Sunday, December 6, 2009

Illicit Flows and Criminal Things or Soviet and Kosher

Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization

Author: Willem van Schendel

Examines the "dark side" of globalization.



Table of Contents:
Introduction : the making of illicitness1
1Spaces of engagement : how borderlands, illicit flows, and territorial states interlock38
2The rumor of trafficking : border controls, illegal migration, and the sovereignty of the nation-state69
3Talking like a state : drugs, borders, and the language of control101
4"Here, even legislators chew them" : coca leaves and identity politics in Northern Argentina128
5Seeing the state like a migrant : why so many non-criminals break immigration laws153
6Criminality and the global diamond trade : a methodological case study177
7Small arms, cattle raiding, and borderlands : the Ilemi Triangle201

Books about: Analysis for Financial Management or Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work

Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939

Author: Anna Shternshis

Explores the formation of a unique Soviet Jewish identity.

What People Are Saying

Scott Ury
"Shternshis takes the reader far beyond the cold war politicalization and American Jewish and/or Israeli Jewish romanticization of "Soviet Jewry" as "the Jews of Silence," and deep into the personal accommodations and transformations of those individuals who saw themselves as being both Soviet and kosher."--(Scott Ury, Faculty of Humanities, Tel Aviv University)




Saturday, December 5, 2009

Asia America and the Transformation of Geopolitics or Time and Chance

Asia, America and the Transformation of Geopolitics

Author: William H Overholt

American security and prosperity now depend on Asia. William H. Overholt offers an iconoclastic analysis of developments in each major Asian country, Asian international relations, and U.S. foreign policy. Drawing on decades of political and business experience, he argues that obsolete Cold War attitudes tie the U.S. increasingly to an otherwise isolated Japan and obscure the reality that a U.S.-Chinese bicondominium now manages most Asian issues. Military priorities risk polarizing the region unnecessarily, weaken the economic relationships that engendered American preeminence, and ironically enhance Chinese influence. As a result, despite its Cold War victory, U.S. influence in Asia is declining. Overholt disputes the argument that democracy promotion will lead to superior development and peace, and forecasts a new era in which Asian geopolitics could take a drastically different shape. Covering Japan, China, Russia, Central Asia, India, Pakistan, Korea, and South-East Asia, Overholt offers invaluable insights for scholars, policymakers, business people, and general readers.



Look this: Unleashing the Idea Virus or ABC for Book Collectors

Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment With History

Author: James Cannon

Gerald Ford came to the presidency at the time of one of our nation's greatest constitutional crises, the downfall of President Richard M. Nixon in the aftermath of the Watergate affair. His service as president concluded a distinguished career in the House of Representatives during which he served as leader of the Republican Party in the House. With unrestricted access to Gerald Ford's papers, James M. Cannon tells the story of Ford's rise and Nixon's ruin, providing new insights into this troubling period of our history and Ford's role in guiding the nation through it. Cannon tells the story of Ford's difficult early life and the beginnings of his career in politics in the period immediately after World War II. He tells the story of Ford's rise to prominence in the House of Representatives during the 1950s and 1960s, giving us a fascinating picture of the Congress. In addition, in telling us about the personal life of Gerald Ford, he gives us a sense of the price Ford paid for his success.

"James Cannon, formerly national affairs editor at Newsweek and Ford's domestic policy advisor, has written a superbly provocative and arresting biography that traces Ford's life from his July 4, 1913, birth in Omaha, Nebraska, to his September 8,1974, decision to pardon Nixon of the Watergate conspiracy." --Washington Post Book World

James M. Cannon is a journalist and was Domestic Policy Adviser to President Ford and Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker.



Friday, December 4, 2009

Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy or Promoting Community Resilience in Disasters

Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy

Author: Steven M Cahn

Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy provides in one volume the major writings from nearly 2,500 years of political and moral philosophy. The most comprehensive collection of its kind, it moves from classical thought (Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero) through medieval views (Augustine, Aquinas) to modern perspectives (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Adam Smith, Kant). It includes major nineteenth-century thinkers (Hegel, Bentham, Mill, Nietzsche) as well as twentieth-century theorists (Rawls, Nozick, Nagel, Foucault, Habermas, Nussbaum). Also included are numerous essays from The Federalist Papers and a variety of notable documents and addresses, among them Pericles' Funeral Oration, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and speeches by Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Dewey, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The readings are substantial or complete texts, not fragments.
An especially valuable feature of this volume is that the works of each author are introduced with a substantive and engaging essay by a leading contemporary authority. These introductions include Richard Kraut on Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Cicero; Paul J. Weithman on Augustine and Aquinas; Roger D. Masters on Machiavelli; Jean Hampton on Hobbes; Steven B. Smith on Spinoza and Hegel; A. John Simmons on Locke; Joshua Cohen on Rousseau and Rawls; Donald W. Livingston on Hume; Charles L. Griswold, Jr., on Smith; Bernard E. Brown on Hamilton and Madison; Jeremy Waldron on Bentham and Mill; Paul Guyer on Kant; Richard Miller on Marx and Engels; Richard Schacht on Nietzsche; Thomas Christiano on Nozick; John Deigh on Nagel;Thomas A. McCarthy on Foucault and Habermas; and Eva Feder Kittay on Nussbaum. Offering unprecedented breadth of coverage, Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy is an ideal text for courses in social and political philosophy, moral philosophy, or surveys in Western civilization.



Table of Contents:
* Unabridged selections

Preface

PLATO

Introduction, Richard Kraut

* Defence of Socrates

* Crito

Republic

Statesman

ARISTOTLE

Introduction, Richard Kraut

Nicomachean Ethics

Politics

EPICURUS

Introduction, Richard Kraut

* Letter to Menoeceus

* Principal Doctrines

CICERO

Introduction, Richard Kraut

On the Republic

On the Laws

AUGUSTINE

Introduction, Paul J. Weithman

The City of God

THOMAS AQUINAS

Introduction, Paul J. Weithman

Summa Theologiae

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

Introduction, Roger D. Masters

The Prince

Discourses

THOMAS HOBBES

Introduction, Jean Hampton

Leviathan

BARUCH SPINOZA

Introduction, Steven B. Smith

Theologico-Political Treatise

JOHN LOCKE

Introduction, A. John Simmons

Second Treatise of Government

Letter Concerning Toleration

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Introduction, Joshua Cohen

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Of the Social Contract

DAVID HUME

Introduction, Donald W. Livingston

A Treatise of Human Nature

* Of Parties in General

* Of the Original Contract

ADAM SMITH

Introduction, Charles L. Griswold, Jr.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

The Wealth of Nations

ALEXANDER HAMILTON and JAMES MADISON

Introduction, Bernard E. Brown

The Federalist Papers

JEREMY BENTHAM

Introduction, Jeremy Waldron

Principles ofLegislation

IMMANUEL KANT

Introduction, Paul Guyer

* Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

* On the Common Saying: "This May Be True in Theory but It Does Not Apply in Practice"

G.W.F. HEGEL

Introduction, Steven B. Smith

The Philosophy of Right

The Philosophy of History

KARL MARX and FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Introduction, Richard Miller

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

The German Ideology

* Manifesto of the Communist Party

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

* Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

JOHN STUART MILL

Introduction, Jeremy Waldron

* Utilitarianism

* On Liberty

Considerations on Representative Government

The Subjection of Women

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Introduction, Richard Schacht

Human, All Too Human

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Beyond Good and Evil

On the Genealogy of Morals

Twilight of the Idols

JOHN RAWLS

Introduction, Joshua Cohen

A Theory of Justice

ROBERT NOZICK

Introduction, Thomas Christiano

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

THOMAS NAGEL

Introduction, John Deigh

Equality and Partiality

MICHEL FOUCAULT

Introduction, Thomas A. McCarthy

Power/Knowledge

JURGEN HABERMAS

Introduction, Thomas A. McCarthy

* Three Normative Models of Democracy

* On the Internal Relation Between the Rule of Law and Democracy

MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM

Introduction, Eva Feder Kittay

* The Feminist Critique of Liberalism

DOCUMENTS AND ADDRESSES

PERICLES

* Funeral Oration

EDMUND BURKE

Speech to the Electors of Bristol

* THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

* THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

* THE DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN AND OF THE CITIZEN

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

First Inaugural Address (selections)

* Gettysburg Address

* Second Inaugural Address

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

* The Solitude of Self

JOHN DEWEY

Democracy

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

* Letter from a Birmingham City Jail

* The March on Washington Address

New interesting book: Trading for a Living or Harvest for Hope

Promoting Community Resilience in Disasters: The Role for Schools, Youth, and Families

Author: Kevin R Ronan

"Promoting Community Resilience in Disasters offers both clinicians and researchers guidance on hazard preparation efforts as well as early response and intervention practices. It emphasizes an evidence- and prevention-based approach that is geared toward readiness, response, and recovery phases of natural and human-made disasters." Promoting Community Resilience in Disasters is specifically geared toward assisting those who work in school or community settings - including school psychologists and counselors, emergency managers and planners, and all mental health professionals - not only to increase resilience after a disaster, but to respond and intervene as quickly as possible when catastrophe strikes. It will assist those charged with the responsibility for helping others respond to and rebound from major traumas, especially clinicians and other professionals who work with children and their family members.



Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Sex of Class or Vestiges of War

The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor

Author: Dorothy Sue Ed Cobbl

Women now comprise the majority of the working class. Yet this fundamental transformation has gone largely unnoticed. This book is about how the sex of workers matters in understanding the jobs they do, the problems they face at work, and the new labor movements they are creating in the United States and globally. In The Sex of Class, twenty prominent scholars, labor leaders, and policy analysts look at the implication of this "sexual revolution" for labor policy and practice. In clear, crisp prose, The Sex of Class introduces readers to some of the most vibrant and forward-thinking social movements of our era: the clerical worker protests of the 1970s; the emergence of gay rights on the auto shop floor; the upsurge of union organizing in service jobs; worker centers and community unions of immigrant women; successful campaigns for paid family leave and work redesign; and innovative labor NGOs, cross-border alliances, and global labor federations. The Sex of Class reveals the animating ideas and the innovative strategies put into practice by the female leaders of the twenty-first-century social justice movement. The contributors to this book offer new ideas for how government can help reduce class and sex inequalities; they assess the status of women and sexual minorities within the traditional labor movement; and they provide inspiring case studies of how women workers and their allies are inventing new forms of worker representation and power.



Books about: 5 Minutes Smoothies or Slow Food

Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream 1899-1999

Author: Angel Shaw

U.S. intervention in the Philippines began with the little-known 1899 Philippine-American War. Using the war as its departure point in analyzing U.S.-Philippine relations, Vestiges of War retrieves this willfully forgotten event and places it where it properly belongs—as the catalyst that led to increasing U.S. interventionism and expansionism in the Asia Pacific region. This seminal, multidisciplinary anthology examines the official American nationalist story of "benevolent assimilation" and fraternal tutelage in its half century of colonial occupation of the Philippines.Integrating critical and visual art essays, archival and contemporary photographs, dramatic plays, and poetry to address the complex Philippine and U.S. perspectives and experiences, the essayists compellingly recount the consequences of American colonialism in the Philippines. Vestiges of War will force readers to reshape their views on what has been a deliberately obscure but significant phase in the histories of both countries, one which continues to haunt the present. Contributors include: Genara Banzon, Santiago Bose, Ben Cabrera, Renato Constantino, Doreen Fernandez, Eric Gamalinda, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Jessica Hagedorn, Reynaldo Ileto, Yong Soon Min, Manuel Ocampo, Paul Pfeiffer, Christina Quisumbing, Vicente Rafael, Daniel Boone Schirmer, Kidlat Tahimik, Mark Twain, and Jim Zwick.

Author Biography: Angel Velasco Shaw is a film and video maker and teaches in the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program at New York University. Luis H. Francia's many books include Flippin': Filipinos on America, Eye of the Fish and Brown River, White Ocean.

Howard Zinn

An extraordinary collection of literary, artistic, and historical work which fills the huge gap in what Americans know about their nation's relationship to the Philippines, in war and peace.



Tuesday, December 1, 2009

All Fall Down or Day of Reckoning

All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran

Author: Gary Sick

All Fall Down is the definitive chronicle of America's experience with the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis of 1978-81. Drawing on internal government documents, it recounts the controversies, decisions and uncertainties that made this a unique chapter in modern American history. From his personal experiences, author Gary Sick draws revealing portraits of the people who engaged in this test of wills with an Islamic revolutionary regime. A page one review in the New York Times Book Review praised it as "convincing, fair and balanced."



New interesting textbook: The Future of Reputation or Essay on the Principle of Population

Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed are Tearing America Apart

Author: Patrick J Buchanan

America is coming apart at the seams.  Forces foreign and domestic seek an end to U.S. sovereignty and independence.  Before us looms the prospect of an America breaking up along the lines of race, ethnicity, class and culture.  In Day of Reckoning, Pat Buchanan reveals the true existential crisis of the nation and shows how President Bush’s post-9/11 conversion to an ideology of “democratism” led us to the precipice of strategic disaster abroad and savage division at home.

Ideology, writes Buchanan, is a Golden Calf, a false god, a secular religion that seeks vainly, like Marxism, to create a paradise on earth. 

While free enterprise is good, the worship of a “free trade” that is destroying the dollar, de-industrializing America, and ending our economic independence, is cult madness.  While America must stand for freedom and self-determination, the use of U.S. troops to police the planet or serve as advance guard of some “world democratic revolution” is, as Iraq shows, imperial folly that will bring ruin to the republic. While America should speak out for human rights, the idea that we get in Russia’s face and hand out moral report cards to every nation on earth is moral arrogance.  While we have benefited from immigration and the melting pot worked with millions of Europeans, the idea we can import endless millions of aliens, legal and illegal, from every culture, clime, creed, and continent on earth, and still remain a country, is absurd. 

To save America the first imperative is to remove from power the ideologues of both parties who have nearly killed our country. 

In his finalchapter, Buchanan lays out ideas to prevent the end of America.  He calls for a bottom-up review of all of America’s Cold War commitments, a ten-point program to secure America’s borders, ideas to halt the erosion of our national sovereignty and restore our manufacturing preeminence and economic independence, and a formula for finding the way to a cold peace in the culture wars. 

Buchanan offers a radical but necessary program, for neither party is addressing the real crisis of America -- whether we survive as one nation and people, or disintegrate into what Theodore Roosevelt called a “tangle of squabbling nationalities” and not a nation at all.

IN THIS EYE-OPENING BOOK, PAT BUCHANAN REVEALS THE PERILOUS PATH OUR NATION HAS TAKEN:

- Pax Americana -- the era of U.S. global dominance -- is over.

- A struggle for world hegemony among the United States, China, a resurgent Russia and radical Islam has begun.

- Torn apart by a culture war, America has begun to Balkanize and break down along class, cultural, ethnic, and racial lines.

- Free trade is hollowing out U.S. industry, destroying the dollar, and plunging the country into permanent dependency and unpayable debt.

- One of every six U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished under Bush.

- The Third World invasion through Mexico is a graver threat to U.S. survival than anything happening in Afghanistan or Iraq. 

…IS OUR DAY OF RECKONING JUST AHEAD?

The New York Times - Chris Suellentrop

Buchanan can write, and he knows how to provoke. His foreign policy prescriptions—withdraw from NATO, abandon our commitments to Taiwan and South Korea and pretty much everywhere else in the world—are not likely to be adopted by the nominee of either major party in 2008, but he presents them forcefully and often persuasively. They deserve a wider hearing in American politics than they are currently given, if only to challenge the adherents of the prevailing orthodoxy to question their assumptions.



Table of Contents:
Introduction: How Nations Perish     1
The End of Pax Americana     13
End of a Unipolar World     27
The Gospel of George Bush     55
Imperial Overstretch     109
Who Shall Inherit the Earth?     137
Deconstructing America     169
Colony of the World     191
Day of Reckoning     235
Acknowledgments     265
Notes     267
Index     283