Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Federalist or The Political Mind

Federalist (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Author: Alexander Hamilton

The Federalist, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

  • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
  • Biographies of the authors
  • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
  • Footnotes and endnotes
  • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
  • Comments by other famous authors
  • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
  • Bibliographies for further reading
  • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
  • All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

    A classic of American political thought, The Federalist is a series of eighty-five essays by three authors—Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—the purpose of which was to gain support for the proposed new Constitution of the United States, a document that many considered too radical. Most ofthe "papers" were published in periodicals as the vote on approving it drew near. Without the support of these powerfully persuasive essays, the Constitution most likely would not have been ratified and America might not have survived as a nation.

    Beginning with an assault upon the country's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, the authors of The Federalist present a masterly defense of the new system. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay—three of our most influential founders—comment brilliantly on issue after issue, whether it be the proper size and scope of government, taxation, or impeachment. Today lawmakers and politicians frequently invoke these commentaries, more than 200 years after they first appeared.

    Written in haste and during a time of great crisis in the new American government, the articles were not expected to achieve immortality. Today, however, many historians consider The Federalist as the third most important political document in American history, just behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself. They have become the benchmark of American political philosophy, and the best explanation of what the Founding Fathers were trying to achieve.

    Robert A. Ferguson is George Edward Woodberry Professor in Law, Literature, and Criticism at Columbia University; he teaches in both the Law School and the English Department. His books include Law and Letters in American Culture, The American Enlightenment, 1750–1820, and Reading the Early Republic.



    Go to: Secrets of Jesuit Soupmaking or Biker Billys Hog Wild on a Harley Cookbook

    The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain

    Author: George Lakoff

    The New York Times bestselling author of Don't Think of an Elephant! explains the science behind how we make political decisions.

    Publishers Weekly

    Lakoff (Don't Think of an Elephant) harnesses cognitive science to rally progressive politicians and voters by positing that conservatives have framed the debate on vital issues more effectively than liberals. According to his research, conservatives comprehend that most brain functioning is grounded not in logical reasoning but in emotionalism-as a result, huge portions of the citizenry accept the Republican framing of the "war in Iraq" and "supporting the troops" rather than liberal appeals and phrasing of "the occupation in Iraq" and "squandering tax money." George W. Bush won the presidency by concocting a "redemption narrative," persuading tens of millions of voters that his past moral and business shortcomings should be viewed as a prelude to pulling himself up, rather than as disqualifying behavior. While sections of the book employ technical scientific terminology, the author masterfully makes his research comprehensible to nonspecialists. His conclusion-that if citizens and policy-makers better understand brain functioning, hope exists to ameliorate global warming and other societal disasters in the making-will be of vital importance and interest to all readers. (June)

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

    Kirkus Reviews

    Of neural modeling, X-schemas, neurotransmitters and Dubya-signposts on the culture war whose "main battlefield is the brain."Reality, Stephen Colbert famously remarked, has a liberal bias. Yet liberal think-tanker Lakoff (Cognitive Science and Linguistics/Univ. of California, Berkeley; Whose Freedom?: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea, 2006, etc.) sets out to prove that we are a great deal less rational than we believe ourselves to be. Sure, reality has a liberal bias, and "American values are fundamentally progressive," but the radical right has been winning that culture war at least in part because its tacticians have had a better grasp of our reptilian, fear-driven, emotional inner demons and played to them. "Cut and run," the author notes by way of example. "Can you not think cowardice?" Borrowing a page from the late sociologist Erving Goffman, Lakoff examines a series of "framing issues," the ways in which stories are told and political objectives laid out such that the outcome cannot help but favor the framer. Consider Iraq, for instance: All it would take would be for a skillful narrator to rejigger the frame, and suddenly our occupying army has need to stay for decades, the measure of victory being the guarantee of the safe flow of oil to America. "If the country broke up into three distinct states or autonomous governments," Lakoff adds, "that too might be 'victory' as long as oil profits were guaranteed and Americans in the oil industry protected." The frame is everything: By one frame Anna Nicole Smith is a gold-digger, by another a rags-to-riches success story; by one frame George Bush is a white-knuckle alcoholic, by another a redeemed sinner. The task forprogressives, Lakoff asserts, is to start framing the stories better, outside of the narrative confines of the "Old Enlightenment," lest the right continue its work of dismantling democracy without the left making a peep. The task is also to find an identity-as, Lakoff notes, Barry Goldwater so successfully did as a "biconceptual" conservative-and live up to it. Smart and provocative-essential reading for political activists and policy wonks of any stripe.



    Table of Contents:

    Introduction: Brain Change and Social Change 1

    Pt. I How the Brain Shapes the Political Mind

    Ch. 1 Anna Nicole on the Brain 21

    Ch. 2 The Political Unconscious 43

    Ch. 3 The Brain's Role in Family Values 75

    Ch. 4 The Brain's Role in Political Ideologies 93

    Pt. II Political Challenges for the Twenty-first-Century Mind

    Ch. 5 A New Consciousness 117

    Ch. 6 Traumatic Ideas: The War on Terror 125

    Ch. 7 Framing Reality: Privateering 133

    Ch. 8 Fear of Framing 145

    Ch. 9 Confronting Stereotypes: Sons of the Welfare Queen 159

    Ch. 10 Aim Above the Bad Apples 163

    Ch. 11 Cognitive Policy 169

    Ch. 12 Contested Concepts Everywhere 177

    Pt. III The Technical Is the Political 191

    Ch. 13 Exploring the Political Brain 195

    Ch. 14 The Problem of Self-interest 201

    Ch. 15 The Metaphors Defining Rational Action 209

    Ch. 16 Why Hawks Win 223

    Ch. 17 The Brain's Language 231

    Ch. 18 Language in the New Enlightenment 243

    Afterword: What If It Works? 267

    Notes 275

    Index 283

    Rise of Theodore Roosevelt or War Journal

    Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

    Author: Edmund Morris

    Described by the Chicago Tribune as "a classic," The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest biographies of our time. The publication of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt on September 14th, 2001 marks the 100th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt becoming president.


    From the Trade Paperback edition.

    The New York Times Books of the Century - Charles McGrath

    ....It is a sweeping narrative of the outward man and a shrewd examination of his character.



    Table of Contents:
    Prologue: New Year's Day, 1907
    Pt. 11858-1886
    1The Very Small Person3
    2The Mind, But Not the Body30
    3The Man with the Morning in His Face54
    4The Swell in the Dog Cart80
    5The Political Hack115
    6The Cyclone Assemblyman140
    7The Fighting Cock168
    8The Dude from New York187
    9The Honorable Gentleman213
    10The Delegate-at-Large235
    11The Cowboy of the Present261
    12The Four-Eyed Maverick289
    13The Long Arm of the Law313
    14The Next Mayor of New York339
    Interlude: Winter of the Blue Snow, 1886-1887363
    Pt. 21887-1901
    15The Literary Feller371
    16The Silver-Plated Reform Commissioner400
    17The Dear Old Beloved Brother438
    18The Universe Spinner470
    19The Biggest Man in New York494
    20The Snake in the Grass534
    21The Glorious Retreat563
    22The Hot Weather Secretary588
    23The Lieutenant Colonel618
    24The Rough Rider646
    25The Wolf Rising in the Heart661
    26The Most Famous Man in America695
    27The Boy Governor723
    28The Man of Destiny747
    Epilogue: September 1901775
    Acknowledgments781
    Bibliography783
    Notes789
    Illustrations891
    Index895

    Books about:

    War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq

    Author: Richard Engel

    In the most dramatic and intimate account of battle reporting since Michael Herr's classic Dispatches, NBC News's award-winning Middle East Bureau Chief, Richard Engel, offers an unvarnished and often emotional account of five years in Iraq.

    Engel is the longest serving broadcaster in Iraq and the only American television reporter to cover the country continuously before, during, and after the 2003 U.S. invasion. Fluent in Arabic, he has had unrivaled access to U.S. military commanders, Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iraqi families, and even President George W. Bush, who called him to the White House for a private briefing. He has witnessed nearly every major milestone in this long war.

    War Journal describes what it was like to go into the hole where U.S. Special Operations Forces captured Saddam Hussein. Engel was there as the insurgency began and watched the spread of Iranian influence over Shiite religious cities and the Iraqi government. He watched as Iraqis voted in their first election. He was in the courtroom when Saddam was sentenced to death and interviewed General David Petraeus about the surge.

    In vivid, sometimes painful detail, Engel tracks the successes and setbacks of the war. He describes searching, with U.S troops, for a missing soldier in the dangerous Sunni city of Ramadi; surviving kidnapping attempts, IED attacks, hotel bombings, and ambushes; and even the smell of cakes in a bakery attacked by sectarian gangs and strewn with bodies of the executed.

    War Journal describes a sectarian war that American leaders were late to understand and struggled to contain. It is an account of the author's experiences, insights, bittersweetreflections, and moments from his private video diary -- itself the subject of a highly acclaimed documentary on MSNBC.

    War Journal is the story of the transformation of a young journalist who moved to the Middle East with $2,000 and a belief that the region would be "the story" of his generation into a seasoned reporter who has at times believed that he would die covering the war. It is about American soldiers, ordinary Iraqis, and especially a few brave individuals on his team who continually risked their lives to make his own daring reporting possible.

    Publishers Weekly

    NBC News' Middle East bureau chief Engel (A Fist in the Hornet's Nest) tags along on marine patrols and survives his share of ambushes, truck bombs and kidnapping attempts in this riveting memoir of the Iraq War. His worm's-eye reportage of the spiraling carnage exposes the grisly details omitted from nightly newscasts-a dog carrying a severed human head, a massacre scene in a bakery redolent of sweet aromas and the merry trilling of a victim's cellphone-along with his own numbed reactions. His battles with network suits and right-wing bloggers who insist that he find good news to report are a leitmotif, as is his scrupulous discernment of the big picture beneath the chaos of war. Fluent in Arabic, with access to Iraqi prime ministers and insurgents as well as American leaders (including George W. Bush), he deftly elucidates the bitter rivalry between dethroned Sunnis and rising Shiites and, behind that, Iran's skillful consolidation of power in Iraq as the United States flounders. Engel's fine, heartfelt but disabused account of this bewildering conflict renders the suffering in Iraq with understanding and compassion. Photos. (June 3)

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



    Tuesday, December 23, 2008

    Gandhi Churchill or They Must Be Stopped

    Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age

    Author: Arthur Herman

    In this fascinating and meticulously researched book, bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of the most universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, and reveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India and the British Empire.

    They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain’s most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle-class household in a provincial town in India. Yet Arthur Herman reveals how their lives and careers became intertwined as the twentieth century unfolded. Both men would go on to lead their nations through harrowing trials and two world wars—and become locked in a fierce contest of wills that would decide the fate of countries, continents, and ultimately an empire.

    Gandhi & Churchill reveals how both men were more alike than different, and yet became bitter enemies over the future of India, a land of 250 million people with 147 languages and dialects and 15 distinct religions—the jewel in the crown of Britain’s overseas empire for 200 years.

    Over the course of a long career, Churchill would do whatever was necessary to ensure that India remain British—including a fateful redrawing of the entire map of the Middle East and even risking his alliance with the United States during World War Two.

    Mohandas Gandhi, by contrast, would dedicate his life to India’s liberation, defy death and imprisonment, and create an entirely new kind of political movement: satyagraha, or civil disobedience. His campaigns of nonviolence in defiance of Churchill and the British, including his famous Salt March, wouldbecome the blueprint not only for the independence of India but for the civil rights movement in the U.S. and struggles for freedom across the world.

    Now master storyteller Arthur Herman cuts through the legends and myths about these two powerful, charismatic figures and reveals their flaws as well as their strengths. The result is a sweeping epic of empire and insurrection, war and political intrigue, with a fascinating supporting cast, including General Kitchener, Rabindranath Tagore, Franklin Roosevelt, Lord Mountbatten, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. It is also a brilliant narrative parable of two men whose great successes were always haunted by personal failure, and whose final moments of triumph were overshadowed by the loss of what they held most dear.


    The Washington Post - Edwin M. Yoder Jr.

    Herman's book focuses on two imposing figures who epitomized the clash between traditional imperialism and the gathering anti-colonial insurgency, and he tells their stories stylishly and eloquently…he has probed beneath the stereotypes to show that Gandhi, like Churchill, was an unpredictable maverick and that Churchill's doubts sprang from genuine worry that an independent India could be ripped apart by the communal stresses of her countless sects, castes, languages and regions.

    Publishers Weekly

    Historian Herman (How the Scots Invented the Modern World) paints a forceful portrait of the emergence of the postcolonial era in the fateful contrast-and surprising affinities-between two historic figures on opposite sides of the struggle for Indian independence. Churchill and Gandhi, both elites in their respective milieus, began their careers with remarkably similar perspectives and trod intersecting paths across India, South Africa and England. They shared an obsession with physical courage (albeit channeled in different ways) that tied conceptions of masculinity to larger ideas of racial identity and moral superiority-and India loomed large in their triumphal careers, ultimately frustrating both men's idealism. While Herman's dual biography artfully depicts the personalities of the two men, he gives short shrift to the more complex forces of British imperial decline, Indian nationalism and the emergence of the postwar order (for example, Herman helpfully but also too neatly explains the dogged centrality of India and the British raj in Churchill's worldview as an act of filial loyalty to his beloved father) But the author also takes careful account of the constellation of modern and antimodern currents of late Victorian thought in situating these vastly influential figures in a fascinating narrative of their times. (May)

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

    Elizabeth Morris - Library Journal

    The complex task of drawing comparison and contrast between two of the most chronicled lives of the 20th century is easily and compellingly handled by Herman (How the Scots Invented the Modern World). Spanning the globe and dozens of decades, Herman never sinks into the clichés of these two men's biographies but rather deconstructs some of the cherished myths surrounding them while maintaining a warm and lively tone. From India to South Africa to London, they seemed to cross paths in life yet could never reach a true understanding of each other. Churchill, the ardent defender of the British Empire, had trouble accepting modern political realities and fixated upon Gandhi as the ultimate threat to his beloved England's legacy. Gandhi, in turn, achieved global superstar status but could not unite Indian politics and eventually became a hindrance, then an irrelevance, to Indian independence. These two men may have been presented historically as enemies, or at least proxy enemies, but Herman brings out the true issues that divided them yet made them remarkably similar holdovers of the Victorian era. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ1/08.]

    Kirkus Reviews

    Veteran historian Herman (To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, 2004, etc.) offers an ambitious, reasoned joint biography of two great men. Each was a late-Victorian political figure who continued to lead into the mid-20th century. Each held an exemplary vision for his country that initially and spectacularly prevailed, but ultimately collided with new modern realities. Born to a well-to-do Hindu family in the western province of Gujarati, Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) was groomed in the English educational system to be a barrister and spent a formative period studying in London. His first experience of racial discrimination was in South Africa, where he worked for the enfranchisement of indentured servants. Winston Churchill (1874-1965), son of an aristocrat who was briefly secretary of state for India, inherited his father Randolph's unshakeable belief in Britain's imperial mission to the subcontinent. While both Gandhi and Churchill had absorbed the idea of empire as "a moral force, an institution of order and civilization," Gandhi's view would change drastically. He gradually repudiated Britain for its criminal subjugation and tyranny, fashioning a new spiritual creed from his deep philosophical readings, during his many jail stints, of Tolstoy, Ruskin and the Bhagavad Gita. Churchill rejected Gandhi's brand of religious "fanaticism," which he believed threatened to engulf the civilized Christian world in paganism and darkness. When Gandhi returned to India and joined national politics, he developed his belief in ahimsa (nonviolence) to embrace methods of satyagraha (passive resistance) in order to challenge the Raj's paternalistic, restrictive policies.Churchill opposed him at every step, passionately rejecting, for example, Viceroy Lord Irwin's advocacy of dominion status for India in 1929. Herman's measured portrait of each man conveys his entire worldview, shaped by class, history and education. Each proved great and flawed in different ways. A well-wrought historical narrative that adds significantly to our understanding of both figures. Agent: Glen Hartley/Writers' Representatives



    Books about: Economics Ethics and Public Policy or Media Planning Workbook

    They Must Be Stopped

    Author: Brigitte Gabriel

    They Must Be Stopped is New York Times bestselling author Brigitte Gabriel’s warning to the world: We can no longer ignore the growth of radical Islam--we must act soon, and powerfully. Gabriel challenges our western and politically-correct notions about Islam, demonstrating why radical Islam is so deadly and how we can halt its progress.

    Brigitte Gabriel speaks her mind:

    *Fundamentalist Islam is a religion rooted in 7th century teachings that are fundamentally opposed to democracy and equality.

    *Radical Islamists are utterly contemptuous of all “infidels” (non-Muslims) and regard them as enemies worthy of death.

    *Madrassas in America are increasing in number, and they are just one part of a growing radical Islamic army on US soil.

    *Radical Islam exploits the US legal system and America’s protection of religion to spread its hatred for western values.

    *America must organize a unified voice that says “enough” to political correctness, and demands that government officials and elected representatives do whatever is necessary to protect us.

    Brigitte Gabriel has fearlessly faced down critics, death threats, and political correctness, and is one of the most sought after terrorism experts in the world. They Must Be Stopped is her clarion call to action. Gabriel thoroughly addresses the historical and religious basis of radical Islam, its frightening encroachment into societies around the world, and its abuses of democracy in the name of religion.



    Table of Contents:

    1 Islam 101 : the East through Western eyes 13

    2 Islamic terrorism : then and now 27

    3 Purists drink their Islam straight 50

    4 The Muslim Brotherhood "project" for North America 73

    5 Madrassas in America and abroad 88

    6 Reviving the caliphate : one world nation under Allah; supersizing the Muslim world 116

    7 The Islamization of Europe 129

    8 The subtle Islamization agenda : boiling the West alive 150

    9 Islam's contempt for women and minorities 170

    10 Tolerance : a one-way street 190

    11 Rising in defense of democracy 204

    12 Winning the war on Islamofascism : strategies and tactics 223

    A note of thanks 237

    Acknowledgments 239

    Notes 241

    Index 267