirky social experiment became something far richer and deeper, as the women transformed a symbol of exclusivity into a symbol of inclusiveness. They discovered that sharing the necklace among themselves was only the beginning; The more they shared with others, the more profound this experience–and experiment–became.

Original, resonant, and beautifully told, this book is an inspiring story about a necklace that became greater than the sum of its links, and about thirteen ordinary women who understood the power of possibility, who touched the lives of a community, and whotogether created one extraordinary experience.

Crystal Goldman - Library Journal

Freelance journalist Jarvis (The Marriage Sabbatical: The Journey That Brings You Home) explores the lives of 13 women from Ventura, CA, from diverse social, educational, and political backgrounds who together purchased an expensive diamond necklace that was beyond their means individually. Cost: $37,000. Jonell McLain first saw the 16.25 carat necklace in a jeweler's window and came up with the idea for a group purchase. What began as a social experiment about ownership and American consumerism became much larger as the necklace took on a life of its own. The group of women, all over 50, used the necklace to generate attention for various fund-raising activities and to raise social awareness in their community. While Jarvis's prose is a bit sentimental, she does offer an engaging snapshot of what it means to be a middle-aged woman in contemporary America. Underlying the light treatment applied to each of the 13 narratives and mini-biographies that make up this work are the deeper issues of aging, health care, retirement, relationships, divorce, sex, and child rearing. A highly readable book recommended for public libraries and any library with an interest in women's studies or studies on growing older. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/1/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

Jarvis (The Marriage Sabbatical, 2000) chronicles the adventures of 13 California women who pooled their money to buy a $37,000 diamond necklace. They named it Jewelia (in honor of Julia Child, who had died two months earlier in 2004) and determined that each of them would have it for 28 days, during her birthday month. Through sharing the necklace, this passionate and diverse group became a charitable and unifying community force as well as a close-knit band of friends. They far outshone their purchase, but the author is so dazzled by the diamonds that she devalues the women who wore them. Rather than examining why a luxury item was necessary to catalyze such nourishing togetherness, Jarvis continually gushes that the necklace is a magical miracle. She bombards us with tales of the transcendent ecstasy the women experienced when donning Jewelia, but she never explores why it inspired such excitement and Buddha-like empathy for others. Although the book is trumpeted as an anti-materialist lesson in the value of collaboration, the author mostly misses what was truly remarkable about the collective: the fact that its founding members looked beyond their usual social circles when recruiting partners, uniting people who seemingly had nothing in common and in several cases alleviating long-standing feelings of loneliness and isolation. Why would diamonds, of all things, inspire this unusual openness? Does modern life have so few vehicles for sisterhood that shopping is the one thing we have left? Jarvis avoids wrestling with such ideas, preferring to fawn and overstate. As frivolous as its centerpiece. Agent: David Kuhn/Kuhn Projects

Education for Extinction or The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Other Writings

Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience,1875-1928

Author: David Wallace Adams

"Education for Extinction delivers on the promise of its title. This is a thorough and thoughtful study of the federal government's Indian education program that was explicitly aimed at extinguishing a culture. That it failed testifies to a deficient understanding of cultural dynamics as well as to the durability of Indian culture. An important contribution to the literature of Indian-white relations."—Robert M. Utley, author of The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull

"Adams has achieved something remarkable here: he offers a great deal of information on an important and difficult historical topic while never losing sight of its human dimension. Persuasive and moving, his book is full of good stories that should appeal to the general public."—Brian Dippie, author of The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy

"An outstanding contribution to the field of Indian history and the history of Indian education."—Robert Trennert, author of The Phoenix Indian School: Forced Assimilation in Arizona, 1891-1988

Author Biography: David Adams is associate professor of education at Cleveland State University and the author of chapters in Leonard Dinnerstein and Kenneth Jackson's American Vistas: 1877 to the Present and Philip Weeks's Native American Experience.

Booknews

An account of the Native American experience in government boarding schools, based on government archives, student and teacher autobiographies, and school newspapers, revealing coping strategies of Indian youth in institutions designed to reconstruct them psychologically and culturally. Chronicles the government's gradual retreat from its assimilationist vision due to student resistance and its contradictory set of humanitarian and racist motivations. Contains b&w photos. Of interest to students and general readers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

	List of Illustrations and Tables
	Preface
	Prologue: 1882	1
Pt. 1	Civilization	3
1	Reform	5
2	Models	28
3	System	60
Pt. 2	Education	95
4	Institution	97
5	Classroom	136
6	Rituals	164
Pt. 3	Response	207
7	Resistance	209
8	Accommodation	239
Pt. 4	Causatum	271
9	Home	273
10	Policy	307
	Conclusion	335
	Notes	339
	Index	391

Read also The High Vitality Cookbook or Wedding Showers for Couples

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Other Writings

Author: Max Weber

In The Protestant Ethic, Max Weber opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and relates the rise of the capitalist economy to the Calvinist belief in the moral value of hard work and the fulfillment of one's worldly duties. Based on the original 1905 edition, this volume includes, along with Weber's treatise, an illuminating introduction, a wealth of explanatory notes, and exemplary responses and remarks-both from Weber and his critics-sparked by publication of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

This is the first English translation of the 1905 German text and the first volume to include Weber's unexpurgated responses to his critics, which reveal important developments in and clarifications of Weber's argument.

Franklin Pierce or The Best War Ever

Franklin Pierce, Vol. 14

Author: John DiConsiglio

Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire was handsome, gregarious, and famous for his cloquence. In private life and in politics, however, he proved to be unlucky and unhappy. As a young man he suffered from alcoholism, his wife was often ill, and their three sons died in childhood. A Northern Democrat with Southern sympathies, he was nominated for president in 1852 and won the election against a hapless Whig opponent. He soon lost the support of the North by enforcing the hated Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which promised to extend slavery in the new territories. When Kansas was swept by violence, Pierce supported proslavery factions and refused to send federal troops to restore order. In 1856, his party refused to renominate him, bringing his political career to a close.

Interesting textbook: Globalizing Feminist Bioethics or Mobile Disruption

The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq

Author: Sheldon Rampton

and/or stickers showing their discounted price. More about bargain books

Confessions of a Tax Collector or Human Capital

Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty inside the IRS

Author: Richard Yancey

Twelve years ago, Richard Yancey answered a blind ad in the newspaper offering a salary higher than what he'd made over the three previous years combined. It turned out that the job was for the Internal Revenue Service -- the most hated and feared organization in the federal government.

So Yancey became the man who got in his car, drove to your house, knocked on your door, and made you pay. Never mind that his car was littered with candy wrappers, his palms were sweaty, and he couldn't remember where he stashed his own tax records. He was there on the authority of the United States government.

With "a rich mix of humor, horror, and angst [and] better than most novels on the bestseller lists" (Boston Sunday Globe), Confessions of a Tax Collector contains an astonishing cast of too-strange-for-fiction characters. But the most intriguing character of all is Yancey himself who -- in detailing how the job changed him and how he managed to pull himself back from the brink of moral, ethical, and spiritual bankruptcy -- reveals what really lies beneath those dark suits and mirrored sunglasses.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Publishers Weekly

After failing at a number of jobs, Yancey joined the IRS as a revenue officer in 1991 when he answered a want ad in the newspaper. As a revenue officer, Yancey was charged with collecting taxes from delinquent taxpayers. At the start of his career, Yancey was ambivalent about working for the IRS, but the longer he stayed with the organization the more seriously he took the job. A turning point came during a seizure (when the IRS seizes property from people who have been unable or unwilling to pay taxes), when Yancey stumbled across a band of tax protesters and took it as a personal challenge to root out as many protesters as possible and in the course of doing so found himself living for his job. Yancey's account of his 12-year career starts out as a lighthearted look at his early days as an IRS trainee, but the tone is more somber and reflective as he becomes more enmeshed in his job, breaks up with his girlfriend, and finds himself isolated from nearly everyone outside of his workplace. There is a happy ending to the story, however, as Yancey marries his supervisor, quits the service and fulfills his dream of writing a book. His description of what life is like inside the IRS is generally engaging and shows the fallibility of a system that comprises, after all, men and women who have their own strengths and weaknesses. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Come April 15 each year, most people pay their taxes on time, but those who avoid doing so are invariably called upon by the likes of Yancey, who recounts his 12-year career as a revenue officer for the Internal Revenue Service. Yancey chronicles how he would hunt down individuals, often hounding them until they paid their delinquent taxes, while laboring in an almost Kafkaesque work environment. His breezy confessional style is often humorous yet sometimes terrifying, as he discloses the various methods "the service" (as it is referred to by IRS employees) utilizes to get people to "pay up"-at the cost of a real psychic toll to himself and his colleagues. In the book's final pages, the author does mention the Revenue Restructuring Act of 1998, which has gone a long way in curbing many of the questionable enforcement actions he describes. Yancey comes across as a decent, humane guy, certainly not your typical tax inquisitor, who has succeeded in writing an engaging insider's account of life inside the dreaded IRS. (Readers wanting to read more about other misdeeds of the IRS should peruse John A. Andrew's Power To Destroy.) Recommended for larger public libraries.-Richard Drezen, "Washington Post," New York City Bureau Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

New interesting book: Contented Poachers Epicurean Odyssey or Bread Making Quality of Wheat

Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education

Author: Gary Stanley Becker

Human Capital is Becker's classic study of how investment in an individual's education and training is similar to business investments in equipment. Recipient of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economic Science, Gary S. Becker is a pioneer of applying economic analysis to human behavior in such areas as discrimination, marriage, family relations, and education. Becker's research on human capital was considered by the Nobel committee to be his most noteworthy contribution to economics.
This expanded edition includes four new chapters, covering recent ideas about human capital, fertility and economic growth, the division of labor, economic considerations within the family, and inequality in earnings.
"Critics have charged that Mr. Becker's style of thinking reduces humans to economic entities. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Becker gives people credit for having the power to reason and seek out their own best destiny."—Wall Street Journal

Table of Contents:

	List of Tables
	List of Charts
	Preface to the Third Edition
	Preface to the First Edition
I	Introduction to the Second Edition	3
II	Human Capital Revisited	15
III	Investment in Human Capital: Effects on Earnings	29
IV	Investment in Human Capital: Rates of Return	59
V	Rates of Return from College Education	161
VI	Underinvestment in College Education?	205
VII	Rates of Return from High School Education and Trends Over Time	215
VIII	Age, Earnings, Wealth, and Human Capital	228
IX	Summary and Conclusions	245
X	Human Capital and the Rise and Fall of Families	257
XI	The Division of Labor, Coordination Costs, and Knowledge	299
XII	Human Capital, Fertility, and Economic Growth	323
	App. A. Sources and Methods	351
	App. B. Mathematical Discussion of Relation Between Age, Earnings, and Wealth	370
	Author Index	377
	Subject Index	381

Palestine or Global Environmental Governance

Palestine: The Special Edition

Author: Joe Sacco

An expanded edition of one of the all-time classic graphic novels.

Joe Sacco's breakthrough novel of graphic journalism is widely hailed as one of the great graphic novels of all-time. Since its original publication in the mid-1990s, it has won an American Book Award (1996), sold over 50,000 copies, been added to university curriculums worldwide, led to a Guggenheim Fellowship for Sacco, and firmly ensconced Sacco in the pantheon of great cartoonists. Despite this, the book has never been published in hardcover. Until now.

Fantagraphics Books is pleased to present, for the first time, the definitive, expanded, hardcover collection of Sacco's landmark of comics journalism. Palestine: The Special Edition is more than a new edition: consider it the "Criterion" Palestine. In addition to the original, 288-page graphic novel and introduction by the late Edward Said, The Special Edition includes a host of unique supplemental material never-before-published, including many of Sacco's original background notes, sketches, photographic reference, and much more. The book also includes a new, introductory interview with Sacco about the making of the book as well as a new cover and design. Palestine: The Special Edition will be a cornerstone of any serious comic collection.

With the Middle East's role in contemporary world politics, Sacco's Palestine has never been more relevant or more valuable to a country desperate to understand this long-running conflict. Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians andJews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, whose name has since become synonymous with this graphic form of New Journalism.

Sacco's insightful reportage takes place at the front lines, where busy marketplaces are spoiled by shootings and tear gas, soldiers beat civilians with reckless abandon, and roadblocks go up before reporters can leave. Sacco interviewed and encountered prisoners, refugees, protesters, wounded children, farmers who had lost their land, and families who had been torn apart by the Palestinian conflict.

New interesting book: Jungle Travel Survival or How People Heal

Global Environmental Governance

Author: James Gustave Speth

Today's most pressing environmental problems are planetary in scope, confounding the political will of any one nation. How can we solve them? Global Environmental Governance offers the essential information, theory, and practical insight needed to tackle this critical challenge. It examines ten major environmental threats-climate disruption, biodiversity loss, acid rain, ozone depletion, deforestation, desertification, freshwater degradation and shortages, marine fisheries decline, toxic pollutants, and excess nitrogen-and explores how they can be addressed through treaties, governance regimes, and new forms of international cooperation. Written by Gus Speth, one of the architects of the international environmental movement, and accomplished political scientist Peter M. Haas, Global Environmental Governance tells the story of how the community of nations, nongovernmental organizations, scientists, and multinational corporations have in recent decades created an unprecedented set of laws and institutions intended to help solve large-scale environmental problems.The book critically examines the serious shortcomings of current efforts and the underlying reasons why disturbing trends persist. It presents key concepts in international law and regime formation in simple, accessible language, and describes the current institutional landscape as well as lessons learned and new directions needed in international governance. Global Environmental Governance is a concise guide, with lists of key terms, study questions, and other features designed to help readers think about and understand the concepts discussed.

Table of Contents:

Ch. I	Introduction : toward planetary stewardship	1
Ch. II	Global-scale environmental challenges	12
Ch. III	From Stockholm to Johannesburg : first attempt at global environmental governance	52
Ch. IV	Environmental accord : treaties and international environmental law	82
Ch. V	Key actors, expanding roles : the United Nations, international organizations, and civil society	107
Ch. VI	Paths of the future : a second attempt at global environmental governance?	125

Gerald R Ford or Hizbullah

Gerald R. Ford

Author: Douglas Brinkley

THE "ACCIDENTAL" PRESIDENT WHOSE INNATE DECENCY AND STEADY HAND RESTORED THE PRESIDENCY AFTER ITS GREATEST CRISIS

When Gerald R. Ford entered the White House in August 1974, he inherited a presidency tarnished by the Watergate scandal, the economy was in a recession, the Vietnam War was drawing to a close, and he had taken office without having been elected. Most observers gave him little chance of success, especially after he pardoned Richard Nixon just a month into his presidency, an action that outraged many Americans, but which Ford thought was necessary to move the nation forward.

During his presidency, many people thought of Ford as a man who stumbled a lot -- clumsy on his feet and in politics -- but acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley shows him to be a man of independent thought and conscience, who never allowed party loyalty to prevail over his sense of right and wrong. As a young congressman, he stood up to the isolationists in the Republican leadership, promoting a vigorous role for America in the world. Later, as House minority leader and as president, he challenged the right wing of his party, refusing to bend to their vision of confrontation with the Communist world. And after the fall of Saigon, Ford also overruled his advisers by allowing Vietnamese refugees to enter the United States, arguing that to do so was the humane thing to do. Brinkley also offers keen analyses of the Mayaguez incident and the Helsinki Accords, where Ford's steady and focused leadership played a key role in advancing American interests.

Brinkley draws on exclusive interviews with Ford and on previously unpublished documents (including a remarkable correspondence between Ford and Nixon stretching over four decades), fashioning a masterful reassessment of Gerald R. Ford's presidency and his underappreciated legacy to the nation.

The Washington Post - David Broder

Brinkley does full justice to those qualities of Midwestern goodwill exhibited by Ford all his life, and he excuses Ford's anger with Reagan and the right-wingers because he plainly shares Ford's preference for a more tolerant, pragmatic version of conservatism.

Foreign Affairs

Brinkley has written a decent and honest book about a decent andhonest man; more than that, Brinkley has managed to get beneath Gerald Ford's Midwestern reserve to give us a surprisingly engaging and accessible account of the most down-to-earth president since Calvin Coolidge. He is particularly good on Ford's congressional years, illuminating the political life of a Republican Party that seemed, for much of Ford's active career, doomed to perpetual minority status.

Brinkley's Gerald R. Ford is part of a series of short presidential lives edited by Arthur Schlesinger. The series is the latest and by no means the least of the contributions Schlesinger made to American studies during a long and extraordinary career. His generosity to rising generations of historians and his commitment to useful history that could inform contemporary policy debates in the service of democratic values were remarkable; he will be sorely missed. <

What People Are Saying

"A rock-hard moral core defined Gerald Ford. Unrattled by the speed of events or by their uneven consequences, Ford remained the steadiest of public men, certain of his course and confident in his ability to keep to it. He may have landed in the White House without planning to but he proved well prepared for the nation's highest office, intellectually as well as emotionally. Having never slogged through the mud of a presidential campaign, he arrived in the White House with neither an untoward gratitude for those who had supported him nor any lingering animosity toward those who hadn't. Instead, he had an unobstructed view of his enormous and widely diverse constituency, and his record in the White House was remarkably evenhanded. He left the presidency in far better shape than he had found it -- perhaps even healthier than it had been in decades."

--Douglas Brinkley on Gerald R. Ford

Go to: Whats Cooking America or Donna Dewberrys Designs For Entertaining

Hizbullah (Hezbollah): The Story from Within

Author: Naim Qassem

A unique insider's view of one of the most important political parties in the Middle East. The mandate of Hizbullah ("Party of God") is laid out here for the first time in English by a high-ranking insider.

Table of Contents:

1	Vision and goals	13
2	Organization and public work	59
3	Key milestones in the history of Hizbullah	87
4	The Palestinian cause	151
5	Issues and stance	187
6	Regional and international relations	235
7	Hizbullah's future	261
App	Hizbullah's 1992 election programme	271

The Quest for Cosmic Justice or American Dreamer

The Quest for Cosmic Justice

Author: Thomas Sowell

This is not a comforting book -- it is a book about disturbing issues that are urgently important today and enduringly critical for the future. It rejects both "merit" and historical redress as principles for guiding public policy. It shows how "peace" movements have led to war and to needless casualties in those wars. It argues that "equality" is neither right nor wrong, but meaningless.

The Quest for Cosmic Justice shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting inequality, and how the tyranny of social visions prevents many people from confronting the actual consequences of their own beliefs and policies. Those consequences include the steady and dangerous erosion of the fundamental principles of freedom -- and the quiet repeal of the American revolution.

Publishers Weekly

One of the country's most respected conservative intellectuals, Sowell (Race and Culture, etc.) proclaims a need to clarify the notion of justice. He then hurriedly decrees an absolute dichotomy between "traditional justice"--purely procedural equal treatment--and "cosmic justice." Unfortunately, Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, never satisfactorily defines what he means by cosmic justice, using it as an elastic term. Sowell easily tears apart handpicked examples of ill-conceived cosmic justice while steering clear of serious engagement with opposing positions. Thus he attacks Supreme Court rulings such as Miranda as "attempts to seek cosmic justice in the courtroom," but it requires a much better argument than Sowell provides to see how Miranda is anything but procedural. He equates redistributive state policies with "Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot," as if Western European welfare states simply didn't exist. Sowell makes some very good points in these four essays (touching on the difficulty of defining equal performance, the necessity of considering costs in pursuing abstract ideals and the corrosive political effects of envy), but he overplays his hand. The essay called "The Tyranny of Visions" asserts that conservatives "acquire no sense of moral superiority" from their positions, a point that anyone familiar with Pat Buchanan or with Sowell himself will find hard to swallow. Certainly, a good case can be made that people use the term "justice" loosely and that many conflate procedural justice with metaphysical justice. Beyond that, however, Sowell offers a catechism for true conservative believers. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"Much of the world today and down through centuries of history has suffered the terrible consequences of unbridled government power, the prime evil that the writers of the American constitution sought to guard against." It is this "unbridled government power" that prolific political theorist Sowell (Affirmative Action Reconsidered) fears most as something that follows necessarily when societies try to achieve "cosmic justice" (as opposed to "social justice"). "Cosmic justice," he asserts, "is not about the rules of the game" but rather about "putting particular segments of society in the position that they would have been in but for some undeserved misfortune." Referring often to 20th-century world history, he argues persuasively that whatever benefits one might hope would result from trying to right the past wrongs of the world (instead of trying to repair the present world), they are not worth the almost inevitable risks of the loss of freedom and the rise of despotism. As Sowell does so well in his other books--many of which analyze the tradeoff between freedom and equality--he presents his case in clear, convincing, and accessible language. Strongly recommended for most public and academic libraries.--Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

The Wall Street Journal - Daniel J. Silver

Mr. Sowell provides a trenchant critique of this disturbing line of thought, which has done so much harm to the basic values and commitments of most Americans.

Kirkus Reviews

A cosmic straw man is vanquished in the fight against dangerous ideals such as social justice and equality. This is not the place to look for original ideas or honest analysis. Presumably, Sowell's (Migrations and Cultures, 1996, etc.) goal is to entertain those who share his convictions rather than convince open-minded readers, and this audience will be pleased. "Cosmic justice" is presented as a fundamental departure from the "traditional" conception of justice, which Sowell claims has the "characteristic of a process," rather than of a particular outcome. He conveniently forgets to mention that this "tradition" dates back only to the emergence of liberal-democratic states and that contrasting notions of procedural vs. substantive justice remain the subject of lively debate. Admitting legitimate disagreement over even something as slippery as justice would soften the blows he aims at those who think inequality and any associated oppression raises concerns a just society should address, and Sowell is not one to temper a political argument simply to maintain intellectual integrity. He is not straightforwardly defending inequality, of course, but rather is pursuing the familiar strategy of attacking measures that could alleviate it. Sowell, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, boldly asserts that those who believe equality should be pursued through public policy "assume that politicizing inequality is free of costs and dangers." No names are mentioned, and it is indeed hard to imagine that anyone would believe there are no costs or dangers. By stating the issue in terms of extremes, however, he ducks the real issue—the challenge of weighing costs and benefits—andavoids the need for incorporating any subtlety into his discussion.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
I	The Quest for Cosmic Justice	1
II	The Mirage of Equality	49
III	The Tyranny of Visions	97
IV	The Quiet Repeal of the American Revolution	143
	Notes	191
	Index	207

Books about: French Worker or Case Studies in Estate Planning

American Dreamer: The Life of Henry A. Wallace

Author: John C Culver

The son of prominent Midwestern Republicans, Henry Agard Wallace became the emblematic leftist politician of his time. A man ill at ease in the world of politics, Wallace nevertheless came close to becoming president of the United States. He was beloved by millions as the Prophet of the Common Man and yet reviled by millions more as a dangerous, misguided radical.

With American Dreamer, John C. Culver and John Hyde do justice to this important and controversial figure. We are shown Wallace the agriculturist of international renown, the prolific author, the ground-breaking economist, and the businessman whose company (eventually worth billions) paved the way for a worldwide agricultural revolution. The authors do more than investigate the complex personality of their subject. They bring to life with novelistic intensity the pivotal era in which Wallace lived: the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Wallace held two cabinet posts, served four tumultuous years as FDR's wartime vice president, and waged a brave if quixotic campaign for president in 1948. By the McCarthy years, Wallace's reputation was in steep decline, his cries against the escalating Cold War unheeded.

Drawing on thousands of documents, many previously unavailable, Culver and Hyde provide a fully rounded portrait of a man who reflected his country's hopes as well as its flaws, an authentic American dreamer whose story is a vital part of our nation's history.

Arthur Schlesinger

A careful, readable, sympathetic but commendably dispassionate biography. —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Douglas Brinkley

At long last a lucid, balanced and judicious narrative of Henry Wallace...a first-rate biography.

Robert Dallek

Everyone interested in twentieth-century American history will want to read this book.

Walter LaFeber

[T]he most balanced, complete, and readable account...

Kai Bird

A formidable achievement....[an] engrossing account.

Evan Thomas

[A] lucid and sympathetic portrait of a fascinating character. Wallace's life reminds us of a time when ideas really mattered.

George McGovern

This is a great book about a great man. I can't recall when—if ever—I've read a better biography.

Dale Bumpers

Many perceptions of Henry Wallace, not always favorable, will forever be changed.

Michael Beschloss

A fascinating, thoughtful, incisive, and well-researched life of the mysterious and complicated figure who might have become president...

James MacGregor Burns

A fine contribution to twentieth-century American history.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Wonderfully researched and very well written...an indispensable document on both the man and the time.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

In this masterly work, Culver and Hyde have captured one of the more fascinating figures in American history.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy

[E]minently readable...a captivating chronicle of American politics from the Depression through the 1960s.

Mexican New York or Learning to Drive

Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants

Author: Robert Courtney Smith

Drawing on more than fifteen years of research, Mexican New York offers an intimate view of globalization as it is lived by Mexican immigrants and their children in New York and in Mexico. Robert Courtney Smith's groundbreaking study sheds new light on transnationalism, vividly illustrating how immigrants move back and forth between New York and their home village in Puebla with considerable ease, borrowing from and contributing to both communities as they forge new gender roles; new strategies of social mobility, race, and even adolescence; and new brands of politics and egalitarianism.
Smith's deeply informed narrative describes how first-generation men who have lived in New York for decades become important political leaders in their home villages in Mexico. Smith explains how relations between immigrant men and women and their U.S.-born children are renegotiated in the context of migration to New York and temporary return visits to Mexico. He illustrates how U.S.-born youth keep their attachments to Mexico, and how changes in migration and assimilation have combined to transnationalize both U.S.-born adolescents and Mexican gangs between New York and Puebla. Mexican New York profoundly deepens our knowledge of immigration as a social process, convincingly showing how some immigrants live and function in two worlds at the same time and how transnationalization and assimilation are not opposing, but related, phenomena.

Table of Contents:

1	Transnational life in ethnographic perspective	1
2	Dual contexts for transnational life	18
3	"Los ausentes siempre presentes" : making a local-level transnational political community	53
4	The defeat of Don Victorio : transnationalization, democratization, and political change	76
5	Gender strategies, settlement, and transnational life in the first generation	94
6	"In Ticuani, he goes crazy" : the second generation renegotiates gender	123
7	"Padre Jesus, protect me" : adolescence, religion, and social location	147
8	"I'll go back next year" : transnational life across the life course	186
9	Defending your name : the roots and transnationalization of Mexican gangs	207
10	Returning to a changed Ticuani	242
	Conclusions and recommendations	277
	Coda : the Mexican educational foundation of New York	293

Look this: Governing the White House or Accounting Principles

Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories

Author: Katha Pollitt

Celebrated for her award-winning political columns, criticism, and poetry, Katha Pollitt offers something new in this poignant, hilarious, and sometimes outrageous collection of stories drawn from her own life. With deep feeling and sharp insight, she writes about love, sex, betrayal, heartbreak, and much more: what she learned about her parents from reading their FBI files, the joy and loneliness of new motherhood, the curious mental effects of a post-college stint proofreading pornographic novels, and the decline and fall of practically everything, including herself. Unafraid to say what others only think and acknowledge what others won’t admit, Katha Pollitt surprises and entertains on every page.

Praise for Learning to Drive

“The kind of book you want to look up from at points so you can read aloud certain passages to a friend or lover.”
–Chicago Tribune

“A powerful personal narrative . . . full of insight and charm . . . [Katha] Pollitt is her own Jane Austen character . . . haughty and modest, moral and irresponsible, sensible and, happily for us, lost in sensibility.”
–The New York Review of Books

“With . . . bracing self-honesty, Pollitt takes us through the maddening swirl of contradictions at the heart of being fifty-something: the sense of slowing down, of urgency, of wisdom, of ignorance, of strength, of helplessness, of breakdown, of renewal.”
–Sunday Seattle Times

“Essays of breathtaking candor and razor-sharp humor . . . [Pollitt] has outdone herself. . . . [Her] observations are acute and her confessionstonic. Forget face-lifts; Pollitt’s essays elevate the spirit.”
–Booklist (starred review)

“Candid, confessional prose . . . But even at her most intimate, [Pollitt] manages to infuse her tales of dissatisfaction and heartbreak with levity and humor.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Pitch perfect . . . painfully hilarious to read.”
–The Boston Globe

The New York Times - Toni Bentley

Her three previous essay collections gathered brilliant commentary on welfare, abortion, surrogate motherhood, Iraq, gay marriage and health care, mostly from the pages of The Nation. But with Learning to Drive, she gets personal, and shameless. She has decided to wave her dirty laundry (among which she found unidentified striped panties) and confesses to "Webstalking" her longtime, live-in, womanizing former boyfriend…It's hard to tell if she's coming into her own, trying to sell more books or has lost it entirely. Or perhaps she's giving up her dignity in a generous motion of solidarity toward the rest of us who have already blown our cover? Whatever the reason, she's entitled.

Publishers Weekly

This collection of reflections by the Nationessayist and poet Pollitt (Reasonable Creatures) ranges in subject from her philandering boyfriend to a general late-midlife sense of loss. The title essay is the zippiest and most successful, fashioning a canny metaphor about the importance of observation both in learning to drive for the first time at age 52 and in recognizing that her lover of seven years was cheating on her from the get-go. Pollitt plays the conflicted modern woman par excellence, both feminist and feminine; she writes of unabashedly joining a Marxist study group at the behest of her guru-like boyfriend, who padded the meetings with past and present lovers ("In the Study Group"), then wonders with wistful anticipation what kind of life it will be when she has outlived all the men who find her desirable ("After the Men Are Dead"). Familiarity seems to breed weariness, however, and her essays about motherhood ("Beautiful Screamer") and women's tenacious collusion in men's superiority ("Sisterhood") have the feel of oft-tread ground. (Sept. 4)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Stacy Russo - Library Journal

Pollitt (Virginity or Death!) is unconcerned with making friends: some of her comments, particularly on the subjects of abortion and religion, will anger members of the conservative right. But a close reading of these 11 nonfiction pieces executed with fiercely poetic language and brilliantly placed sarcasm reveals a highly inquisitive and independent voice. Pollitt divvies out clever observations of American culture along with honest moments of self-examination. In "Webstalker," she frankly and humorously describes her voyeuristic obsession with her former partner. Another comical yet endearing essay, "In the Study Group," portrays various members of a Marxist study group. Pollitt writes movingly of her father in "Good-bye, Lenin" and of her mother in "Mrs. Razzmatazz." In the final entry, "I Let Myself Go," she questions how some feminists equate plastic surgery with women's freedom. In one of the collection's most poignant moments, Pollitt describes a black-and-white photograph of writer Iris Murdoch's wonderfully wrinkled and asymmetrical face. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. [The New Yorkerwill feature the first serial.-Ed.]

Kirkus Reviews

A collection of savvy, witty essays, more personal than political, from a feminist known for her social and cultural commentary. In the title essay, Pollitt (Virginity or Death!: And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time, 2006, etc.), a long-time columnist for The Nation, has lost her man and consequently must learn to drive a car, a task fraught with difficulties for a woman in late middle age. In the second piece, "Webstalker," the loss of her man turns her into an Internet addict who compulsively Googles him and anyone connected to him. These two essays, both previously published in the New Yorker, are laced with self-deprecating humor, as is "Memoir of a Shy Pornographer," about her stint as a young, shy freelance copyeditor and proofreader of pornography. There is a darker tone to her wry essay on belonging to a Marxist study group, led by a charismatic leader who was also her philandering boyfriend, and in the several pieces on feminism. A measure of poignancy marks her recollections of her Communist father ("Good-Bye, Lenin"), on whom the FBI kept error-filled files, and of her alcoholic mother ("Mrs. Razzmatazz"), who hid bottles in the kitchen cabinets. Resignation fills "End Of," her meditative piece on a vanishing landscape near her Connecticut home. Love, sex, marriage, mothering, aging, keeping up appearances-all come under her sharp scrutiny. A sardonic observer of human behavior, especially the relations between men and women, Pollitt leaves no doubt about her opinions. She writes that " the stories women tell each other about themselves emphasize the comical, the improbable, the vaguely malevolent but always entertaining twists and turns of fate," acharacterization that fits much of her work here. Thoroughly enjoyable reading for anyone, feminist or not, who likes bright, funny, opinionated writing. Agent: Melanie Jackson/Melanie Jackson Agency