Politics & Islam Books

Illicit Flows and Criminal Things or Soviet and Kosher

2009-12-06T13:15:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Willem van Schendel

Examines the "dark side" of globalization.

	Introduction : the making of illicitness	1
1	Spaces of engagement : how borderlands, illicit flows, and territorial states interlock	38
2	The rumor of trafficking : border controls, illegal migration, and the sovereignty of the nation-state	69
3	Talking like a state : drugs, borders, and the language of control	101
4	"Here, even legislators chew them" : coca leaves and identity politics in Northern Argentina	128
5	Seeing the state like a migrant : why so many non-criminals break immigration laws	153
6	Criminality and the global diamond trade : a methodological case study	177
7	Small arms, cattle raiding, and borderlands : the Ilemi Triangle	201

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)

Asia America and the Transformation of Geopolitics or Time and Chance

2009-12-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-12-04T02:51:00.000-08:00

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.

* 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.

The Sex of Class or Vestiges of War

2009-12-02T21:40:00.000-08:00

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.

All Fall Down or Day of Reckoning

2009-12-01T16:17:00.000-08:00

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.

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

Catherine the Great or ReOrient

2009-11-30T11:04:00.000-08:00

Catherine the Great: Life and Legend

Author: John T Alexander

One of the most colorful characters in modern history, Catherine II of Russia began her life as a minor German princess, until the childless Empress Elizabeth and Catherine's own scheming mother married her off to the Grand Duke Peter of Russia at age sixteen. By thirty-three, she had overthrown her husband in a bloodless coup and established herself as Empress of the multinational Russian Empire, the largest territorial political unit in modern history.
Portrayed both as a political genius who restored to Russia the glory it had known in the days of Peter the Great and as a despotic foreign adventuress who usurped the Russian throne, murdered her rivals, and tyrannized her subjects, she was, by all accounts, an extraordinary woman. Catherine the Great, the first popular biography of the empress based on contemporary scholarship, provides a vivid portrait of Catherine as a mother, a lover, and, above all, an extremely savvy ruler. Concentrating on her long reign (1762-96), John Alexander examines all aspects of Catherine's life and career: the brilliant political strategies by which she won the acceptance of a nationalistic elite; her expansive foreign policy; the domestic reforms with which she revamped the Russian military, political structure, and economy; and, of course, her infamous love life.
Beginning with an account of the dramatic palace revolt by which Catherine unseated her husband and a background chapter describing the circumstances of her early childhood and marriage, Alexander then proceeds chronologically through the thirty-four years of her reign. Presenting Catherine in more human terms than previous biographers have, Alexander includesnumerous quotations from her reminiscences and notes. We learn, for instance, not only the names and number of her lovers, but her understanding of what many considered a shocking licentiousness. "The trouble is," she wrote, "that my heart would not willingly remain one hour without love."
The result of twenty years' research by one of America's leading narrative historians of modern Russia, this truly impressive work offers a much-needed, balanced reappraisal of one of history's most scandal-ridden figures.

The Chicago Tribune - W. Bruce Lincoln

Alexander's carefully researched political biography at last gives Catherine her due as "the overburdened ruler of an immense and turbulent empire."

Interesting textbook: The New Deal or Lighting the Way

ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age

Author: Andre Gunder Frank

This book outlines and analyzes the global economy and its sectoral and regional division of labor and cyclical dynamic from 1400 to 1800. The evidence and argument are that within this global economy Asians and 20 particularly Chinese were preponderant, no more"traditional" than Europeans, and in fact largely far less so. The historical documentation poses an 'emperor has no clothes' challenge to all received Eurocentric historiography and social theory from Montesquieu, Marx and Weber, or 20 Toynbee and Polanyi, to Rostow, Braudel and Wallerstein.

The books's global economic analysis offers a more holistic theoretical alternative. 'The Rise of the West' was not due to any 'European Miracle exceptionalism' that allegedly permitted it to pull itself up by its own bootstraps as Weberians have contended. Nor did Europe build a 'European world-economy around itself" a la Braudel and thereby 20 as per Marx and Wallerstein [as well as Frank's own WORLD ACCUMULATION 1492-1789] initiating a European centered 'Modern Capitalist World-System' primarily by exploiting the wealth of its American and African colonies. Instead, Europe used its American silver to buy itself marginal entry into the long since existing world market in Asia, which was much larger, more productive and competitive, continued to expand much faster until 1800, and was able to support a rate of population growth in Asia that was than double that of Europe until 1750.

Then changing world economic/ demographic/ ecological relations and relative factor prices in the competitive global economy resulted in the temporary 'Decline of the East' and the opportunity for the also temporary 'The Rise of the West'. Europe took advantage of this world economic opportunity through import substitution, export promotion and technological change to become Newly Industrializing Economies after 1800, as is again happening today in East Asia. That region is now REgaining its 'traditional' dominance in the global economy, with the Chinese 'Middle Kingdom' again at its 'center.'

Harbans Mukhia

If challenging received wisdom is a trademark, this book is written as the mother of all challenges. The immense power of the book rests on the ability to provoke and force one to rethink many facets of history that have been taken for granted for a long long time. -- Harbans Mukhia

Saubhik Chakabarti

ReOrient's biggest virtue: it forces the reader to at least look differently at world history- This impressive and illuminating analysis 20 sets out to challenge the mother of all orthodoxies that Europe discovered capitalism and industrialisation and that what followed and is happening and will happen is essentially a fallout of this European preeminence. -- The Statesman

What People Are Saying

Jack Goody
This is a brave book, brave in the academic as well as the personal sense. It insists on a completely necessary reorientation of academic and political views. It will prove to be compulsory reading. (Jack Goody London Times Higher Education Supplement & St. Johns College, Cambridge)

Martin Lewis
ReORIENT deserves to become an instant classic. (Martin Lewis, Duke University)

Mark Selden
A book for the millennium ... can be a landmark book that shapes substantially the scholarship and understanding of the next generation of researchers. It should have an immediate impact. (Mark Selden, State University of New York)

Albert Bergesen
Frank gained his world wide fame by making an argument that caused a revolution in thinking about Third World Development. Well, the same thing is about to happen again, except this time the stakes are much higher. Now it is the theories of the endogenous nature of change in the West that is being challenged. The Wallersteinian world economy did not give rise to the world-system, Frank argues, but the Afroeurasian world system gave rise to the European world economy. To correct the historical fact is to challenge the theoretical scaffolding of everyone from Marx to Weber to Braudel to Wallerstein. Frank shows how [they] got it all wrong. This book is conceptually that important. A fundamental rethinking absolutely essential to understanding world history. (Albert Bergesen, University of Arizona)

Kenneth Pomeranz
This will be an extremely important book of sufficient originality and importance to have a major impact. It could not be more ambitious. (Kenneth Pomeranz, University of California at Irvine)

Bin Wong
The author redefines our baseline for assessing the 'rise' of Europe. I believe this book could become a benchmark study. (Bin Wong, University of California at Irvine)

Peter Perdue
Andre Gunder Frank's ReORIENT is a heroic effort to reconstruct our conceptions of the world economy in the early modern age. A brilliant theory - Frank's single-mided, relentless, and compelling organic model achieves coherence and has much to offer. (Peter Perdue, Massachussetts Institute of Technology)

Peer Vries Itinerario
Andre Gunder Frank's latest work ReORIENT:Global Economy in the Asian Age definitely is a book with a message. Its author sets out to challenge and overturns the ideas of such influential scholars as Marx, Weber, Polanyi, Rostow, Braudel and Wallerstein. As a matter of fact, almost everybody who has ever touched on the subject. (Peer Vries Itinerario, University of Leiden)

Guarding the Golden Door or Gods of Diyala

2009-11-29T05:52:00.000-08:00

Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882

Author: Roger Daniels

"Arguably the most useful for general readers. Clearly written, reasonably lean and on the whole, balanced in its assessments, it is an excellent primer." --Los Angeles Times

The federal government's efforts to pick and choose among the multitude of immigrants seeking to enter the United States began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Conceived in ignorance and falsely presented to the public, it had undreamt of consequences, and this pattern has been rarely deviated from since. As renowned historian Roger Daniels shows in this brilliant new work, America's inconsistent, often illogical, and always cumbersome immigration policy has profoundly affected our recent past.

Immigration policy in Daniels' skilled hands shows Americans at their best and worst, from the nativist violence that forced Theodore Roosevelt's 1907 "gentlemen's agreement" with Japan to the generous refugee policies adopted after World War Two and throughout the Cold War. And in a conclusion drawn from today's headlines, Daniels makes clear how far ignorance, partisan politics, and unintended consequences have overtaken immigration policy during the current administration's War on Terror.

Irreverent, deeply informed, and authoritative, Guarding the Golden Door presents an unforgettable interpretation of modern American history.

Publishers Weekly

Immigration-perhaps no other subject so contentiously touches on both our collective idealism and our capacity for irrational fear. Nostalgic about past immigrants, we magnify the threat of newly arriving hordes of outsiders. Daniels, author of several books about the Japanese-American experience, judiciously avoids a sweeping narrative in favor of an immersion in the messy details of legislation and demography, although accurate assessments are elusive. Reflecting the lack of overarching plot, the book's first half is chronological to 1965, after which it switches to an ethnic breakdown. As Daniels shows, the subject yields hyperbolic rhetoric and misleading statistics, which rarely lead to coherent or effective legislation. Congress rarely grasp the real ramifications of its immigration policy as it underfunds its nominally ambitious measures. Despite his deeply academic cast of mind, Daniels keeps his prose engaging and lively, as he displays his evident love of accuracy and impatience with obfuscation. Those who read closely will unearth arresting tidbits, such as the central role of the Chinese as targets in virtually all early anti-immigration measures and the brief but virulent anti-Filipino hysteria of the early 1930s. Perhaps most interesting is the final section, in which Daniels tackles broader questions about the debate, including the surprisingly little-changed status of immigration in the post-9/11, post-INS landscape. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

This useful study introduces readers to the tangled history of immigration policy in the United States. Such an introduction is badly needed: on the evidence of this book, much of U.S. immigration policy has been made by those who did not understand the consequences of the policies they struggled to enact. Before 1882, the country had no immigration policy: anyone who got here could stay here. But Americans already living here have always felt ambivalent toward new arrivals; while recognizing that immigrants provide cheap and willing labor, they have doubted the ability of various groups to assimilate. Benjamin Franklin worried about the Germans, and later generations worried about the Irish, the Italians, and the Jews. Historically, these fears have been expressed in terms of race; today, "culture" is the preferred term to distinguish the assimilable, useful immigrants from the purportedly dangerous ones. Daniels sees immigration policy moving in long waves. From 1882 to 1921, the doors were slowly closed. Immigration policy was tightest between the two world wars, but controls began to relax during Harry Truman's presidency. A second period of openness culminated in the amnesties of the 1980s. Now, with the percentage of foreign-born residents comparable to levels of a century ago, there may be further efforts at tightening ahead.

Library Journal

Daniels (Prisoners Without Trial) provides an expert reexamination of American immigration policy and immigrant history. He identifies "nodal points" in the history of immigration to the United States, beginning with the racist Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and following the twists and turns in official policy up to the present debate on how to control illegal immigration. Statistics and detailed discussion of immigration law and its consequences (intended and unintended) illustrate the successive battles between nativists and those championing freer immigration. Daniels's work is particularly striking when detailing the story of Asian immigration to the United States. For example, in the 19th century Chinese immigrants were nearly entirely male; it was not until after World War II that large numbers of Chinese women were admitted, many as war brides. Throughout, the author argues that immigration policy is often based on unfounded assumptions and often produces results completely opposite to those intended. Intricate descriptions of immigration law and statistical evidence make this a solid but rather scholarly work that is highly recommended for academic libraries.-Duncan Stewart, Univ. of Iowa Libs., Iowa City Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

	List of Tables and Charts
	Acknowledgments
Pt. I	The Golden Door Closes and Opens, 1882-1965
1	The Beginnings of Immigration Restriction, 1882-1917	3
2	The 1920s: The Triumph of the Old Nativism	27
3	No New Deal for Immigration	59
4	World War II and After: The Barriers Begin to Drop	81
5	Admitting Displaced Persons: 1946-1950	98
6	The Cold War and Immigration	113
7	Lyndon Johnson and the End of the Quota System	129
Pt. II	Changing Patterns in a Changing World, 1965-2001
8	Immigrants from Other Worlds: Asians	147
9	Immigrants from Other Worlds: Latinos	175
10	Refugees and Human Rights: Cubans, Southeast Asians, and Others	190
11	Immigration Reform: Myths and Realities	219
12	"Controlling Our Borders": Struggles over Immigration Policy	232
	Epilogue: Immigration After 9/11	261
	Notes	269
	Bibliography	301
	Index	317

Interesting textbook: Guinea Pig Zero or Walking for Fitness

Gods of Diyala: Transfer of Command in Iraq

Author: Caleb S Cag

"When Caleb Cage and Greg Tomlin deployed to Baquba, Iraq, in March 2004, they embarked on a mission that would redefine how conventional U.S. military forces right an urban war. Responsible for leading artillery units through a transition into anti-insurgent rifle companies and carrying out daily combat patrols in one of the region's most notorious hotspots, Cage and Tomlin chronicle Task Force 1-6 Field Artillery's year on the ground in Iraq and its response to the insurgency that threatened to engulf their corner of the Sunni Triangle a year after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime." The Gods of Diyala offers a new and personal perspective on the second stage of the ongoing war in Iraq. Students and scholars of military history will find its insights meaningful and informative, and general readers will enjoy its measured narratives of a year spent trying to protect a fragile nation's struggle toward democracy.

Writing in the Dark or Quiet Strength

2009-11-28T00:40:00.000-08:00

Writing in the Dark: Essays

Author: David Grossman

Recent essays on Israel, literature, and language from one of the country's most respected and best-loved voices Throughout his career, David Grossman has been a voice for peace and reconciliation between Israel and its Arab citizens and neighbors. In six new essays on politics and culture in Israel today, he addresses the conscience of a country that has lost faith in its leaders and its ideals. This collection includes an already famous speech concerning the disastrous Second Lebanon War of 2006, the war that took the life of Grossman’s twenty-year-old son, Uri. Moving, humane, clear-sighted, and courageous, touching on literature and artistic creation as well as politics and philosophy, these writings are a cri de coeur from a heroic voice of reason at a time of uncertainty and despair.

Publishers Weekly

Peace activist and vocal advocate for "relinquishing the Territories and ending the Occupation," Israeli novelist Grossman is unafraid of controversy; these six essays, however, address these concerns more obliquely, through the lens of literature. "Books That Have Read Me" merges the young reader's discovery that "books are the place in the world where both the thing and the loss of it can be contained" with the older writer's urge "to describe contemporary political reality in a language that is not the public, general, nationalized idiom." Grossman's passions are two-an Israel at peace with its neighbors and a citizenry restored to dignity through the individual language of literature, which "can bring us together with the fate of those who are distant and foreign." Grossman lays claim to an "acquired naïveté" in his hopefulness; how welcome and enlightening it is. (Oct.)

David Keymer - Library Journal

Reflecting on the historical trauma that preceded the birth of his young country and conditioned its citizens' response to subsequent threats, Israeli novelist and essayist Grossman writes of his childhood in the 1950s: "In my neighborhood, people screamed every night from their nightmares." Besides being powerful imagery, that quote explains the environment in which Grossman operates. This slim book may seem limited in its appeal-four essays are on writing fiction in Israel, two on the need for peace with Israel's neighbors-but Grossman's ruminations are pertinent to us all. What can the fiction writer offer us in a world under continual siege, where external threat deadens our response to others' suffering and we dehumanize our enemies to make it easier to deal with them? Fiction writers, argues Grossman, have the rare opportunity to see other people as people, resisting the impulse to demonize them. "To write about the enemy means, primarily, to think about the enemy...even if he [the writer] is absolutely convinced of his own justness and the enemy's malice and cruelty." These essays are all worth reading, but the four on writing are exceptional. This heartfelt book, with a lasting impact, is enthusiastically recommended for larger general collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ6/15/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

Israeli novelist Grossman (Her Body Knows, 2005, etc.) muses about authors who have influenced him and about the difficulties of living and writing in one of the world's most dangerous places. In these six slender essays, most originally delivered as speeches, the author discusses his passionate belief in the redemptive powers of literature. Grossman recalls reading Sholem Aleichem at his father's urging when he was a boy, then later realizing that the people he read about in those tales were the sorts of people who had died in the Holocaust. He alludes to other literary mentors-Kafka, Mann, Boll, Woolf-and writes amusingly about the influence of Bruno Schulz, whom he'd not read until a reader informed him that his work sounded like Schulz's. He writes compellingly of "the Other," examining our fear of those who are not like us and the analogous fear of the "others" who dwell inside us, whom we struggle to control. Grossman, who lost a son in military action in Lebanon, reveals the ability to view the world from perspectives other than his own; he tries to enter the minds of, say, Palestinians, just as he attempts to inhabit the lives of his fictional characters. Until people have hope in a peaceful future, he declares, chaos continues and powerful leaders easily control us by frightening us and appealing to the worst aspects of our nature. Living in fear and hopelessness leads to "a shrinking of our soul's surface," he writes, and fear constricts not just the political landscape but language itself. Grossman ponders the metaphor of Israel's borders, which have shifted continually since the nation's birth. Repeatedly, he yearns for a time when stability replaces fragility and hopetriumphs over fear. His final piece blasts the current Israeli leadership for exacerbating conditions in the region. Affecting essays that emphasize our common humanity.

Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation

Author: Rosa Parks

On June 15, 1999, Mrs. Rosa Parks was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor -- a tribute to the power of one solitary woman to influence the soul of a nation. But awards and influence were far from her mind when, on December 1, 1955, she refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was not trying to start a movement. She was simply tired of social injustice and did not think a woman should be forced to stand so that a man could sit down. Yet her simple act of courage set in motion a chain of events that changed forever the landscape of American race relations. Quiet Strength celebrates the principles and convictions that have guided her through a remarkable life. It is a printed record of her legacy -- her lasting message to a world still struggling to live in harmony.

War and Decision or Brown Tide Rising

2009-11-26T19:29:00.000-08:00

War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism

Author: Douglas J Feith

Of all the players in the planning and evolution of the Bush Administration's war on terrorism, few were more integral -- or more controversial -- than Douglas Feith, the chief strategist on Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon policy team. A highly influential international policy analyst for more than a quarter century before joining the Bush Administration in 2001, Feith worked closely with Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Cheney, and President Bush in defining the U.S. response to the attacks of 9/11 -- from the successful war on Afghanistan to the more challenging invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

Now, in this candid and revealing memoir, Feith -- a founding member of the "neoconservative" movement and an architect of the administration's preventive strategy in the war on terrorism -- offers the most in-depth and authoritative account yet of the Pentagon's evolving stance during one of the most controversial eras of American history. Drawing upon a unique trove of documents and records, this extraordinary chronicle will put the reader in the room for scores of previously unreported senior-level meetings, showing how hundreds of critical decisions were made in defense of American interests during and after the crisis of 9/11 -- decisions both successful and controversial. Where journalists like Bob Woodward could only speculate, Feith is the first inside player to reveal the inner workings of the Pentagon, at a time when history hung in the balance.

As the political battles over Iraq and the Bush administration surge onward, one thing has been missing: A fair and accurate assessment of how the battles were joined, from inside the team that planned them. With this exceptional work of history, Douglas Feith contributes the only thing that can change the course of the debate: the truth.

Book about: Data Analysis Using Microsoft Excel or The SSCP Prep Guide

Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse

Author: Otto Santa Ana

"...awash under a brown tide...the relentless flow of immigrants..like waves on a beach, these human flows are remaking the face of America...." Since 1993, metaphorical language such as this has permeated mainstream media reporting on the United States' growing Latino population. In this groundbreaking book, Otto Santa Ana argues that far from being mere figures of speech, such metaphors produce and sustain negative public perceptions of the Latino community and its place in American society, precluding the view that Latinos are vested with the same rights and privileges as other citizens.

Applying the insights of cognitive metaphor theory to an extensive natural language data set drawn from hundreds of articles in the Los Angeles Times and other media, Santa Ana reveals how metaphorical language portrays Latinos as invaders, outsiders, burdens, parasites, diseases, animals, and weeds. He convincingly demonstrates that three anti-Latino referenda passed in California because of such imagery, particularly the infamous anti-immigrant measure, Proposition 187. Santa Ana illustrates how Proposition 209 organizers broadcast compelling new metaphors about racism to persuade an electorate that had previously supported affirmative action to ban it. He also shows how Proposition 227 supporters used antiquated metaphors for learning, school, and language to blame Latino children's speech—rather than gross structural inequity—for their schools' failure to educate them. Santa Ana concludes by calling for the creation of insurgent metaphors to contest oppressive U.S. public discourse about minority communities.

	Foreword
	Preface
	Acknowledgments
Ch. 1	Why Study the Public Discourse Metaphors Depicting Latinos?	1
Pt. I	Theory and Method	13
Ch. 2	How Metaphor Shapes Public Opinion	15
Pt. II	Analyses	63
Ch. 3	Proposition 187: Misrepresenting Immigrants and Immigration	65
Ch. 4	Proposition 209: Competing Metaphors for RACISM and AFFIRMATIVE ACTION	104
Ch. 5	Student as Means, Not End: Contemporary American Discourse on Education	156
Ch. 6	American Discourse on NATION and LANGUAGE: The "English for the Children" Referendum	197
Pt. III	Conclusions	251
Ch. 7	DISEASE or INTRUDER: Metaphors Constructing the Place of Latinos in the United States	253
Ch. 8	Insurgent Metaphors: Contesting the Conventional Representations of Latinos	295
App	Tallies of Political Metaphors	321
	Notes	333
	References	365
	Permissions Acknowledgments	393
	Index	395

For Freedoms Sake or Chicano Art

2009-11-25T14:17:00.000-08:00

For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

Author: Chana Kai Le

In this intimate biography, Chana Kai Lee documents Hamer's lifelong crusade to empower the poor through collective action, her rise to national prominence as a civil rights activist, and the personal costs of her ongoing struggle to win a political voice and economic self-sufficiency for blacks in the segregated South.. "Offering a complex understanding of how racism, sexism, violence, and economic injustice intersected to spur the civil rights movement and to shape, and sometimes restrict, the role of women and poor people within it, Lee illuminates the abiding links between political activism and economic transformation.. "The definitive biography of one of the most important civil rights activists of the twentieth century, For Freedom's Sake is also a moving social history of a critical epoch in American history.

Publishers Weekly

At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Fannie Lou Hamer garnered the national spotlight when she and other members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party attempted to unseat the entirely white official Mississippi delegation. Though the coup failed, and Hamer herself earned the wrath of Lyndon Johnson, she helped draw attention to the ways in which black Southerners were denied political power. At the time, Hamer had only been involved in the civil rights movement for two years; at the age of 47 she reemerged as a natural and vibrant leader who would go on to run (unsuccessfully) for the Mississippi State Senate. Lee's biography is less committed to exploring Hamer's personal life than to charting her growth as an activist and examining the profound impact of gender, sexuality, violence and poverty on the early civil rights movement. By focusing on these issues in Hamer's own life--the repeated rapes her grandmother endured, resulting in 20 illegitimate children, Hamer's own involuntary sterilization and the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the police--the book highlights the vantage point of African-American women in the fight for basic human rights in the South. Lee handles this difficult material sensitively, placing it in context of the economic and social complexities of Southern life. Never sentimentalizing her subject, Lee honestly discusses the movement's bitter internal struggles, Hamer's severe bouts with depression and her strong disagreements with white feminists. This biography vividly brings to light a crucial aspect of the civil rights movement that until now has not been given its due. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Interesting book: Imperialismo:a Etapa mais Alta de Capitalismo

Chicano Art: Inside/Outside the Master's House: Cultural Politics and the Cara Exhibition

Author: Alicia Gaspar de Alba

In the early 1990s, a major exhibition Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985 toured major museums around the United States. As a first attempt to define and represent Chicano/a art for a national audience, the exhibit attracted both praise and controversy, while raising fundamental questions about the nature of multiculturalism in the U.S.

This book presents the first interdisciplinary cultural study of the CARA exhibit. Alicia Gaspar de Alba looks at the exhibit as a cultural text in which the Chicano/a community affirmed itself not as a "subculture" within the U.S. but as an "alter-Native" culture in opposition to the exclusionary and homogenizing practices of mainstream institutions. She also shows how the exhibit reflected the cultural and sexual politics of the Chicano Movement and how it serves as a model of Chicano/a popular culture more generally.

Drawing insights from cultural studies, feminist theory, anthropology, and semiotics, this book constitutes a wide-ranging analysis of Chicano/a art, popular culture, and mainstream cultural politics. It will appeal to a diverse audience in all of these fields.

The Many Faces of Political Islam or Foxbats Over Dimona

2009-02-21T22:41:00.000-08:00

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.<

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

2009-02-20T17:29:00.000-08:00

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.

	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

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

2009-02-19T08:51:00.000-08:00

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.

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

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

2009-02-18T03:38:00.000-08:00

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.

	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

2009-02-16T22:27:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-02-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

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.

	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

2009-02-14T12:01:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-02-13T06:47:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-02-12T01:35:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-02-10T20:23:00.000-08:00

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.

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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

2009-02-09T15:11:00.000-08:00

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)

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

2009-02-08T09:58:00.000-08:00

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.

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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

2009-02-07T04:45:00.000-08:00

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

	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

2009-02-05T23:33:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-02-04T18:20:00.000-08:00

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.

The Quest for Cosmic Justice or American Dreamer

2009-02-03T13:07:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-02-02T07:53:00.000-08:00

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.

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)

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

100 Ways America is Screwing up the World or Kennedy Women

2009-02-01T02:40:00.000-08:00

100 Ways America is Screwing up the World

Author: John Tirman

What do George W. Bush, Wal-Mart, Halliburton, gangsta rap, and SUVs have in common? They're all among the hundred ways in which America is screwing up the world. The country that was responsible for many, if not most, of the twentieth century's most important scientific and technological advancements now demonizes its scientists and thinkers in the twenty-first, while dumbing down its youth with anti-Darwin/pro-"Intelligent Design" propaganda. The longtime paragon of personal freedoms now supports torture and illegal wiretapping—spreading its principles and policies at gunpoint while ruthlessly bombing the world with Big Macs and Mickey Mouse ears.

At once serious-minded and satirical, John Tirman's 100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World is an insightful, unabashed, entertaining, and distressing look at where we've gone terribly wrong—from the destruction of the environment to the promotion of abhorrent personal health and eating habits to the "wussification" of the free press—an alternately admonishing and amusing call to arms for patriotic Blue America.

Publishers Weekly

As a liberal response to the wealth of pop conservative writing-such as last year's 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America by Bernard Goldberg and Peter Schweitzer's Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy-this collection of 100 pithy salvos against current U.S. culture, and domestic and foreign policy hits its mark. Tirman, an unabashed liberal and the executive director of MIT's Center for International Studies, has a sly style and makes his often predictable points with unexpected panache. Whether he `s skewering the American obsession with consumerism, the rise of the pro-war progressive ("when I see a liberal hawk, I smell a rat") or the recent globalization of Christian evangelism, Tirman stays just this side of cranky and avoids preaching only to the converted. About a third of the time, he makes arresting points, such as that the media obsesses over white "damsels in distress," like Laci Peterson or Natalee Holloway, while refusing to discuss truly important issues such as "rapes of girls as a weapon of war." As quick-sketch political commentary goes, these laconic essays are terrific. But the bottom line is that while Tirman is arguably fairer and more nuanced than Goldberg or Schweitzer, none of these books contributes to substantive political understanding or debate. (Aug. 1) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family

Author: Laurence Leamer

Monumental in scope and extraordinary in sensitivity, The Kennedy Women chronicles five matrilineal generations in our nation's premier political dynasty. Not merely distinguished cultural history, it is a story of epic sweep, brimming with triumph and tragedy, courage and compliance, self-sacrifice and self-delusion. Moving from steerage on an immigrant vessel to the slums of Boston, from the Court of St. James's to the White House and beyond, The Kennedy Women paints startling, in-depth portraits of the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters who stood beside some of the most dynamic men of the twentieth century through occasions of great opulence and heartbreak, victory and scandal. Among its revelations: how Rose's marriage almost ended on her wedding day; the poignantly detailed life stories of mentally challenged Rosemary and the glorious, lost Kathleen; Jackie's near death in the weeks before the inauguration; Eunice's struggle, despite chronic illness, to build the Special Olympics; a long-guarded account of Rose's response to Chappaquiddick; Jean Kennedy Smith's and the family's private reactions to the William Kennedy Smith rape charges; Jackie's gallant battle to live and die with dignity and privacy; and the unique challenges and pressures confronting future Kennedy matriarchs Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, Maria Shriver Schwarzenegger, Kerry Kennedy Cuomo, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and Rory Kennedy. Here, finally, is the women's story; even those who feel they know all there is to know about the Kennedys will discover how much more there is to the story. For five years, Laurence Leamer researched this book, receiving unprecedented cooperation from family members, interviewing scores of relatives and close associates, gaining access to hundreds of personal documents. Included are thirty-two pages of rare and fascinating family photographs. The Kennedy Women combines exhaustive and superb scholarship with a gripping narrative.

Publishers Weekly

Five generations of Kennedys are chronicled in this unauthorized biography of the women who helped shape the image of this enduring dynasty. (June)

Library Journal

This intimate portrait of five generations of Kennedy women is the basis for a minidocudrama airing in October.

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

2009-01-30T21:28:00.000-08:00

Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization

Author: Jason Brownle

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

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

Lincoln and the Civil War

Author: John M Hay

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

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

2009-01-29T16:15:00.000-08:00

The Best Damn Cybercrime and Forensics Book Period

Author: Jack Wiles

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

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

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

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

Book review: Digital Communications or Latin Journey

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

Author: Susan Griffin

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

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

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

Bob Nardini Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - School Library Journal

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

Hearing the Other Side or Ikes Final Battle

2009-01-28T11:03:00.000-08:00

Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative Versus Participatory Democracy

Author: Diana C Mutz

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

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

Author: Kasey S Pipes

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

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

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

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

Wall Street Journal - Fred Barnes

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

American Spy or The Dismal Science

2009-01-27T05:48:00.000-08:00

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

Author: E Howard Hunt

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

Publishers Weekly

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

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

Books about: Bold Vegetarian Chef or Complete Book of Herbs and Spices

The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community

Author: Stephen A Marglin

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

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

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

Danny Lang - Irish Times

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

Tikkun

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

Adventures with Ed or Diplomats Dictionary

2009-01-26T00:28:00.000-08:00

Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey

Author: Jack Loeffler

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

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

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

The New York Times

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

Outside

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

Booklist

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

Southwest BookViews

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

Weekly Alibi

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

Inside Tucson Business

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

Library Journal

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

Diplomat's Dictionary

Author: Chas W Freeman

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

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

Why Unions Matter or Nuclear Weapons

2009-01-24T19:16:00.000-08:00

Why Unions Matter

Author: Michael D Yates

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

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

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

Library Journal

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

Booknews

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

What People Are Saying

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

	Introduction	1
1	Why Unions?	8
	Strength in Numbers	10
	The First U.S. Unions	13
	Do Unions Work?	15
	Unions and Dignity	18
2	How Unions Form	24
	A Little History	27
	How Unions Form	30
	Successful Union Organizing	34
3	Union Structures and Democracy	39
	Locals and Internationals	41
	Union Structure and the Law	45
	An Example of Union Democracy	47
	A Local Union Meeting	50
4	Collective Bargaining	53
	The IWW's Case against Collective Bargaining	55
	Strategies of the Contract Campaign	57
	Bargaining in Wartime	64
	At the Table	66
	The Agreement	71
	Politics and Collective Bargaining	79
5	Unions and Politics: Local, National, Global	81
	Why U.S. Labor Politics Are Different	84
	Labor Politics in the 1930s	86
	The AFL-CIO and Politics Today	88
	The Missouri Victory Against Right-to-Work	94
	Workers of the World Suppressed	95
	The American Institute for Free Labor Development	98
	The Time is Ripe	100
6	Unions, Racism, and Sexism	104
	Unions, Racism, and Justice	108
	The United Packinghouse Workers	112
	Black and Latino Unionism	113
	Unions and Women	116
	Women in Struggle	119
	Intersection of Race and Gender	122
	Gay and Lesbian Workers	125
	What Collective Bargaining Has Won	126
	Politics of Liberation	128
7	The Tasks Ahead	130
	The Difficulties Labor Faces	132
	Reasons for Labor's Decline: External Forces	135
	Reasons for Labor's Decline: Internal Forces	140
	The "New Voice"	143
	An International Labor Movement?	147
	Still to Come	148
	Appendix	153
	Notes	157
	Index	176

Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Joseph M Siracusa

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

The War for Righteousness or The World Economy

2009-01-23T14:03:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Richard M Gambl

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

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

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

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

Book about: Der Exekutivguide zur Strategischen Planung

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

Author: Beth V Yarbrough

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

Reagan in His Own Voice or The American Supreme Court

2009-01-22T08:50:00.000-08:00

Reagan in His Own Voice

Author: Ronald Reagan

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

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

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

Library Journal

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

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

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

Author: Robert G McCloskey

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

Booknews

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

Ark of the Liberties or Warmans Political Collectibles

2009-01-21T03:38:00.000-08:00

Ark of the Liberties: America and the World

Author: Ted Widmer

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

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

Publishers Weekly

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

William D. Pederson - Library Journal

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

Kirkus Reviews

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

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

Warman's Political Collectibles: Identification and Price Guide

Author: Enoch L Nappen

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

Shinsengumi or The Unfinished Journey

2009-01-20T00:46:00.000-08:00

Shinsengumi: Shogun's Last Samurai Corps

Author: Romulus Hillsborough

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

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

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

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

Books about: Ikes Spies or In Pursuit of Reason

The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II

Author: William H Chaf

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

Community Policing and Problem Solving or Andrew Johnson

2009-01-19T13:34:00.000-08:00

Community Policing and Problem Solving

Author: Kenneth J Peak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Crime Prevention: For Safe Communities.

6. Planning and Implementation: Translating Ideas Into Action.

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

8. Training for COPPS: Approaches and Challenges.

9. Police in a Diverse Society.

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

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

12. Evaluating COPPS Initiatives.

13. Selected American Approaches.

14. In Foreign Venues: COPPS Abroad.

15. Looking Forward While Looking Back: The Future.

Appendix A: Award-winning Problem Solving Case Studies.

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

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

Index.

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

Andrew Johnson, Vol. 17

Author: Don Nardo

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

Surrender Is Not an Option or Kofi Annan

2009-01-19T03:20:00.000-08:00

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

Author: John R Bolton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author: Stanley Meisler

"Absorbing."
—Booklist

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

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

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

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

Alexis de Tocqueville or War on Human Trafficking

2009-01-18T14:08:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Joseph Epstein

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

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

The New York Times - Christopher Caldwell

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

Publishers Weekly

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

Kirkus Reviews

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

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

War on Human Trafficking: U. S. Policy Assessed

Author: Anthony M DeStefano

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

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

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

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

Political Liberalism or Empire

2009-01-18T02:55:00.000-08:00

Political Liberalism (Columbia Classics in Philosophy Series)

Author: John Rawls

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

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

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

-- Times Literary Supplement

Times Literary Supplement

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

Library Journal

Booknews

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

Pt. 1	Political liberalism : basic elements	1
Lecture I	Fundamental ideas	3
Lecture II	The powers of citizens and their representation	47
Lecture III	Political constructivism	89
Pt. 2	Political liberalism : three main ideas	131
Lecture IV	The idea of an overlapping consensus	133
Lecture V	Priority of right and ideas of the good	173
Lecture VI	The idea of public reason	212
Pt. 3	Institutional framework	255
Lecture VII	The basic structure as subject	257
Lecture VIII	The basic liberties and their priority	289
Lecture IX	Reply to Habermas	372
Pt. 4	The idea of public reason revisited	435
	Introduction to "The idea of public reason revisited"	437
	The idea of public reason revisited (1997)	440

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

Empire

Author: Michael Hardt

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

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

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

The Nation - Stanley Aronowitz

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

Time - Michael Elliott

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

The Observer [UK] - Ed Vulliamy

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

New York Times - Emily Eakin

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

Sunday Times [UK]

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

Stanley Aronowitz

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

Sueddeutsche Zeitung - Slavoj Zizek

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bad Subjects - Aaron Shuman

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

What People Are Saying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2009-01-17T14:42:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Wendell E Pritchett

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

Publishers Weekly

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

How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life

Author: Peter Robinson

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

Publishers Weekly

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

Library Journal

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

The Sorrows of Empire or One World

2009-01-17T04:30:00.000-08:00

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

Author: Chalmers Johnson

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

-Los Angeles Times Book Review, front page

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

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

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

The New York Times

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

The Washington Post

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

Kirkus Reviews

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

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

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

Author: Peter Singer

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

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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

Foreign Affairs

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

The World According to Tomdispatch or Palestine

2009-01-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

The World According to Tomdispatch: America and the Age of Empire

Author: Tom Engelhardt

From America's most influential political blog, a grand survey of the world since 9/11.

Tomdispatch.com has established itself as the go-to blog for contemporary US politics, and the favored web platform for radical commentators from Noam Chomsky to Howard Zinn. Its powerful, no-holds-barred features draw a huge response from the public and resonate throughout the global media, acting as a touchpaper for debates which subsequently become headline news. This comprehensive volume offers readers a chance to catch up on some of the finest political analysis of our age, including trenchant accounts of the two Bush administrations' catastrophic imperial adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq; Guantánamo, extraordinary rendition and its apologists; and Hurricane Katrina, global warming, black gold and the rise of Hugo Chávez.

Introduced, arranged and with additional commentary throughout by the blog's founder Tom Engelhardt, The World According to Tomdispatch is the essential primer for anyone seeking illumination and guidance along the highways and byways of our post-9/11 world.

Contributors include:
• John Brown
• Ira Chernos
• Noam Chomsky
• Michael Klare
• Juan Cole
• Mike Davis
• Mark Danner
• Greg Grandin
• Adam Hochschild
• Arlie Hochschild
• Dahr Jamail
• Chalmers Johnson
• Ann Jones
• Bill McKibben
• Rasha Salti
• Jonathan Schell
• Rebecca Solnit
• Nick Turse
• Behzad Yaghmaian

Look this: Internationales Geschäft

Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

Author: Jimmy Carter

Following his #1 New York Times bestseller, Our Endangered Values, the former president, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, offers an assessment of what must be done to bring permanent peace to Israel with dignity and justice to Palestine.

President Carter, who was able to negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt, has remained deeply involved in Middle East affairs since leaving the White House. He has stayed in touch with the major players from all sides in the conflict and has made numerous trips to the Holy Land, most recently as an observer in the Palestinian elections of 2005 and 2006.

In this book President Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the Middle East and his personal experiences with the principal actors, and he addresses sensitive political issues many American officials avoid. Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism.

The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known, the president writes. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy, and the international "road map" for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel's official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, U.S. government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal of a just agreement that both sides can honor.

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid is a challenging, provocative, and courageous book.

Publishers Weekly

It's hard to use standard criteria to assess this book. Former President Carter is not a very good reader; his tone is flat, and his pronunciation sometimes difficult. Nor is he a literary stylist; there is neither music nor imagery in his down-to-earth sentences. But Carter feels strongly that what he has to say is absent from public discourse and policy decisions, and he knows that his status and voice provide authority to what might otherwise be rejected out of hand as anti-Israeli propaganda. He explains that Israel has never complied with U.N. Resolution 242 and others; has never lived up to its agreements made over the years in Washington, Oslo and elsewhere; continues to grab land through settlements and placement of a wall well within Palestinian territory; and still imprisons thousands of Palestinian men, women and children. While pointing out many murderous and counterproductive moves of Arafat and various Palestinian groups, he pointedly lays the blame for the current situation at the door of the Israelis and their Washington backers, with special venom for Bush and Rice, who have been mute on the subject for six years—even during the invasion of Lebanon. Many will dispute his facts and counter his views, but Carter maintains that if we really want to understand and promote change in this region, we must know both sides of the story. Simultaneous release with the S&S hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 27). (Jan.)

Foreign Affairs

Soon after taking office in 1977, Jimmy Carter declared that the Palestinians must have a "homeland." Later in his presidency, Carter led the tortuous negotiations culminating in Israel's first treaty with an Arab neighbor: the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli treaty, which, it should be remembered, contained provisions intended to move matters toward a viable Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Out of office soon thereafter, Carter continued to follow closely the many ups and downs of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation, keeping in touch with the American, Arab, and Israeli principals involved. In recent years, he has put himself very much in situ by leading the monitoring of Palestinian elections. This book offers a historical overview in the form of a personal memoir, tracing developments since the 1970s as Carter experienced and understood them. He may thus be said to be both a source for the historian and himself a historian of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. This little book merits a reading on both counts. Carter concludes that "Israel's continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land." That statement, so out of line with the way mainstream American political figures (even those retired from public office) frame the issue, ensures that the book will be attacked by many. Perhaps it will be read as well.

Library Journal

Snowblind or The Boy Who Fell out of the Sky

2009-01-16T05:05:00.000-08:00

Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade

Author: Robert Sabbag

Now available from Grove Press, Snowblind, Robert Sabbag's all-out, non-stop, and now-classic look at the cocaine trade, follows the brief, Roman-candle career of American smuggler Zachary Swan and the intricate scams he rode to glory in the 1970s. From Colombia to New York, Swan brought better living through chemistry to those who were buying, inventing dazzling deceptions to stay one step ahead of the narcs. In the process he discovered a hip, dangerous, high-velocity world that Sabbag evokes with extraordinary power and humor.

New Yorker

A triumphant piece of reporting.

National Review

A classic.

LA Times

A witty, intelligent, fiercely stylish, drug-induced exemplary tale.

Rolling Stone

An extremely rare cut of dry wit, poetry, rock-hard fact and relentless insight.

What People Are Saying

Hunter S. Thompson
A flat-out ballbuster. It moves like a threshing machine with a fuel tank full of ether....Sabbag is a whip-song writer.

Norman Mailer
One of the first books about the cocaine trade and it is still among the best.

Susan Brownmiller
The ultimate slide down the precipice of hip.

Robert Stone
One of the best books about drugs ever written.

Nora Ephron
One of the most dazzling and spectacular pieces of reporting I have ever read.

The Boy Who Fell out of the Sky: A True Story

Author: Ken Dornstein

David Dornstein was twenty-five years old, with dreams of becoming a great writer, when he boarded Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Thirty-eight minutes after takeoff, a terrorist bomb ripped the plane apart over Lockerbie, Scotland. Almost a decade later, Ken Dornstein set out to solve the riddle of his older brother’s life, using the notebooks and manuscripts that David left behind. In the process, he also began to create a new life of his own. The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky is the unforgettable story of one man’s search for the truth about his brother--and himself.

The New York Times - William Grimes

The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky is a mesmerizing tale of family crisis, mental illness and unfulfilled promise.

The Washington Post - Marian Fontana

Most memoirs chronicling loss deal with its immediate aftermath, the searing pain of raw and unexpected grief, but in Ken Dornstein's haunting new memoir, The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky, the author tries to understand the loss of his only brother -- killed in the terrorist airplane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. Not just a tribute to the brief and complicated life of David Dornstein, the book is a kind of catharsis for the author, whose own identity was all but destroyed on that day.

Publishers Weekly

On December 21, 1988, Dornstein's older brother, David, went down with Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Shattered, Dornstein returned to college and tried to move on. But eight years later, he started reading the papers left behind by his brother, who was an unpublished but prolific writer. He decided to travel to Lockerbie, believing "I could still save David's life if I went right away." This memoir cobbles together the author's memories, past news accounts and David's passionate journal entries and letters. It is this comprehensive blending, as well as Frontline series editor Dornstein's clear and eloquent writing about understanding the mystery of who his brother really was-he uncovers that David had been molested as a child-that keeps this from being a sappy, self-indulgent account. Dornstein employs some clever literary devices, such as a list of things to do in Lockerbie, which includes a walk to Tundergarth, one of the wreckage sites, with "hills so lush, soft, and rolling green you will want to drop onto them yourself." Seventeen years after the bombing, Dornstein is married (to his brother's first love, incidentally), a father and at peace with the loss. (Mar. 7) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Yes, Dornstein's book is a memoir. It's about reckoning with the loss of his older brother David, who, at age 25, was on Pan Am Flight 103, bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Yet it avoids all the stereotypes of the genre: no self-pity, no prose that veers either into grandiloquence or single-word sentences, no tidy pronouncements about a messed-up life. Dornstein (PBS series editor, Fronline; Accidentally, On Purpose: The Making of a Personal Injury Underworld in America) gives us the tale of his journey to learn more about a brother whom he thought he'd have a full lifetime to encounter. His book shows how, in seeking to make that encounter endure in spite of David's death, he newly encounters himself. In deceptively straightforward prose, he weaves a subtle story, filled with self-deprecating humor and replete with wisdom. His book is loving, honest, and moving precisely because there is never a heavy hand at play. In fact, Dornstein's approach is the perfect counterpoint to the declamatory style of his brother's life. David had been avid, beyond all else, to be a published writer, and Ken quotes liberally from the many notebooks he left behind. David's death denied fulfillment of his ambition, but through Ken's book, the loss is not complete. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/05.]-Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Dornstein's memoir is characterized by a surpassing drive to express truths as he investigates the emotional landscape of loss following the death of his older brother. In December 1988, David, 25, was flying home on Pan Am Flight 103. A terrorist's bomb detonated onboard, killing all 259 passengers and the crew. The author, then a college sophomore, shares how he initially deflected the monstrous pain of his loss through denial, gradually working toward acceptance of the tragedy in all its attendant sorrows, and ultimately requiring nearly 17 years' reflection before he felt ready to compose this story. David is depicted as a vibrant, impassioned, artistic soul, an aspiring writer who left behind voluminous notebooks, correspondence, and intense ruminations permeated with tones of despair over whether he would fail to achieve his literary destiny. The author feels an obligation to assume responsibility for David's body of work, to organize and somehow wrest from it a timeless "essence" of his brother, to validate his truncated life by bringing the unfinished oeuvre to fruition. The healing process for Dornstein, as he alternately approaches and retreats from this self-assigned task, is laid out with dogged thoroughness. His journey in moving beyond an intractable knot of bereavement is depicted with blunt yet graceful sensitivity. Black-and-white photos are included. This is an ambitious read for teens, but rewarding because of its courage and authenticity.-Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The disturbing story of a passenger on the doomed Pan Am Flight 103, written by the victim's younger brother, an editor for PBS's Frontline. Dornstein was only 19 when his 25-year-old brother David was killed in the terrorist attack over Lockerbie, Scotland. In this grim, often depressing account, the author digs deeply into his erratic brother's past, seeking not only to recreate his brother's final days, but to burrow into his mind and soul. David Dornstein was a would-be writer whose craving for fame and success far outstripped his talent, and his life had been spiraling downward even before his graduation from Brown in 1984. Although he filled notebook after notebook with his meandering, autobiographical prose, David was far better at imagining himself a successful author than in focusing on the task of becoming one. His personal life was equally troubled. Though handsome and likable, he bounced from one squalid apartment, menial job and failed relationship to the next, while his college friends moved on. When David boarded the Pan Am flight, he was on his way home from Israel, fleeing a promising relationship with an attractive woman. There's a strange, almost creepy element to Dornstein's near-obsessive pursuit of his dead brother's ghost: The author initiates a close friendship with David's former Israeli girlfriend, then later befriends-and eventually marries-his brother's college sweetheart. Dornstein's search also uncovers a childhood secret that helps to partially explain his brother's self-destructive behavior. There are powerful, chilling moments in this story: Dornstein's visit to Lockerbie, where he treads the very ground on which his brother's body fell to Earth, and hisfinal goodbye to the rebuilt skeleton of the 747 in a remote hangar in England. Elsewhere, the narrative stalls, as the author gets buried under the rambling, unfocused writings that grew in unfinished piles in his brother's rooms. Eerily, David had often imagined himself dying young in a plane crash-he presumed it his quickest ticket to fame. Given the downward spiral of David's brief life, we're forced to ponder whether the Libyan terrorists eventually charged with the bombing didn't spare him an even sadder end. It's the most disturbing part of this penetrating but uneven story.

Dead Certain or Erasmus

2009-01-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush

Author: Robert Draper

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

Go to: Final Cut Pro 6 for Mac OS X or C 30 Design Patterns

Erasmus: The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria

Author: Desiderius Erasmus

This is a new student edition of Erasmus' crucial treatise on political theory and also contains a new, excerpted translation from his Panegyric. The Education of a Christian Prince is one of the most important "advice-to-princes" texts published in the Renaissance and was dedicated to Charles V. It is a strongly pacifist work in which Erasmus sought to ensure that the prince governed justly and benevolently. This edition also includes an original introduction, a chronology of the life and work of Erasmus, and a comprehensive guide to further reading.

Minimum Wages or Re thinking Freire

2009-01-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

Minimum Wages

Author: David Neumark

Minimum wages exist in more than one hundred countries, both industrialized and developing. The United States passed a federal minimum wage law in 1938 and has increased the minimum wage and its coverage at irregular intervals ever since; in addition, as of the beginning of 2008, thirty-two states and the District of Columbia had established a minimum wage higher than the federal level, and numerous other local jurisdictions had in place "living wage" laws. Over the years, the minimum wage has been popular with the public, controversial in the political arena, and the subject of vigorous debate among economists over its costs and benefits.

In this book, David Neumark and William Wascher offer a comprehensive overview of the evidence on the economic effects of minimum wages. Synthesizing nearly two decades of their own research and reviewing other research that touches on the same questions, Neumark and Wascher discuss the effects of minimum wages on employment and hours, the acquisition of skills, the wage and income distributions, longer-term labor market outcomes, prices, and the aggregate economy. Arguing that the usual focus on employment effects is too limiting, they present a broader, empirically based inquiry that will better inform policymakers about the costs and benefits of the minimum wage.

Based on their comprehensive reading of the evidence, Neumark and Wascher argue that minimum wages do not achieve the main goals set forth by their supporters. They reduce employment opportunities for less-skilled workers and tend to reduce their earnings; they are not an effective means of reducing poverty; and they appear to have adverse longer-term effects onwages and earnings, in part by reducing the acquisition of human capital. The authors argue that policymakers should instead look for other tools to raise the wages of low-skill workers and to provide poor families with an acceptable standard of living.

Book about: Video over IP or Spider Man

Re-thinking Freire: Globalization and the Environmental Crisis (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education Series)

Author: C Bowers

This landmark collection of essays by Third World activists highlights two major world changes which, they argue, have been neglected by Freire and his many followers : the Third World grass-roots cultural resistance to economic globalization, and the ecological crisis.

	Introduction	1
1	From a pedagogy for liberation to liberation from pedagogy	13
2	Nurturance in the Andes	31
3	Who are the oppressed?	49
4	Vernacular education for cultural regeneration : an alternative to Paulo Freire's vision of emancipation	69
5	From conscientization to interbeing : a personal journey	83
6	Whose oppression is this? : the cultivation of compassionate action in dissolving the dualistic barrier	101
7	Cease to do evil, then learn to do good (a pedagogy for the oppressor)	115
8	How the ideas of Paulo Freire contribute to the cultural roots of the ecological crisis	133
	Afterword	151

The Official Handbook of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy or The Worst Case Scenario Almanac

2009-01-13T10:03:00.000-08:00

The Official Handbook of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: The Arguments You Need to Defeat the Loony Left This Election Year

Author: Mark W Smith

An Antidote to Liberal Bias

Already tired of the left-wing media spin on the 2008 elections? Had enough of Democratic talking heads hyping tax increases and the global warming scare? Looking for an island of straight-talking sanity in today's swamp of multi-cultiliberal gibberish? Look no further. Mark Smith continues his crusade against the lunatic Left with this new edition of The Official Handbook of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Right on time for the 2008 elections, this book shows you how to shoot down the latest liberal rants for bigger government, a cowardly foreign policy, and depraved social values. If you need a quick comeback to a liberal's demand to expand the nanny state, this is the place to find it. If you want handy arguments to challenge a leftist's denial of liberal media bias, you'll get them here. And if you must have the one book that drives liberals absolutely berserk, this is it. Why stay silent in the face of so many leftist lies? Grab a copy of The Handbook and you'll be ready to wade into a San Francisco cocktail party, a Grateful Dead reunion concert, or an Ivy League classroom and take on liberals on their home turf. More fun than Hillary's dysfunctional village and less expensive than John Edwards's haircuts, The Official Handbook of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy will get you riled up and ready for battle in the 2008 presidential election.

The Worst-Case Scenario Almanac: Politics

Author: David Borgenicht

Leave it to the experts of the best-selling Worst-Case Scenario series to ferret out the most scandalous, dangerous, incompetent, and downright awful people to ever seek power. The most lavish palaces, the bloodiest coups, the stupidest declarations. . . . Plus all the lists, charts, maps, and profiles that have made the Worst-Case Scenario Almanacs such a success. Which country had more governments in the past 175 years—Italy or Bolivia? What ever happened to all those people who ran for vice president of the United States of America—and lost? Illustrated, step-by-step scenarios describe how to respond when confronted with misfortune or challenge, including how to give a concession speech, kiss a drooling baby, escape a sex scandal, and evade the truth.

Ojibwa Warrior or In Reckless Hands

2009-01-12T20:50:00.000-08:00

Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement

Author: Dennis Banks

Dennis Banks, an American Indian of the Ojibwa Tribe, is probably the most influential Indian leader of our time. In Ojibwa Warrior, written with acclaimed writer and photographer Richard Erdoes, Banks tells his own story for the very first time and reveals an inside look at the birth of the American Indian Movement.

Born in 1937 and raised by his grandparents on the Leach Lake reservation in Minnesota, Dennis Banks grew up learning traditional Ojibwa lifeways. As a young child he was torn from his home and forced to attend a government boarding school designed to assimilate Indian children into white culture. After years of being white man-ized in these repressive schools, Banks enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, shipping out to Japan when he was only seventeen years old.

After returning to the states, Banks lived in poverty in the Indian slums of Minnesota until he was arrested for stealing groceries to feed his growing family. Although his white accomplice was freed on probation, Banks was sent to prison. There he became determined to educate himself. Hearing about the African American struggle for civil rights, he recognized that American Indians must take up a similar fight. Upon his release, Banks became a founder of AIM, the American Indian Movement, which soon inspired Indians from many tribes to join the fight for American Indian rights. Through AIM, Banks sought to confront racism with activism rooted deeply in Native religion and culture.

Ojibwa Warrior relates Dennis Banks's inspiring life story and the story of the rise of AIM—from the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties march to Washington, D.C., which ended in the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building, to the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, when Lakota Indians and AIM activists from all over the country occupied the site of the infamous 1890 massacre of three hundred Sioux men, women, and children to protest the bloodshed and corruption at the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation.

Banks tells the inside story of the seventy-one day siege, his unlikely nighttime escape and interstate flight, and his eventual shootout with authorities at an FBI roadblock in Oregon. Pursued and hunted, he managed to reach California. There, authorities refused to extradite him to South Dakota, where the attorney general had declared that the best thing to do with Dennis Banks was to put a bullet through his head.

Years later, after a change in state government, Banks gave himself up to South Dakota authorities. Sentenced to two years in prison, he was paroled after serving one year to teach students Indian history at the Lone Man school at Pine Ridge. Since then, Dennis Banks has organized Sacred Runs for young people, teaching American Indian ways, religion, and philosophy worldwide. Now operating a successful business on the reservation, he continues the fight for Indian rights.

This account is enhanced by dramatic photographs, most taken by Richard Erdoes, of key people and events from the narrative.

Edna Boardman - KLIATT

At the time when the push for African American racial justice and the campaign to end American involvement in the war in Vietnam were shaking the nation, American Indians also sought to right grievances that had long haunted them. In this autobiographical account, Dennis Banks, one of the leaders of a group called the American Indian Movement, opened his eyes to the possibility for dignity and freedoms enjoyed by other citizens but, incredibly, denied to America's first residents. This book is both a history of AIM and the story of Banks's personal quest. Banks provides a valuable perspective on the fight for autonomy that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, and into the 1980s. He tells of the "lack of spiritual connection" among Native Indians and how it led to the revival of the Sweat Lodge, which helped them to reestablish that connection; he gives an account of the Sun Dance, long outlawed, which he describes as a rite of healing and survival, a "ceremony that transcends all others." He tells of his own participation in both of these ceremonies. He also informs readers about the Ghost Dance, which came into existence as white settlers and armies increased pressure on the Native American way of life. Using the tools of civil disobedience they had observed in the fight for African American equality, they fought to reclaim ancestral lands and sacred sites such as the Black Hills and fought restrictions on hunting and fishing rights. He and other Indian leaders led the campaign against the "lack of power, our inability to run our own lives," and the control the Bureau of Indian Affairs continued to exercise on them. They challenged the disdain for treaties by the government, limitations(some of them social) on where Indians could go, and police brutality very much like that visited on black Americans. Banks gives an interesting description of the 1973 Wounded Knee shootings. He spent time in prison, but has been released. This is an absorbing, well-written book, a useful Indian perspective on the life-changing events of the 20th century. KLIATT Codes: SA--Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2004, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 362p. illus., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

The American Indian Movement's (AIM) initial purpose upon its founding in 1968 was to protect the civil rights of Native Americans living in urban areas. Its scope quickly expanded as AIM turned to the problems of native peoples throughout the United States, especially on reservations. Banks, one of the founders of AIM, details the emergence of the organization and its national leaders, including Russell Means, Clyde Bellecourt, and George Mitchell. He also examines events that grabbed national headlines, such as the 1969-71 occupation of Alcatraz and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee. Evident throughout is the belief that tribal governments aided the federal government in oppressing native peoples; in order for true reform to occur, entrenched accommodationist tribal leadership would have to be uprooted. Particularly enlightening is Banks's discussion of the role of spiritual leaders within AIM. Their vital role in the organization is often overlooked in discussions of AIM's activities. This autobiographical account by an important Native American leader is highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

	List of Illustrations	ix
1.	A Night to Remember	3
2.	At the Center of the Universe	12
3.	The Yellow Bus	24
4.	Interlude	32
5.	Machiko	43
6.	We AIM Not to Please	58
7.	Crow Dog	95
8.	On the Warpath	105
9.	Yellow Thunder	114
10.	Fishing in Troubled Waters	121
11.	One Hell of a Smoke Signal	126
12.	The Town with the Gunsmoke Flavor	145
13.	A Place Called Wounded Knee	157
14.	The Siege	167
15.	A Nation Reborn	181
16.	The Stand Down	196
17.	The Waters of Justice Have Been Polluted	210
18.	The Symbionese Liberation Army	228
19.	The Informer	266
20.	Fields of Terror	284
21.	Outlawed	299
22.	Exile	312
23.	Onondaga	329
24.	Freedom	338
25.	Suddenly I Am an "Elder"	348
26.	Looking Back	354

New interesting textbook: Living with Spina Bifida or Modern Primitives

In Reckless Hands: Skinner V. Oklahoma and the Near-Triumph of American Eugenics

Author: Victoria F Nours

The disturbing, forgotten history of America's experiment with eugenics.

In the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of men and women were sterilized at asylums and prisons across America. Believing that criminality and mental illness were inherited, state legislatures passed laws calling for the sterilization of "habitual criminals" and the "feebleminded." But in 1936, inmates at Oklahoma's McAlester prison refused to cooperate; a man named Jack Skinner was the first to come to trial. A colorful and heroic cast of characters—from the inmates themselves to their devoted, self-taught lawyer—would fight the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Only after Americans learned the extent of another large-scale eugenics project—in Nazi Germany—would the inmates triumph.

Combining engrossing narrative with sharp legal analysis, Victoria F. Nourse explains the consequences of this landmark decision, still vital today—and reveals the stories of these forgotten men and women who fought for human dignity and the basic right to have a family. 11 photographs.

Publishers Weekly

The shocking story of the American eugenics movement has been told before, but Nourse's first book focuses on the Supreme Court case that dealt the movement its death blow: the 1942 decision in Skinner v. Oklahoma. Nourse conveys the popular acceptance of the idea of "race betterment" in the 1920s and '30s: in the permanent Eugenics Pavilion at the Kansas Free Fair, for instance, flashing lights toted up the cost to society of the criminal and the "feebleminded." Against this background, Nourse, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, conveys the magnitude of the constitutional challenge facing Jack Skinner, an Oklahoma convict ordered sterilized pursuant to a eugenic statute aimed at "habitual criminals." Nourse is equally effective depicting the legal strategies and the impact of the Depression and the growing awareness of Nazi atrocities on the High Court. A bit more challenging is Nourse's analysis of Skinner's theoretical underpinnings. She argues convincingly that today, when genes are viewed as the "cause for everything from criminality to spirituality," America's flirtation with eugenics is a cautionary tale worth remembering. 11 photos. (July)

Kirkus Reviews

Memorable account of a landmark case that stymied the practice of forced sterilization. The original 1934 plaintiffs were three men jailed in Oklahoma's McAlester prison; each had at least three felony convictions, which made them eligible for sterilization under the state's broad 1933 law. Similar laws around the country drew their rationale from the pseudo-science of eugenics, which claimed that insanity, feeble-mindedness, promiscuity and criminality were inherited traits. Pseudonymous, frequently flawed family studies in the late 19th- and early-20th century had made names like Jukes and Kallikak synonyms for generations of imbeciles and criminals. Two crusading Oklahoma lawyers took the McAlester inmates' case and managed to delay implementation of the law as they lost appeal after appeal to higher courts-losses that occasioned prison riots and breakouts. At the 11th hour, two additional lawyers filed for consideration of Skinner v. Oklahoma by the U.S. Supreme Court. By that time, in late 1941, the court was headed by Harlan Stone and included Roosevelt appointees Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas. The world was at war, and even the self-righteous who saw eugenics as the path to society's betterment were having second thoughts in light of Nazi atrocities. Douglas wrote in the deciding opinion on June 1, 1942, that "in reckless hands," entire "races or types" might "wither and disappear." Moreover, the law violated equal protection because it did not mandate sterilization for embezzlers or tax cheats (non-felons). Perhaps the most visionary language, however, came in the justice's reference to procreation as "an area of human rights." In a nuanced discourse, Nourse(Criminal and Constitutional Law/Univ. of Wisconsin) recounts how legal thinking concerning race, liberty, constitutionality, equal protection and civil rights has changed dramatically since Skinner. However, she warns, society may once again be looking for "the 'natural' secret to criminal tendencies," this time in the form of bad genes. A legal tale that reads like a cliffhanger. Agent: Cecelia Cancellaro/Idea Architects

Flag or George H W Bush

2009-01-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

Flag: An American Biography

Author: Marc Leepson

The nation turns to it as an emotional, political, and patriotic symbol in good times and bad. Americans fly it everywhere we live and everywhere we go, from front porches in Florida to pickup trucks in Alaska. We display the red-white-and-blue American flag at festive events to celebrate and, at times of national tragedy, to grieve and show our resolve. We wrap ourselves in it in displays of patriotism, politics, nationalism, and jingoism.

The thirteen-stripe, fifty-star flag is as familiar an American icon as any that has existed in the nation’s history. It stirs something in the hearts of Americans like no other symbol. Yet the history of the flag, especially its origins, is cloaked in myth and misinformation. Flag: An American Biography rectifies that situation by presenting a lively, comprehensive, illuminating look at the history of the American flag from its beginnings to today.

Journalist, historian, and author of the highly acclaimed Saving Monticello, Leepson uncovers scores of little-known, fascinating facts as he traces the evolution of the American flag from the Colonial period to its prominent role as a symbol of American resolve in today’s war against terrorism.

Flag sifts through the historical evidence to---among many other things---uncover the truth behind the Betsy Ross myth and to discover the true designer of the stars and stripes. The book also shinesinforming light on a string of colorful and influential Americans who shaped the history of the American flag.

Leepson analyzes the influence and impact of the maker of the star-spangled banner, Mary Pickersgill; the author of the national anthem, Francis Scott Key; the coiner of the phrase “Old Glory,” U.S. Navy Capt. Samuel Driver; the first officer killed in the Civil War, Union Col. Elmer Ellsworth, who died defending the flag; the first African-American Medal of Honor recipient, William Carney, who carried the flag and led troops through a viciously bloody Civil War battle; the creator of Flag Day, Wisconsin schoolteacher B. J. Cigrand; the father of the pledge of allegiance, Francis Bellamy; and Joe Rosenthal, the AP photographer who took the most reproduced image of the twentieth century, the marines raising the American flag at Iwo Jima.

The American flag was seen as a symbol of a “divine plan” for the American ideal during the Civil War; as a symbol of the nation’s historical heritage at the 1876 centennial celebrations; as a symbol conveying respect for the government and our social institutions---the so-called “cult of the flag”---in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. During the Vietnam War, the flag was a divisive emblem in a bitterly divided nation. In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, the flag became an instant and widely used symbol of a nation united against terrorism.

“Flag,” as the novelist Nelson DeMille says in his preface, “is not a book with an agenda or a subjective point of view. It is an objective history of the American flag, well researched, well presented, easy to read and understand, and very informative and entertaining.”

Publishers Weekly

Leepson notes that "no country in the world can match the intensity of the American citizenry's attachment to the... Stars and Stripes." He goes on to chart the evolution of the flag and Americans' relationship with it in its detail-packed history. Despite the famous image in George Washington Crossing the Delaware, Leepson (Saving Monticello) says, the general's boat did not display the Stars and Stripes; the Continental Congress hadn't yet determined what the American flag would be. And "flagmania," as a 19th-century newspaper termed it, began only with the start of the Civil War. Embraced by the Ku Klux Klan, burned by Vietnam War protestors, the Stars and Stripes was again embraced in the wake of 9/11 as a ubiquitous symbol of American solidarity. Such was the revived flagmania, Leepson relates, that the flag was used to sell everything from contact lenses to disposable diapers. From reverence to kitsch, Americans' attitudes to their flag and its mythology have changed over the years, and Leepson does a creditable job of recounting those changes just in time for July 4. Agent, Joseph Brendan Vallely. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Gilbert Taylor - Booklist

Chronicling the two-centuries-plus history of the U. S. flag, Leepson considers the abundant stories that purport to be the truth about Old Glory. That moniker, like Francis Scott Key's naming the flag the "star-spangled banner," arose from reliable historical sources. But other commonly accepted views of the flag are more dubious, such as its depiction in historical paintings of the Revolutionary War--impossible, rules Leepson, since the Continental Army marched under regimental flags, not the drapery Betsy Ross stitched together under George Washington's approving eye, a legend almost certainly made from whole cloth. In truth, explains the author, interest in the flag's orgins dates from the Civil War and its aftermath, when nationalistic feeling about the flag first welled up, and ever since, in times of crisis, has been a distinctive American trait. Previously, the Stars and Stripes simply identified government installations. Its evolution into a symbol of popular affection, though one invested with divergent emotions, as laws and lawsuits concerning its proper display evince, animate Leepson's evenhanded, myth-sifting account.

Kirkus

Comprehensive, dispassionate chronicle of the potent banner that stirs up passions of every stripe.

Leepson (Saving Monticello, 2001) compiles the curious history of Old Glory and the special veneration it often evokes. Few readers will be shocked by his revelation that the legend of Betsy Ross and her little shop may not be entirely factual. We're reminded that in early American history the flag was used principally as a military or naval ensign and rarely flown by individual citizens. It is within living memory that Flag Day, the Flag Code, the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance received official recognition. After the strife of the Civil War, the Confederate Stars and Bars battle flag became part of history, along with the yarn about old Barbara Frietschie, and in efforts to display national unity the Starts and Stripes appeared all over, becoming a part of everyday commercial and political battles. The Union veterans' organization promoted dsiplay of the Red, White and Blue in every schoolroom. The flag achieves apotheosis in wartime, and such times hav always been banner years for manufactureres of the country's symbol. The image fo the flag-raising on Iwo Jima remains a national icon, and the colors have been proudly planted at the North Pole and on the Moon. But there have been periods when the flag was not saluted with pride by all, for example, during the discord over the Vietnam War. A mighty resurgance of popular display followed 9/11, when flags became ubiquitous in every medium and on every surface, from lapel to football field. Despite Flag Code strictures and the rules of flag etiquette, the Grand Old Flag is displayed day and night at used car lots,behind star performers and on varied consumer products--including politicians of every stripe.

Unflaggingly straightforward vexillary law, lore and legend, agreeably presented. (25 b&w photos)

Library Journal

Journalist Leepson (Saving Monticello) aims at general audiences with this celebratory biography (or "complete history") of the American national flag, which he describes as "in the social, political, and emotional hearts and minds of millions of Americans." He includes familiar stories, such as Betsy Ross and Francis Scott Key, but also covers such recent initiatives as the campaign to promote the flag as a central symbol of patriotism and the move to outlaw flag desecration. Bringing his discussion into the post-9/11 era, he builds on books published several years ago, such as Boleslaw and Marie-Louise Mastai's The Stars and the Stripes and Scot Guenter's The American Flag, 1777-1924. Leepson would have greatly enhanced his book had he followed through on his reference to the "nation's great experiment in democracy" by discussing Native American views of the flag and by expanding his narrative on African Americans who made enormous contributions to notions of freedom and citizenship. He supplies endnotes, a bibliography, and an appendix listing the dates when the stars for individual states were added to the flag, but unfortunately there is no index. Recommended for public libraries.-Charles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., State College Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Lehane's sleuthing bartender faces labor troubles, woman troubles, gangster troubles and even those ancient and terrible Troubles imported from the old country. Brian McNulty has a new gig working the stick at the Savoy, a once elegant New York City hostelry. Though the hotel's best days are long gone, a veteran staff has managed to maintain professional standards. Among these dedicated, hardworking people are Brian's fellow bartender Barney Saunders and his particular friend and cocktail waitress Betsy Tierney-lovely, sweet-natured and married to a cop whose blue uniform camouflages a black heart. All three are members of the "rank and file insurgency," increasingly active as the Savoy staff chafes under intensifying exploitation. The exploiters-a Simon Legree of a hotel manager allied with a shamelessly crooked union boss-confront legitimate complaints with an iron fist. Inevitably, there's an unjust firing, a sympathy strike and finally bloodletting. Barney is badly hurt, Brian is threatened by mobsters, Betsy by her bully of a husband. In behalf of his friends, Brian (What Goes Around Comes Around, 2005, etc.) is forced once more to turn sleuth, not very efficiently this time. But how's a detective to manage when those very friends hide the deepest secrets and tell the darkest lies?The Brian who once was amiably feckless has become multi-faced and fully engaged in a world he never made, adding substance to a series that keeps getting better.

Interesting book: 7 Color Cuisine or The Worcester Lunch Car Company Massachusetts

George H. W. Bush: The American Presidents Series: The 41st President, 1989-1993

Author: Timothy Naftali

The judicious statesman who won victories abroad but suffered defeat at home, whose wisdom and demeanor served America well at a critical time

George Bush was a throwback to a different era. A patrician figure not known for eloquence, Bush dismissed ideology as “the vision thing.” Yet, as Timothy Naftali argues, no one of his generation was better prepared for the challenges facing the United States as the Cold War ended. Bush wisely encouraged the liberalization of the Soviet system and skillfully orchestrated the reunification of Germany. And following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he united the global community to defeat Saddam Hussein. At home, Bush reasserted fiscal discipline after the excesses of the Reagan years.

It was ultimately his political awkwardness that cost Bush a second term. His toughest decisions widened fractures in the Republican Party, and with his party divided, Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992. In a final irony, the conservatives who scorned him would return to power eight years later, under his son and namesake, with the result that the elder George Bush would see his reputation soar.

Publishers Weekly

The 41st president's political persona was the stuff of greatness, argues this entry in the American Presidents series. Historian Naftali (Khrushchev's Cold War) credits Bush less with principles than with "tendencies" toward flexibility, realism and a moderate Republican version of decency. In his foreign policy, these qualities helped him nudge communism toward a soft collapse and build an international alliance to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait; domestically they led him to a budget compromise with Democrats, in which he acquiesced to unpopular tax hikes for the good of the nation. Bush's flexibility had a dark side, the author notes, that came out in his repeated tactical embrace of racial politics, from his opposition to civil rights legislation during his 1964 Senate run to the 1988 Willie Horton ads, and in his public support for Reaganomics despite deep private misgivings. Naftali forthrightly dissects Bush's misdeeds-especially his role in the Iran-Contra scandal-but he's less skeptical about the substance of Bush's policies, which he pointedly contrasts with Bush Jr.'s failures; he credits Bush's wars in Panama and Kuwait with helping America "overcome the burden of Vietnam," without wondering whether this paved the way for the son's misadventure in Iraq. Naftali's is a brisk, useful, but not always penetrating overview of a pivotal presidency. (Dec.)

Thomas J. Baldino - Library Journal

Naftali (director, Nixon Presidential Lib.; Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism) focuses specifically on Bush senior's time in the Oval Office, covering his earlier life and career in only about 60 pages. He argues that the 41st president deserves credit for successfully navigating U.S. foreign policy through the difficult times of the Soviet Union's collapse, the reunification of Germany, and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, which led to the Gulf War. On the domestic front, however, Bush inherited problems that led to his being denied a second term, viz. the cost of repairing the savings and loan debacle, which contributed to the economic downturn of the early 1990s and the divisions that were forming in his Republican Party over issues like abortion. While informative, this book does not offer new insights or provide as satisfying an explanation for what motivated Bush as did Tom Wicker's George Herbert Walker Bush. Also, those needing a more traditional biography should consider Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer's The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty.Public libraries owning Wicker's book need not add this one to their collections unless a large budget or high demand calls for it.

Kirkus Reviews

Latest title in the American Presidents Series spotlights the elder Bush's uneven one-term presidency, riding Reagan's coattails and navigating the "new world order."Son of a Republican senator from Connecticut, educated at Phillips Academy and Yale, a naval aviator during World War II, George Herbert Walker Bush forged a path unique from his father's by moving to West Texas with wife Barbara to grow rich as an oil man. He lost Senate runs in 1964 and 1970, his mixture of social liberalism and economic conservatism doomed by compromises on key issues. Expedient and tactical, pragmatic and emotional, Bush won a congressional election in 1966 thanks to his friend James A. Baker III. Briefly considered as Nixon's running mate, he was instead offered a job as United Nations representative, then chairman of the Republican National Committee. After a stint as UN representative to China and head of the CIA under Gerald Ford, Bush ran for president against Ronald Reagan and was again sidelined as an understudy. Vice President Bush was Reagan's loyal soldier and crisis manager, a key participant in the controversial Iran-Contra scandal and coverup. His political adaptability was often taken as a sign of weakness. "Fighting the Wimp Factor" became his presidential campaign's rallying cry against Bob Dole and Michael Dukakis. Cleaning up Reagan's mess marked the beginning of his presidency, which was plagued by the budget deficit, the savings-and-loan debacle, the intransigence of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. However, the unraveling of the Soviet bloc allowed Bush moments of greatness. These did not protect him from becoming an object of public scornand being roundly defeated in 1992 by Democrat Bill Clinton. Naftali (Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism, 2005, etc.) offers a soft-pedaling, well-paced glimpse at the career highlights of a man whose presidency still remains murky and out-of-focus.

Called or Their Finest Hour

2009-01-11T16:43:00.000-08:00

Called: Hello, My Name is Mrs. Jefferson. I Understand Your Plane is Being Hijacked?: 9:45 AM, Flight 93, September 11, 2001

Author: Lisa Jefferson

With one ring of the phone, Lisa Jefferson went from GTE Airfone supervisor, suburban wife, and mother to the listening ear of a nation shattered by tragedy. Called tells the gripping account of 9/11 from her vantage point... the moment she took the call from Todd Beamer on United Airlines Flight 93... hearing the immortal words, Let's roll!... seeing her life transformed, simply by answering the call. Jefferson sends a stirring challenge to all of us... whether it comes during quiet obscurity or international adversity, we must be prepared to answer God's call.

New interesting book: Pokemon or Hot Text

Their Finest Hour, Vol. 2

Author: Winston S Churchill

The eight uneasy, dangerous months from May to December 1940, as Britain stands isolated and Germany follows its war path.

Refined by Fire or Meltdown

2009-01-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

Refined by Fire: A Family's Triumph of Love and Faith: A Soldier's Story of 9-11

Author: Brian Birdwell

When hijacked American Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, LTC (RET) Brian Birdwell was only 15 to 20 yards away. He stepped out into the corridor and was instantly engulfed in flames—burns consumed 60 percent of his body, with almost 40 percent of them third-degree. Thirty-plus operations and countless physical therapy sessions later, his recovery has truly been remarkable, and spiritually he and his family are stronger than ever before. Brian and his wife, Mel, tell their captivating story of God's grace and sovereignty.

Publishers Weekly

Using vivid first-person narration, the Birdwells describe how Brian suffered second- and third-degree burns over 60% of his body when terrorists crashed a jet into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and how the family's Christian faith brought it through Brian's recovery. Birdwell spent three months in the hospital, enduring more than 30 surgeries, daily debridement (removal of unhealthy tissue) and physical therapy. The account alternates between the perspectives of husband and wife, and also incorporates the experiences of their son, Matt. The technique works well throughout; it is most gripping when Brian faces death alone in a flaming hallway and when Mel scrambles through gridlocked traffic to get to the hospital. Details set this book apart. The Birdwells relate Brian's horrific injuries and treatments in a way that might turn some stomachs (skin coming off with his wedding ring, a staph infection that covered his body with green pus). They also expose their own shortcomings: Mel feels guilty about leaving her son and berates some hospital staffers, while Brian expresses anger toward the terrorists. Such confessions lend credence to the Birdwells' belief that only a sovereign God could bring them through their ordeal. This memoir's striking descriptions of the Birdwells' pain, failures and faith against the backdrop of 9-11 will fascinate many readers. (July 4) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreword by Major General R. L. Van Antwerp........................xi
Introduction: A Day We'll Never Forget.............................xiii
Chapter One Death Blow............................................1
Chapter Two Road to Survival......................................11
Chapter Three The Lone Casualty at Georgetown.....................25
Chapter Four The Transfer.........................................43
Chapter Five The Day After........................................55
Chapter Six No Rest for the Weary.................................65
Chapter Seven Unconsciousness Is Bliss............................75
Chapter Eight What Happened?......................................85
Chapter Nine Aftereffects.........................................95
Chapter Ten Previous Pain.........................................105
Chapter Eleven Tough Questions....................................119
Chapter Twelve Pressing On........................................127
Chapter Thirteen Moving to Step-Down..............................133
Chapter Fourteen Waiting on God...................................147
Chapter Fifteen Going Home........................................157
Chapter Sixteen The Media.........................................165
Chapter Seventeen Learning through the Pain.......................171
Chapter Eighteen Going Back.......................................179
Chapter Nineteen Reaching Out.....................................187
Chapter Twenty Where Was God?.....................................197
Chapter Twenty-One Looking Ahead..................................207
Acknowledgments....................................................217
Photo Credits......................................................219
Resources..........................................................221
Scriptures for Comfort.............................................223
Face the Fire Ministries, Inc......................................227
About the Authors..................................................229

Book review: Dimensiones Internacionales de Comportamiento Organizativo

Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media

Author: Patrick J Michaels

Now in Paperback!

Chomsky on Anarchism or Sword and the Shield

2009-01-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

Chomsky on Anarchism

Author: Noam Chomsky

We all know what Noam Chomsky is against. His scathing analysis of everything that's wrong with our society reaches more and more people every day. His brilliant critiques of-among other things-capitalism, imperialism, domestic repression and government propaganda have become mini-publishing industries unto themselves. But, in this flood of publishing and republishing, very little ever gets said about what exactly Chomsky stands for, his own personal politics, his vision of the future.

Not, that is, until Chomsky on Anarchism, a groundbreaking new book that shows a different side of this best-selling author: the anarchist principles that have guided him since he was a teenager. This collection of Chomsky's essays and inter-views includes numerous pieces that have never been published before, as well as rare material that first saw the light of day in hard-to-find pamphlets and anarchist periodicals. Taken together, they paint a fresh picture of Chomsky, showing his lifelong involvement with the anarchist community, his constant commitment to nonhierarchical models of political organization and his hopes for a future world without rulers.

For anyone who's been touched by Chomsky's trenchant analysis of our current situation, as well as anyone looking for an intelligent and coherent discussion of anarchism itself, Chomsky on Anarchism will be one of this season's most exciting and surprising reads.

Noam Chomsky is one of the world's leading intellectuals, the father of modern linguistics, an outspoken media and foreign policy critic and tireless activist. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Books about: Beginning Python or InDesign CS4 For Dummies

Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

Author: Christopher Andrew

The Sword and the Shield is based on one of the most extraordinary intelligence coups of recent times: a secret archive of top-level KGB documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union which the FBI has described, after close examination, as the "most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source." Its presence in the West represents a catastrophic hemorrhage of the KGB’s secrets and reveals for the first time the full extent of its worldwide network.Vasili Mitrokhin, a secret dissident who worked in the KGB archive, smuggled out copies of its most highly classified files every day for twelve years. In 1992, a U.S. ally succeeded in exfiltrating the KGB officer and his entire archive out of Moscow. The archive covers the entire period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the 1980s and includes revelations concerning almost every country in the world. But the KGB's main target, of course, was the United States.Though there is top-secret material on almost every country in the world, the United States is at the top of the list. As well as containing many fascinating revelations, this is a major contribution to the secret history of the twentieth century.Among the topics and revelations explored are: The KGB’s covert operations in the United States and throughout the West, some of which remain dangerous today. KGB files on Oswald and the JFK assassination that Boris Yeltsin almost certainly has no intention of showing President Clinton. The KGB’s attempts to discredit civil rights leader in the 1960s, including its infiltration of the inner circle of a key leader. The KGB’s use of radio intercept posts in New York and Washington, D.C., inthe 1970s to intercept high-level U.S. government communications. The KGB’s attempts to steal technological secrets from major U.S. aerospace and technology corporations. KGB covert operations against former President Ronald Reagan, which began five years before he became president. KGB spies who successfully posed as U.S. citizens under a series of ingenious disguises, including several who attained access to the upper echelons of New York society.

Booknews

Mitrokhin worked for the foreign intelligence archive of the Soviet spy agency. In 1972 he was charged with moving the top-secret records to a new headquarters, and took the opportunity to make notes and transcripts and hide them under his dacha floor. In 1992 British intelligence spirited him to the west, where he now spills the beans with the help of Andrew (modern and contemporary history, Cambridge U.). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

	Abbreviations and Acronyms
	The Evolution of the KGB, 1917-1991
	The Transliteration of Russian Names
	Foreword
1	The Mitrokhin Archive	1
2	From Lenin's Cheka to Stalin's OGPU	23
3	The Great Illegals	42
4	The Magnificent Five	56
5	Terror	68
6	War	89
7	The Grand Alliance	104
8	Victory	122
9	From War to Cold War	137
10	The Main Adversary - Part 1: North American Illegals in the 1950's	162
11	The Main Adversary - Part 2: Walk-ins and Legal Residencies in the Early Cold War	176
12	The Main Adversary - Part 3: Illegals after "Abel"	190
13	The Main Adversary - Part 4: Walk-ins and Legal Residencies in the Later Cold War	203
14	Political Warfare: Active Measures and the Main Adversary	224
15	PROGRESS Operations - Part 1: Crushing the Prague Spring	247
16	PROGRESS Operations - Part 2: Spying on the Soviet Bloc	262
17	The KGB and Western Communist Parties	276
18	Eurocommunism	294
19	Ideological Subversion - Part 1: The War Against the Dissidents	307
20	Ideological Subversion - Part 2: The Victory of the Dissidents	322
21	SIGINT in the Cold War	337
22	Special Tasks - Part 1: From Marshal Tito to Rudolf Nureyev	356
23	Special Tasks - Part 2: The Andropov Era and Beyond	374
24	Cold War Operations Against Britain - Part 1: After the "Magnificent Five"	397
25	Cold War Operations Against Britain - Part 2: After Operation FOOT	417
26	The Federal Republic of Germany	437
27	France and Italy during the Cold War: Agent Penetration and Active Measures	460
28	The Penetration and Persecution of the Soviet Churches	486
29	The Polish Pope and the Rise of Solidarity	508
30	The Polish Crisis and the Crumbling of the Soviet Bloc	517
31	Conclusion: From the One-Party State to the Yeltsin Presidency	544
App. A	KGB Chairmen, 1917-26	566
App. B	Heads of Foreign Intelligence, 1920-99	567
App. C	The Organization of the KGB	568
App. D	The Organization of the KGB First Chief Directorate	569
App. E	The Organization of a KGB Residency	570
	Notes	571
	Bibliography	669
	Index	683

Capital or The Liberal Hour

2009-01-10T00:45:00.000-08:00

Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1

Author: Karl Marx

Das Kapital, Karl Marx's masterwork, is the book that above all others formed the twentieth century. From Kapital sprung the economic and political systems that in our time dominated half the earth and for half a century kept the world on the brink of war. Even today, one billion Chinese remain in the power of the Marxist system. Yet this important and powerful work has been passed over by many readers frustrated by Marx's difficult style and his preoccupation with nineteenth-century events of little relevance to today's reader. Now Serge Levitsky presents a new revised version of this masterpiece, carefully retranslated for the modern reader and abridged to emphasize the political and philosophical core of Marx's work, while trimming away much that is now unimportant. Here then is a fresh and highly readable version of a work whose ideas have influenced the lives of nearly every person alive today.

Books about: Avid Editing or The Future of Reputation

The Liberal Hour: The 1960s and the Remaking of American Life

Author: G Calvin MacKenzi

A vibrant and revelatory history of the liberal moment of the 1960s, one which argues that Washington was not simply a target of reform but was, in fact, the era's most effective engine of change

In most accounts of the 1960s, Washington is portrayed as a target of reform-a reluctant group of politicians coaxed into accepting the radical spirit the day demanded. In the newest volume in the award-winning Penguin History of American Life, Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot argue that the most powerful agents of change in the 1960s were, in fact, those in the traditional seats of power, not the counterculture. A masterly new interpretation of this pivotal decade, The Liberal Hour explores the seismic shifts that led to an era when demands that had lingered on the political agenda for years finally entered the realm of possibility.

By the time John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, the political system that had prevailed for most of the century was based on crumbling economic, social, and demographic realities. The growth of the suburbs meant power had shifted out of the cities, rendering urban political machines and party bosses increasingly irrelevant, which in turn allowed younger, more independent-minded politicians to rise. In Congress, Democrats retained their long held control, but the Southern wing of the party was finally loosening its grip. Postwar prosperity led many Americans to believe there was enough wealth to go around, an optimism that lent powerful support to antipoverty programs, not to mention civil rights. And for once the Supreme Court, which has traditionally served the country's dominant interests, was aligned with the progressivespirit of the age. The 1960s all in all represented a rare convergence-a public ready for change, and a government ready to act.

Liberal reform may have begun with JFK's New Frontier, but his assassination only gave emotional urgency to his agenda. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, knew he had a brief window of opportunity before the forces of reaction would set in, an awareness that may have fostered his occasionally bullying tactics to push legislation through Congress. Still, the result was a burst in government initiatives-for civil rights, consumer protection, and environmental reform, among others-that has not been matched in American history. Ultimately, as our authors reveal, the liberal hour promised too much, and couldn't afford both a costly and unpopular war abroad and a Great Society at home, but when it passed it left in its wake a vastly altered American landscape.

With elegant and accessible prose, The Liberal Hour casts one of the most dramatic periods in American history in a new light, revealing that for all that has been written about the more attention-grabbing protest movements, the most powerful engine of change in that tumultuous decade was Washington itself.

The New York Times - Barry Gewen

Granted, it's more fun to read about Abbie Hoffman than about Edmund Muskie, but Mr. Mackenzie and Mr. Weisbrot have a persuasive case to make, and even if much of their story has been told before, their overall argument is a valuable corrective to a lot of hackneyed thinking about the significance of the '60s.

Publishers Weekly

Mackenzie and Weisbrot (Maximum Danger), professors of government and history respectively at Colby College, provide an insightful and well-argued analysis of the 1960s' social, economic and policy dynamics that opened both the public and the government to great and necessary social legislation. The authors argue that the postwar movement of political power from the cities to the suburbs, the decline of conservative Southern Democrats' power in the party and the confident climate of prosperity facilitated the greatest and most far-reaching federal legislation since the New Deal. Unlike many historians of this period, Weisbrot and Mackenzie, in addition to telling of key civil rights legislation and Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, also give due and detailed diligence to environmental legislation, such as the Clean Air Act and the Wilderness Act, which defined strict rules to ensure federally owned wilderness largely remained wilderness. Throughout, the authors reveal how prosperity and a rare window of real opportunity with Democrats in power on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue fueled domestic reform. (July 7)

Karl Helicher - Library Journal

From 1963 to 1966, liberalism reigned in the United States, and during this brief time a breathtaking number of laws were passed, creating the enduring legacy of the 1960s, say Mackenzie (government, Colby Coll.; The Politics of Presidential Appointments) and Weisbrot (history, Colby Coll.; Maximum Danger: Kennedy, the Missiles, and the Crisis of American Confidence). Their informed political history reveals how President Kennedy, a liberal work in progress, and President Johnson, "the most skilled and ingenious legislative leader, perhaps of all time," supported by the 89th and 90th Congresses and by the liberal Warren Court, passed such monumental legislation as the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start, and new laws to protect the environment and to expand aid to higher education. The authors show that liberalism lost public support when it could not meet its overly optimistic goals of ending poverty, healing the racial divide, and, most significantly, financing and winning the Vietnam War. By 1966, liberalism had run its course; the conservative movement gradually emerged to fill the void. This book provides a balance to the many accounts that view the 1960s as most noted for the counterculture, antiwar protestors, and sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. Strongly recommended for larger public and all academic collections.

Kirkus Reviews

The '60s were not just about the shaggy counterculture-as much was accomplished in reshaping the status quo by "the institutions of national politics and the politicians and bureaucrats who inhabited them."So write Mackenzie (Government/Colby Coll.; The Irony of Reform: Roots of American Political Disenchantment, 1996, etc.) and Weisbrot (History/Colby Coll.; Maximum Danger: Kennedy, the Missiles, and the Crisis of American Confidence, 2001, etc.), who submit that the story of these often faceless civil servants is little known. Yet, they convincingly demonstrate, the '60s afforded perhaps the last time that a liberal government and a liberally inclined voting populace agreed that government could be an agent of change for social good, and that it could both lead the people and follow their will. At the beginning of the decade, note the authors, much of America was locked in a state of racial apartheid, while Dixiecrat segregationists controlled nearly three-quarters of the standing committees in Congress; women scarcely figured in politics, and not a single major corporation had a woman at its head; the environment was a mess; many cities were impoverished and crime-ridden, their white middle-class population having begun to depart for the suburbs en masse. But since the people largely trusted government, it could do something about all these things and, moreover, actually did do something. Mackenzie and Weisbrot trace the shift of political power to younger liberals such as Philip Hart, Eugene McCarthy and Dan Rostenkowski through the workings of the Democratic Study Group, a party within the Democratic Party that "allowed its leaders to . . . galvanize a liberal coalition onsignificant pieces of legislation." So thorough was the shift that Lyndon Johnson would quietly complain that "John F. Kennedy was a little too conservative to suit my taste." During the years 1963-66, the liberals forced significant progress in almost every aspect of American life. Yet, as the authors suggest, it was the failings of the Johnson administration-particularly the Vietnam War-that eventually ended the liberal moment. Apart from a good, sturdy narrative history, there are useful lessons here for political activists and progressives.

Richard M Nixon or Getting to Maybe

2009-01-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

Richard M. Nixon: The 37th President, 1969-1974

Author: Elizabeth Drew

The complex man at the center of America’s most self-destructive presidency

In this provocative and revelatory assessment of the only president ever forced out of office, the legendary Washington journalist Elizabeth Drew explains how Richard M. Nixon’s troubled inner life offers the key to understanding his presidency. She shows how Nixon was surprisingly indecisive on domestic issues and often wasn’t interested in them. Turning to international affairs, she reveals the inner workings of Nixon’s complex relationship with Henry Kissinger, and their mutual rivalry and distrust. The Watergate scandal that ended his presidency was at once an overreach of executive power and the inevitable result of his paranoia and passion for vengeance.

Even Nixon’s post-presidential rehabilitation was motivated by a consuming desire for respectability, and he succeeded through his remarkable resilience. Through this book we finally understand this complicated man. While giving him credit for his achievements, Drew questions whether such a man—beleaguered, suspicious, and motivated by resentment and paranoia—was fit to hold America’s highest office, and raises large doubts that he was.

Library Journal

Book review: Frederick the Great or On Suicide Bombing

Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed

Author: Frances Westley

A practical, inspirational, revolutionary guide to social innovation

Many of us have a deep desire to make the world around us a better place. But often our good intentions are undermined by the fear that we are so insignificant in the big scheme of things that nothing we can do will actually help feed the world’s hungry, fix the damage of a Hurricane Katrina or even get a healthy lunch program up and running in the local school. We tend to think that great social change is the province of heroes – an intimidating view of reality that keeps ordinary people on the couch. But extraordinary leaders such as Gandhi and even unlikely social activists such as Bob Geldof most often see themselves as harnessing the forces around them, rather than singlehandedly setting those forces in motion. The trick in any great social project – from the global fight against AIDS to working to eradicate poverty in a single Canadian city – is to stop looking at the discrete elements and start trying to understand the complex relationships between them. By studying fascinating real-life examples of social change through this systems-and-relationships lens, the authors of Getting to Maybe tease out the rules of engagement between volunteers, leaders, organizations and circumstance – between individuals and what Shakespeare called “the tide in the affairs of men.”

Getting to Maybe applies the insights of complexity theory and harvests the experiences of a wide range of people and organizations – including the ministers behind the Boston Miracle (and its aftermath); the Grameen Bank, in which one man’s dream of micro-creditsparked a financial revolution for the world’s poor; the efforts of a Canadian clothing designer to help transform the lives of aboriginal women and children; and many more – to lay out a brand new way of thinking about making change in communities, in business, and in the world.

The Prince or The Secret Destiny of America

2009-01-09T01:19:00.000-08:00

The Prince (Mansfield Translation)

Author: Niccolo Machiavelli

Need to seize a country? Have enemies you must destroy? In this handbook for despots and tyrants, the Renaissance statesman Machiavelli sets forth how to accomplish this and more, while avoiding the awkwardness of becoming generally hated and despised.

"Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge."

For nearly 500 years, Machiavelli's observations on Realpolitik have shocked and appalled the timid and romantic, and for many his name was equivalent to the devil's own. Yet, The Prince was the first attempt to write of the world of politics as it is, rather than sanctimoniously of how it should be, and thus The Prince remains as honest and relevant today as when Machiavelli first put quill to parchment, and warned the junior statesman to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.

Books about: Princípios básicos de Comportamento Organizacional

The Secret Destiny of America

Author: Manly P Hall

Manly P. Hall's two classic works on the hidden history and occult mission of America—The Secret Destiny of America and America's Assignment with Destiny— each redesigned and reset in this special two-in-one volume.

Drawing upon often neglected fragments of history, The Secret Destiny of America presents evidence for a mysterious Great Plan at the core of the nation's founding. Preeminent occult scholar Manly P. Hall argues that humanistic, esoteric, and mystical orders collaborated in setting aside the American continent for a world-shaking experiment in enlightened self-government and religious liberty.

The author locates the seeds for this plan one thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era, exploring figures such as the Pharaoh Akhnaton, Plato, and Plotinus. Once hatched in the colonial age, the great experiment involved: · Christopher Columbus, who may have been an agent of esoteric order connected with Lorenzo de' Medici and Leonardo da Vinci;

• English intellectuals Bacon and Raleigh, who played unique roles in the court intrigue surrounding the settlement of the continent;

• founders Washington and Franklin, who had esoteric associations;

• and a network of Rosicrucians, mystics, and Freemasons whose ideals of religious freedom traveled to American soil.

Whether discussing the symbolism of the Great Seal of the United States, the prophecy at George Washington's birth, or the role of a mysterious stranger who swayed the signers of the Declaration of Independence, The Secret Destiny of America is the sole volume to link together the fascinating strandsof esoteric history that lie at America's heart.

Primal Leadership or The Book of Questions

2009-01-08T15:07:00.000-08:00

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence

Author: Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman's international bestseller Emotional Intelligence forever changed our concept of "being smart," showing how emotional intelligence (EI)-how we handle ourselves and our relationships-can determine life success more than IQ. Then, Working with Emotional Intelligence revealed how stellar career performance also depends on EI.

Now, Goleman teams with renowned EI researchers Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee to explore the role of emotional intelligence in leadership. Unveiling neuroscientific links between organizational success or failure and "primal leadership," the authors argue that a leader's emotions are contagious. If a leader resonates energy and enthusiasm, an organization thrives; if a leader spreads negativity and dissonance, it flounders. This breakthrough concept charges leaders with driving emotions in the right direction to have a positive impact on earnings or strategy.

Drawing from decades of analysis within world-class organizations, the authors show that resonant leaders-whether CEOs or managers, coaches or politicians-excel not just through skill and smarts, but by connecting with others using EI competencies like empathy and self-awareness. And they employ up to six leadership styles-from visionary to coaching to pacesetting-fluidly interchanging them as the situation demands.

The authors identify a proven process through which leaders can learn to:

· Assess, develop, and sustain personal EI competencies over time

· Inspire and motivate people

· Cultivate resonant leadership throughout teams and organizations

· Leverage resonance to increase bottom-line performance

The book no leader in any walk of life can afford to miss, this unforgettable work transforms the art of leadership into the science of results.

USA Today

Now, here is a concept that every new (and old) boss should take to heart: The duty of a leader is to prime positive feelings in workers..... clear, concise writing style is helpful in explaining complex processes in easy-to-understand language....Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee have turned a difficult trick: attacking a tired subject in an invigorating way.

Publishers Weekly

"The fundamental task of leaders... is to prime good feeling in those they lead. That occurs when a leader creates resonance a reservoir of positivity that unleashes the best in people. At its root, then, the primal job of leadership is emotional." So argue Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) and EI (emotional intelligence) experts Boyatzis and McKee. They use the word "primal" not only in its original sense, but also to stress that making employees feel good (i.e., inspired and empowered) is the job a leader should do first. To prove that the need to lead and to respond to leadership is innate, the authors cite numerous biological studies of how people learn and react to situations (e.g., an executive's use of innate self-awareness helps her to be open to criticism). And to demonstrate the importance of emotion to leadership, they note countless examples of different types of leaders in similar situations, and point out that the ones who get their employees emotionally engaged accomplish far more. Perhaps most intriguing is the brief appendix, where the authors compare the importance of IQ and EI in determining a leader's effectiveness. Their conclusion that EI is more important isn't surprising, but their reasoning is. Since one has to be fairly smart to be a senior manager, IQ among top managers doesn't vary widely. However, EI does. Thus, the authors argue, those managers with higher EI will be more successful. (Mar. 11) Forecast: Goleman already has a legion of fans from his early books on EI. His publisher is banking on his fame; the house has planned a $250,000 campaign and a 100,000 first printing. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) teams with Richard E. Boyatzis (Weatherhead Sch. of Management, Case Western Reserve) and Annie McKee (Management Development Services, North America, Hay Group) to focus on the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and successful leadership. The authors define EI as handling one's emotions well when dealing with others and go on to describe how EI makes good leaders. Throughout, the authors talk about leaders exhibiting "resonance," defined as bringing out the best in people by being positive about their emotions, and "dissonance," defined as bringing out the worst in people by undermining their emotions. The book is arranged in three sections, with the first section describing the characteristics of resonant and dissonant leadership as well as the four dimensions of EI, which are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. This section also describes the different types of leadership styles, such as visionary, coaching, and commanding. The second section outlines the steps one needs to take to become a more positive leader, and the third section discusses how to use these newfound skills to build a better organization. Real-life leadership stories are provided throughout. Recommended for public, corporate, and academic libraries. Stacey Marien, American Univ., Washington, DC Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Goleman (emotional intelligence in organizations, Rutgers U.) Richard Joyatzis (organizational behavior, Case Western Reserve U.) and Annie McKee (education, U. of Pennsylvania) explain how successful leaders use a reservoir of positivity to stimulate good feeling in those they lead. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Great leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. When we try to explain why they are so effective, we speak of strategy, vision, or powerful ideas. But the reality is much more primal: Great leadership works through the emotions.

The authors of Primal Leadership write that humankind's original leaders earned their place because their leadership was emotionally compelling. In the modern organization, this primordial emotional task remains. Leaders must drive the collective emotions in a positive direction and clear the smog created by toxic emotions, whether it is on the shop floor or in the boardroom.

When leaders drive emotions positively, they bring out everyone's best. When they drive emotions negatively, they spawn dissonance, undermining the emotional foundations that let people shine. The authors of Primal Leadership explain that the key to making primal leadership work to everyone's advantage lies in the leadership competencies of emotional intelligence; how leaders handle themselves and their relationships. Leaders who exercise primal leadership drive the emotions of those they lead in the right direction.

Matters of the Heart and Mind
Gifted leadership occurs where heart and head - feeling and thought - meet. These are the two things that allow a leader to soar. The authors write that all leaders need enough intellect to handle the tasks and challenges at hand. However, intellect alone won't make a leader. Leaders execute a vision by motivating, guiding, inspiring, listening, persuading, and creating resonance. As a result, the manner in which leaders act - not just what they do, but how they do it - is a fundamental key to effective leadership. The reason lies in the design of the human brain.

The brain is an open loop. The authors explore how we rely on connections with other people for our emotional stability. Scientists describe the open-loop system as "interpersonal limbic regulation," whereby one person transmits signals that can alter hormone levels, cardiovascular function, sleep rhythms, and even immune function inside the body of another. Other people can change our very physiology and our emotions.

The authors describe how the continual interplay of limbic open loops among members of a group creates a kind of emotional soup, with everyone adding his or her flavor to the mix. Negative emotions - especially chronic anger, anxiety or a sense of futility - powerfully disrupt work, hijacking attentions from the tasks at hand.

On the other hand, when people feel good, they work at their best. The authors write that feeling good lubricates mental efficiency, making people better at understanding information and making complex judgments. For example, insurance agents with a glass-is-half-full attitude make more sales, in part because they are able to withstand rejection better than their more pessimistic peers.

Cooperative Teams
A study on 62 CEOs and their top management shows just how important mood is. The CEOs and their management team members were assessed on how upbeat - energetic, enthusiastic and determined - they were. They were also asked how much conflict the top team experienced. The study found that the more positive the overall moods of people in the top management team, the more cooperative they worked together and the better the company's business results. The study concluded that the longer a company was run by a management team that did not get along, the poorer the company's market return.

The authors write that every large organization has pockets of resonance and dissonance. The overall ratio determines the organization's emotional climate and performance. To shift the ratio toward resonance, cultivate a dispersed cadre of emotionally intelligent leaders. To do that, the authors write, leadership training must be the strategic priority and be managed at the highest level. Commitment must come from the top. That's because new leadership means a new mindset and new behaviors, and in order for these to stick, the organization's culture, systems and processes all need to change.

Let's say that as a leader, you get it. You've set the stage by assessing the culture, examining the reality and the ideal. You've created resonance around the idea of change, and you've identified the people who will take top leadership roles. The next step is to design a process that lets those leaders uncover their own dreams and personal ideals, examine their strengths and their gaps, and use their daily work as a learning laboratory. The authors explain that this process must also be self-directed and include the following elements:

A tie-in to the organization's culture.
Seminars emphasizing individual change.
Learning about emotional competencies.
Creative learning experiences.
Relationships that support learning, such as executive coaching.

Why Soundview Likes This Book
Using many in-depth examples of how the concepts of primal leadership work and how the power of emotional intelligent can be used to effect organizations, Primal Leadership delivers many poignant messages about a topic that deserves more attention. The book's focus on real-life scenarios and modern business problems keeps its intellectual ideas grounded in reality, and helps it develop and demonstrate its pertinent ideas. The numerous examples it uses to illustrate these ideas turn this book into an exciting examination of fresh concepts and valuable learning. Copyright (c) 2002 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

What People Are Saying

Sound and practical advice on leading effectively, based on science and business experience, from the leader in the field of emotional intelligence."

-Martin Seligman, Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania

New interesting textbook: Handbook of Ayurveda or Taming of the CANDY Monster

The Book of Questions: Business, Politics and Ethics

Author: Gregory Stock

Right to life, or abortion rights. Whistle-blowing. Does everyone have a price? The most difficult and revealing of all questions are questions of ethics-easy to answer from afar, but impossible when you're in the thick of it.

From the author of the 1.9-million-copy bestselling The Book of Questions, here are 300 primary and follow-up questions on commerce and politics that probe deeply into our conflicts between ideals and reality, and help us sound our own morals.

Put principles to the test: If you knew you could double your money in two years by investing in a company whose activities you strongly disapprove of, would you? Examine basic beliefs: If you knew you would not produce anything of real significance in your life, how would it change your goals and attitudes? Fantasize about power: If you could determine who could immigrate here, would you let in those who would contribute the most to our country or those most in need of refuge? Define convictions: If you were certain someone convicted of armed robbery would never commit another crime, would you choose a punishment that involved no prison sentence? Perhaps even rehearse for tomorrow: What would you do if after shaking hands on a deal for an item you are selling, someone else offers you twice as much?

Fuel those all-to-rare talks that go deep into the night-and explore and refine your values. 106,000 copies in print.

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

	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

	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

	Preface to the Second Edition
	Preface
1	A Changing World	1
2	One Atmosphere	14
3	One Economy	51
4	One Law	106
5	One Community	150
6	A Better World?	196
	Notes	203
	Index	227

	Last Things	1
	Private Investigations	47
	Dreams	115
	Fictions	207
	The End	261
	Acknowledgments	293
	Notes	295

Politics & Islam Books

Illicit Flows and Criminal Things or Soviet and Kosher

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

Table of Contents:

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

What People Are Saying

Asia America and the Transformation of Geopolitics or Time and Chance

Asia, America and the Transformation of Geopolitics

Time and Chance: Gerald Ford's Appointment With History

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

Classics of Political and Moral Philosophy

Table of Contents:

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

The Sex of Class or Vestiges of War

The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor

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

Howard Zinn

All Fall Down or Day of Reckoning

All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran

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

The New York Times - Chris Suellentrop

Table of Contents:

Catherine the Great or ReOrient

Catherine the Great: Life and Legend

The Chicago Tribune - W. Bruce Lincoln

ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age

Harbans Mukhia

Saubhik Chakabarti

What People Are Saying

Guarding the Golden Door or Gods of Diyala

Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882

Publishers Weekly

Foreign Affairs

Library Journal

Table of Contents:

Gods of Diyala: Transfer of Command in Iraq

Writing in the Dark or Quiet Strength

Writing in the Dark: Essays

Publishers Weekly

David Keymer - Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Table of Contents:

Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation

War and Decision or Brown Tide Rising

War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism

Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse

Table of Contents:

For Freedoms Sake or Chicano Art

For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer

Publishers Weekly

Chicano Art: Inside/Outside the Master's House: Cultural Politics and the Cara Exhibition

The Many Faces of Political Islam or Foxbats Over Dimona

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

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

Foreign Affairs

Table of Contents:

Blinded by the Right or The Separation of Church and State

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

Los Angeles Times - Todd Gitlin

Tribune Media Services - Bill Press

New Yorker - Hendrik Hertzberg

New York Times - Frank Rich

NYPress - Michelangelo Signorile

The Nation - Michael Tomasky

Chicago Sun Times - Steve Neal

Philadelphia City Paper - Andrew Milner

New York Observer - Joe Conason

Boston Globe - John Aloysius Farrell

USA Today - Clara Frenk

Library Journal

Table of Contents:

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

After Fidel or Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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

Table of Contents:

Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

D. Schultz - Choice

Charles Larmore - The New Republic

John Dunn - Times Higher Education Supplement

Steven B. Smith - New York Sun

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

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

12.
Individual Retirement Arrangements

13.
Keogh Plans, SEPs and SIMPLE Plans

14.
Executive Retirement Arrangements

15.
Employee Stock Compensation Plans

17.
Defined Benefit Plan Features

18.
Cost and Funding Considerations

19.
Budgeting Pension Costs

20.
Insured Funding Instruments and Trust Fund Plans

23.
Employers’ Accounting for Pensions

25.
Tax Qualification Requirements

26.
Tax QualificationRequirements (Continued)

29.
Investing Retirement Assets

30.
Retirement Asset Wealth Management

31.
Retirement Asset Distribution Planning