Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Planetwalker or Why We Cant Wait

Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking, 17 Years of Silence

Author: John Francis

When the struggle to save oil-soaked birds and restore blackened beaches left him feeling frustrated and helpless, John Francis decided to take a more fundamental and personal stand—he stopped using all forms of motorized transportation. Soon after embarking on this quest that would span two decades and two continents, the young man took a vow of silence that endured for 17 years. It began as a silent environmental protest, but as a young African-American man, walking across the country in the early 1970s, his idea of "the environment" expanded beyond concern about pollution and loss of habitat to include how we humans treat each other and how we can better communicate and work together to benefit the earth.

Through his silence and walking, he learned to listen, and along the way, earned college and graduate degrees in science and environmental studies. The United Nations appointed him goodwill ambassador to the world’s grassroots communities and the U.S. government recruited him to help address the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Was he crazy? How did he live and earn all those degrees without talking? An amazing human-interest story, with a vital message, Planetwalker is also a deeply personal and engaging coming-of-age odyssey—the positive experiences, the challenging times, the characters encountered, and the learning gained along the way.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School

Francis was green before it was the popular thing to be. On January 17, 1971, he saw a half-million-gallon oil spill near the Golden Gate Bridge, and a year later, in an attempt to do something positive for the environment, he chose to start walking, forsaking motorized vehicles of any kind. He walked everywhere, and on his 27th birthday, feeling again that he was not doing enough for the world, he took a vow of silence. For the next 17 years, he spoke not a word. But his life didn't stop and he never sat still. Francis managed to walk across the United States and, while he did, he earned an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in science and environmental studies; finally, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he completed a PhD in land resources. He learned how to play the banjo, and the five-string Conqueror became his walking companion, people magnet, and calling card. He continued his pedestrian trek, took a job at the office of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and eventually became UNEP's Goodwill Ambassador to the World's Grassroots Communities, and walked and sailed to the tip of South America. Planetwalker is an inspiring story that will make teens think and may help them to realize that global change is possible through individual action.-Joanne Ligamari, Twin Rivers United School District, Sacramento, CA



Book about: The Lowfat Jewish Vegetarian Cookbook or Gault Millau Guide to German Wines

Why We Can't Wait

Author: Martin Luther King Jr

In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. launched the Civil Rights movement and demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. Why We Can't Wait recounts not only the Birmingham campaign, but also examines the history of the civil rights struggle and the tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equality for African Americans. Dr. King's eloquent analysis of these events propelled the Civil Rights movement from lunch counter sit-ins and prayer marches to the forefront of the American consciousness.

With a special new afterword by The Reverend Jesse Jackson.



Golda or Big Green Purse

Golda

Author: Elinor Burkett

The first female head of state in the Western world and one of the most influential women in modern history, Golda Meir was a member of the tiny coterie of founders of the State of Israel, the architect of its socialist infrastructure, and its most tenacious international defender. Her uncompromising devotion to shaping and defending a Jewish homeland against dogged enemies and skittish allies stunned political contemporaries skeptical about the stamina of an elderly leader, and transformed Middle Eastern politics for decades to follow.

A blend of Emma Goldman and Martin Luther King Jr. in the guise of a cookie-serving grandmother, Meir was a tough-as-nails politician who issued the first prescient warnings about the rise of international terrorism, out-maneuvered Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger at their own game of realpolitik, and led Israel through a bloody war even as she eloquently pleaded for peace. A prodigious fundraiser and persuasive international voice, Golda carried the nation through its most perilous hours while she herself battled cancer.

In this masterful biography, critically acclaimed author and Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist Elinor Burkett looks beyond Meir's well-known accomplishments to the complex motivations and ideals, personal victories and disappointments, of her charismatic public persona. Beginning with Meir's childhood in virulently anti-Semitic Russia and her family's subsequent relocation to the United States, Burkett places Meir within the framework of the American immigrant experience, the Holocaust, and the single-mindedness of a generation that carved a nation out of its own nightmares and dreams. She paints a vividportrait of a legendary woman defined by contradictions: an iron resolve coupled with magnetic charm, an utter ordinariness of appearance matched to extraordinary achievements, a kindly demeanor that disguised a stunning hard-heartedness, and a complete dedication to her country that often overwhelmed her personal relationships.

To produce this definitive account of Meir's life, Burkett mined historical records never before examined by any researcher, and interviewed members of Meir's inner circle, many going on record for the first time. The result is an astounding portrait of one of the most commanding political presences of the twentieth century—a woman whose uncompromising commitment to the creation and preservation of a Jewish state fueled and framed the ideological conflicts that still define Middle Eastern relations today.

Publishers Weekly

As Israel's prime minister from 1969 to 1974, Golda Meir (1898-1978) was recognized by her wrinkled face and gray bun. But, Burkett (Another Planet: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School) says in this sympathetic but balanced biography, the young Meir was so strikingly attractive that detractors grumbled she had slept her way up the political hierarchy. The rise of the Russian-born, Milwaukee-bred Golda Mabovitz, however, was due to her enormous popularity in the U.S. as a fund-raiser for a struggling Jewish settlement in pre-statehood Palestine. Meir was politicized by memories of poverty and anti-Semitism in czarist Russia and by a feisty, older sister who introduced her to socialist Zionism. A Zionist pioneer, Meir secretly negotiated with Jordan's King Abdullah before the U.N. vote to partition Palestine; became a fervent supporter of Soviet Jewry after her reluctant stint as Israel's first ambassador to Moscow; and hesitantly approved the assassination of Palestinian terrorists responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Burkett says the price of Meir's nonstop political life was rocky relationships with her children and estranged husband. This is a solidly researched, highly readable portrait of a mesmerizing but, according to Burkett, ultimately lonely woman, though much of the material is familiar. 8 pages of b&w photos. (May)

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

Lisa Nussbaum Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information - School Library Journal

To coincide with the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding, journalist Burkett (So Many Enemies, So Little Time) offers a fascinating examination of Golda Meir's public and private selves and her devotion to the creation and defense of the Jewish state. She also assesses Golda's hard-nosed leadership style. Though most of Israel's heavyweights, including David Ben-Gurion, respected Meir, many felt that she was not the right choice to be Israel's prime minister. But she had a load of self-confidence, was a brilliant orator, and proved to be conscientious, determined, dependable, and more than capable. Burkett maintains that the complex and formidable Golda saw the world only in black and white, cajoling friends and foes into agreeing with what she thought was right for the welfare of Israel. For over 50 years, about 30 of them as prime minister, she nearly always prevailed. As Burkett shows, her personal life was another story. She cast her husband and two children into secondary positions, paying them little attention and causing her marriage to wither away. An eye-opening account of a legendary world leader that academic and public libraries will want to buy.

Kirkus Reviews

Spirited biography of the Zionist activist and pioneering Israeli leader. To readers of a certain age, Golda-"the sassy nicotine-stained grandmother who wore baggy suits and orthopedic shoes, spoke with an accent in every language but Yiddish, and led one of the smallest countries in the world"-needs no surname. Yet, particularly in the post-Intifada Middle East, Golda Meir's contributions to Israeli history have come to be overshadowed. Journalist and longtime Middle East hand Burkett (So Many Enemies, So Little Time: An American Woman in All the Wrong Places, 2004, etc.) brings those contributions to the fore, even as the author considers that the ideals for which the Moldova-born, Milwaukee-educated Meir fought are not the ones that prevailed in Israel, "that despite her hectoring, her egalitarian utopia of idealist pioneers would turn into a dog-eat-dog capitalist society rife with consumerism and greed." Meir, of course, had other things to worry about. Having survived the surprisingly uncollegial world of state politics and even engineered a modest coup to supplant David Ben-Gurion (who famously called her the only man in his cabinet), Meir spent much of her tenure as Israeli's prime minister trying to avoid falling into various traps Henry Kissinger laid for her in the service of Nixonian realpolitik. Burkett is at her best in reconstructing these tense moments, explaining, quite reasonably, that "there was little that Golda feared more than a peace imposed by outside powers," having had plenty of experience with those outside powers during the years of war and protectorate. Meir had plenty of problems at home as well, navigating the rightist shoals of Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres andcompany. Burkett capably explains all the political complexities while suggesting that the legendarily tough Meir would have gladly folded back Israel's post-Six-Day War borders had any of the Arab powers agreed to talk about it at the time-a process that is ongoing more than 40 years later. Enlightening but sobering, particularly when one wonders where Meir's utopian ideals went to. Agent: Lisa Bankoff/ICM



See also: Our Bodies Ourselves or After Cancer Treatment

Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World

Author: Diane MacEachern

Protecting our environment is one of the biggest issues facing our planet today. But how do we solve a problem that can seem overwhelming-even hopeless? As Diane MacEachern argues in Big Green Purse, the best way to fight the industries that pollute the planet, thereby changing the marketplace forever, is to mobilize the most powerful consumer force in the world-women.

MacEachern's message is simple but revolutionary. If women harness the "power of their purse" and intentionally shift their spending money to commodities that have the greatest environmental benefit, they can create a cleaner, greener world. Spirited and informative, this book:

•targets twenty commodities-cars, cosmetics, coffee, food, paper products, appliances, cleansers, and more-where women's dollars can make a dramatic difference;

•provides easy-to-follow guidelines and lists so women can choose the greenest option regardless of what they're buying, along with recommended companies they should support;

•encourages women to spend wisely by explaining what's worth the premium price some green products cost, what's not, and when they shouldn't spend money at all; and

•differentiates between products that are actually "green" and those that are simply marketed as "ecofriendly."

Whether readers want to start with small changes or are ready to devote the majority of their budget to green products, MacEachern offers concrete and immediate ways that women can take action and make a difference. Empowering and enlightening, Big Green Purse will become the "green shopping bible" for women everywhere who are asking, "What can I do?"



Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The World Is Curved or When Im Sixty Four

The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy

Author: David M Smick

David Smick keeps a low profile, but experts consider him one of the most insightful financial market strategists in the world. For more than two decades, he has conferred with central bankers and advised top Wall Street executives and investors.
The World Is Curved picks up where Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat left off, taking listeners on an insider's tour through the private offices of central bankers, finance ministers, even prime ministers. Smick reveals how today's risky environment came to be—and why the mortgage mess is a symptom of potentially far more devastating trouble. He wrestles with the two questions on everyone's mind: How bad could things really get in today's volatile economy? And what can we do about it?

The World Is Curved is the rare work that speaks simultaneously to the Wall Street, Washington, and London elite, yet its apt storytelling shows Main Street readers how to survive in these turbulent times.

"The World Is Curved is...essential...for those who wish to understand the workings, politics, and distresses of the global financial system...insightful and entertaining..." — Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; author of The Age of Turbulence

"David Smick's probing insights in The World Is Curved stem from an extraordinary vantage point few observers can match."—George Soros, Soros Fund Management

Publishers Weekly

Confronting the ever-increasing challenges of globalism and the economic problems plaguing the U.S. from a downward spiraling value of the dollar to the subprime mortgage crisis, Smick argues again and again that the solution to the problem is deregulation and encouraging entrepreneurship. While he examines the U.S. in relation to other emerging and potentially powerful markets (China and India, in particular), Smick argues weakly against Thomas Friedman's more utopian or opportunistic points of view. Jim Bond delivers the book in an accessible and gentle tone. Smick's prose can be a bit inundating, but Bond balances speed with emphasis to keep listeners' attention. A Portfolio hardcover (reviewed online). (Sept.)

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

Library Journal

The 2007-08 subprime financial crisis is the jumping-off point for Smick's (Johnson Smick International) examination of current threats to global prosperity. He explains that although the subprime losses are small in the context of world financial markets, a lack of transparency has diminished investor confidence, dried up financial liquidity, and threatened the very foundations of our world financial system. He says that the growth of global financial markets has made it more difficult for central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve to intercede effectively in times of crisis. Smick compares the subprime crisis to past events like the UK's forced devaluation of the pound in 1992 and Japan's economic stagnation in the 1990s. He warns of pending dangers like an overheating of the Chinese development juggernaut and the present calls for protectionism by U.S. politicians. He favors a global financial system built on transparency and trust. Smick's role for some 30 years as an economic adviser to central bankers and legislators of all stripes gives him a solid perspective on the global financial system. This summing-up of the subprime debacle and other global financial threats, aimed at general readers, is first rate; highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.-Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA

Kirkus Reviews

It's a fraught time, writes hedge-fund guru Smick in this timely book. If the "Chinese juggernaut" doesn't sink us, then class warfare and our spendthrift ways will. Borrowing his title, obviously, from Thomas Friedman's optimistic The World Is Flat (2005), Smick dourly notes that in finance, the horizon is near while the dangers lurk out of sight-"nothing happens in a straight line. Instead, there is a continual series of unforeseen discontinuities-twists and turns of uncertainty that often require millions of market participants to stand conventional wisdom on its head." Seeing over the horizon is the job of sound analysts and good political leaders, who seem to be in short supply. Weathering the fiscal storms is ever harder for numerous reasons, one of them the declining vigor of central banks, another, in the United States, an accumulation of personal debt that threatens to put the economy into a Japan-like state of decades-long stagnation. Globalism, some would object, is a vehicle for weakening national economies, but Smick counters that "liberated global financial markets and free trade" are largely responsible for the creation of vast wealth in the last quarter-century (during which the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose from 800 to more than 12,000) and should not be unduly regulated, since economies seem to be slipping beyond the control of national governments. Instability will thus be the norm in the future, especially inasmuch as private concerns dwarf whole economies: The exposure of the Swiss bank UBS to the subprime mortgage meltdown was four times as large as the entire Swiss economy, Smick observes. Couple profligate habits with an ever-growing Chinese economybeholden to no one, and suddenly the future looks like a roller-coaster ride for even the most aggressive investor. A supremely useful book for portfolio planning, though not the thing to give someone who's inclined to worry about the state of the world. Agent: Fredrica Friedman/Fredrica S. Friedman and Company

What People Are Saying

Bill Bradley
"The World Is Curved makes transparent all the challenges facing today's new global economy. Read along while Smick exposes the hidden global economic dangers and what steps must be taken to correct an imperfect system."--(Bill Bradley, former U.S. Senator)


Alan Greenspan
"The World Is Curved is an essential read for those who wish to understand the workings, politics and distresses of the global financial system. David Smick has done an outstanding job in drawing on his interactions with many of the key players in international finance, to produce an insightful and entertaining book."


George P. Shultz
"The World Is Curved affords an engrossing look at the edifice upon which global finance has been built. It's a vision we ignore at our peril; for instance, we know from experience the dangers of protectionism. This is a vital primer about the zone where finance and statesmanship intersect."--(George P. Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State)


Barton M. Biggs
"Smick is a world-class thinker. Any serious investor must read what he has to say."--(Barton M. Biggs, Traxis Partners and author of Hedgehogging)


Lawrence Eagleburger
"The World Is Curved is a brilliant, if disturbing, exposé of today's global financial minefields, and an equally compelling description of possible remedies. The next president would do well to read The World Is Curved before taking office next year."--(Lawrence Eagleburger, former U.S. Secretary of State)


Lawrence H. Summers
"David Smick understands, as few do, that international finance depends on politics and passions as much as on policies. Agree or disagree, his sense of where we have been and where we are going deserves close attention. He writes in a way that makes giving close attention a pleasure."--(Lawrence H. Summers, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury)




Table of Contents:

1 The End of the World 9

2 A Dangerous Ocean of Money 36

3 Entrepreneurs in a World of Private Equity and Hedge Fund Troublemakers 68

4 Tony Soprano Rides the Chinese Dragon 93

5 Japanese Housewives Take the Commanding Heights 132

6 Nothing Stays the Same: The 1992 Sterling Crisis 159

7 The Incredible Shrinking Central Banks 188

8 Class Warfare and the Politics of Globalization 214

9 Surviving and Prospering in This Age of Volatility 242

Acknowledgments 277

A Word on Sources 281

Bibliography 285

Index 289

New interesting textbook: Network Warrior or Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed

When I'm Sixty-Four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them

Author: Theresa Ghilarducci

A crisis is looming for baby boomers and anyone else who hopes to retire in the coming years. In When I'm Sixty-Four, Teresa Ghilarducci, the nation's leading authority on the economics of retirement, explains how to confront this crisis head-on, revealing the causes behind the increasingly precarious economics of old age in America and proposing a bold plan to guarantee retirement security for every working citizen.

Retirement is one of the hallmarks of a prosperous, civilized market economy. Yet in America today Social Security is on the ropes. Government and employers are dismantling pension security, forcing older people to work longer. The federal government spends billions in exemptions for 401(k)s and other voluntary retirement accounts, yet retirement savings for most workers is falling. Ghilarducci takes an unflinching look at the eroding economic structure of retirement in America--and what she finds is alarming. She exposes the failures of pension regulators and the false hopes of privatized Social Security. She tells the ugly truth about risky 401(k) plans, do-it-yourself retirement schemes, and companies like Enron that have left employees without any retirement savings. Ghilarducci puts forward a sweeping plan to revive the retirement-income system, a plan that will ensure that, after forty years of work, every American will receive 70 percent of their preretirement earnings, guaranteed for life. No other book makes such a persuasive case for overhauling the pension and Social Security system in order to provide older Americans with the financial stability they have earned and deserve.



Obama or The King and the Cowboy

Obama: The Historic Front Pages

Author: David Elliot Cohen

Celebrate a milestone in American history: The election of President Barack Obama

Yes, he did! When Barack Obama became president-elect on November 4, 2008, he transformed Martin's Luther King's dream into reality. Obama, and the 66.3 million Americans who voted for him, proved to the world that all things are possible. And the day after, people from coast to coast lined up to buy newspapers as souvenirs. The demand was unprecedented, with stands and stores quickly selling out: USA Today sold an extra 380,000 copies, for example, while the Atlanta Journal-Constitution went back to print five times.

Now, everyone can own a piece of history, thanks to this gorgeous commemorative album of front pages that capture Barack Obama's extraordinary journey to the White House. Featuring newspapers both domestic and foreign, and depicting all the landmarks in this groundbreaking campaign-including the inauguration-Obama is a stunning keepsake for all who experienced this remarkable moment…and future generations, too.

• The only book to feature five historic speeches as well as front covers of three significant moments: when Obama won the Democratic nomination; when he became the first African-American elected president; and when he was sworn in

• Includes the historic speech "A More Perfect Union," delivered at Constitution Hall, Philadelphia, March 18, 2008

• Will include newspapers from both America and around the world, with pull quotes and translations of foreign headlines

• Original images of the inauguration taken especially for this book

• An introduction by Howard Dodson, director of the prestigious Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library



Go to: 101 Tips for a Healthy Pregnancy with Diabetes or The Burden of Sympathy

The King and the Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the Seventh: The Secret Partners

Author: David Fromkin

The story of the unlikely friendship between King Edward the Seventh of England and President Theodore Roosevelt, which became the catalyst for an international power shift and the beginning of the American century.

Publishers Weekly

In this problematic book, Boston University professor Fromkin (A Peace to End All Peace) asserts a personal strategic relationship between president Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII during the Algeciras Conference of 1906. The gathering was to mediate the future of Morocco; France, backed by other European powers, argued for protectorate status, while Germany, wanting to end French dominance in Morocco, argued for independence. The bulk of the book recounts the lives of Edward VII, his tempestuous nephew Kaiser Wilhelm II, and of TR prior to Algeciras. In emphasizing a collaboration between Roosevelt and Edward, neither of whom attended the conference, Fromkin seems to discount the roles of lead mediator Henry White, and his capable assistant Samuel R. Gunnmere, in orchestrating the results, which were largely unfavorable to Germany. Fromkin likewise discounts the machinations of the British Foreign Office, which outweighed any influence the monarch might have had. Only one direct communiqué-secret or otherwise-between TR and Edward, dispatched after the conference, is cited, making Fromkin's assertion of a close "secret partnership" a reach. Overall, Fromkin's volume is without a raison d'être. Illus. (Sept. 5)

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

William D. Pederson - Library Journal

Fromkin (international relations, history & law, Boston Univ.; Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?) is exceptionally well qualified to tell the story of Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII, who both came into positions of power in 1901, albeit with a difference. As Americans tend to confuse their presidents and get absolutely lost among British monarchs, Fromkin first provides readers with the essential Victorian background. In large part because of Victoria's dominance as the longest-serving British monarch, her oldest son, the future Edward VII, became an aging playboy. Yet he was a playboy with a serious side, more open to the world than his mother, ultimately emerging as a "people's king." Fromkin argues that both Roosevelt and Edward were in part "self-invented" characters who ultimately came to share world views. The bad guy in this narrative is the future Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Edward's nephew. Born with a withered arm, he has long been described as trying to make up for that with other expressions of power. Fromkin brings to light the Morocco Crisis of 1905-06 to show, ironically, that it was a prudish president and a playboy king who joined forces then and effectively established an alliance against Germany. A joy to read, this book will appeal to Roosevelt and royalist readers alike. Highly recommended for general and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ5/15/08.]



Monday, December 29, 2008

Richard M Nixon or A Testament of Hope

Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full

Author: Conrad Black

From the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, Nixon was a polarizing figure in American politics, admired for his intelligence, savvy, and strategic skill, and reviled for his shady manner and cutthroat tactics. In deft, masterful prose, Black separates the good in Nixon—his foreign initiatives, some of his domestic policies, and his firm political hand—from the sinister, with his questionable methods and the collection of excesses and offenses associated with the Watergate scandal. Black argues that the hounding of Nixon from office was partly political retribution from a lifetime of enemies and Nixon’s misplaced loyalty to unworthy subordinates, and not clearly the consequence of crimes in which he participated.

National Review

Many writers who know their subjects so well might be tempted to take shortcuts in the archives. Not Black. He's researched everything and read everything, and delights in pulling up amazing let-Nixon-be-Nixon and let-Henry-be-Henry nuggets…. The overwhelming impression one takes away of the narrator…is that of a man without guile. Black's two favorite adjectives are "distinguished" and "considerable." He is a straightforward admirer of the institutions of American government and the great men of his youth: not only Roosevelt and Nixon, but also Eisenhower and, preeminently, de Gaulle. In all the mass of this book, you will find not a whiff of that touch of evil on which Nixon prided himself….This is an impressive and profound book by a decent man, written under travail and adversity. One is left wishing that there will be many more like it from Conrad Black, and that a writer who, in his tycoon days, did so much to assist and support the work of others will at last be granted the tranquility to complete his own.

New Criterion

To read Black's book is to be treated like the guest at a lavish dinner party presided over by an opinionated, brilliant, mordantly amusing, powerful, and loquacious host.a `rocking, socking' (to borrow a term Nixon used to describe his more vigorous campaigns) yarn.

Publishers Weekly

Recently convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice, former Hollinger International chairman and newspaper magnate Black (Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom) is better positioned than most men to chronicle the power and disgrace experienced by Richard Nixon. Black is a versatile and thorough biographer who brings not only sympathy but eloquent clarity to his task. The result is a vibrant narrative of personal and political accomplishment that, though great and heroically achieved, was often marred by self-inflicted wounds springing from personal paranoia. Black is at his best portraying the many contradictions in Nixon's personal makeup and political history. The Nixon who most fascinates Black is the firebrand cold warrior who (in partnership with Henry Kissinger) went on to invent the notion of detente and eventually opened relations with China. As Black shows, Nixon's duality followed him into his postpresidential years. The tireless son of Quakers methodically sought after Watergate to rebuild his reputation as a statesman by issuing carefully crafted publications and granting strategically timed interviews. Black's superb volume, incorporating much new research, is an important and worthy addition to the literature. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Nov.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information



Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments     IX
The Meteoric Rise: 1913-1953     1
One of the Common People: 1913-1945     3
Into the Arena: 1945-1950     75
Vertical Ascent: 1950-1952     145
The Travails of the Fox: 1952-1953     209
The Ordeal of Ambition: 1953-1968     269
The Chief Apprentice: 1953-1956     271
The Regent and the Striver: 1956-1959     321
Defeat and Endurance: 1959-1963     376
The Triumph of Survival: 1963-1968     444
The Pursuit of Peace: 1968-1972     509
Tumult and Victory: 1968-1969     511
The Silent Majority: 1969-1970     577
Calming the Nation: 1970-1971     642
Waging Peace: 1971-1972     703
The Indestructible Man and Myth: 1972-     773
The Pinnacle: 1972     775
The Precipice: 1972-1973     846
The Inferno: 1973-1974     913
The Transfiguration: 1974-1994     987
Notes     1061
Bibliography     1095
Index     1108

Book review: The Wise Men or Republic Jowett translation

A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Author: Martin Luther King

"We've got some difficult days ahead," civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., told a crowd gathered at Memphis's Clayborn Temple on April 3, 1968. "But it really doesn't matter to me now because I've been to the mountaintop. . . . And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."

These prohetic words, uttered the day before his assassination, challenged those he left behind to see that his "promised land" of racial equality became a reality; a reality to which King devoted the last twelve years of his life.

These words and other are commemorated here in the only major one-volume collection of this seminal twentieth-century American prophet's writings, speeches, interviews, and autobiographical reflections. A Testament of Hope contains Martin Luther King, Jr.'s essential thoughts on nonviolence, social policy, integration, black nationalism, the ethics of love and hope, and more.

New Yorker

Reveals the breadth and depth of [King's] philosophical thinking, his tough-mindedness, and the sophistication and forensic skill that he could bringto argument.

New York Times Book Review

Here, in [King's] own words, are the philosophy and strategy of nonviolent protest . . . King's persuasiveness comes through again and again.

The New Yorker

Reveals the breadth and depth of [King's] philosophical thinking, his tough-mindedness, and the sophistication and forensic skill that he could bring to argument.

Washington Post

The volume and quality of this intellectual work is breathtaking . . . His writings reveal an intellectual struggle and growth as fierce and alive as any chronicle of his political life could possibly be.

Kansas City Star

The most powerful and enduring words of the man who touched the conscience of the nation and the world.

San Francisc Chronicle Review

Brings us King in many roles—philosopher, theologian, orator, essayist, interviewee, and author.

New York Times Book Review

Here, in [King's] own words, are the philosophy and strategy of nonviolent protest . . . King's persuasiveness comes through again and again.

Kansas City Star

The most powerful and enduring words of the man who touched the conscience of the nation and the world.

San Francisco Chronicle Review

Brings us King in many roles—philosopher, theologian, orator, essayist, interviewee, and author.



Supreme Conflict or Freethinkers

Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court

Author: Jan Crawford Greenburg

Drawing on unprecedented acc ess to the Supreme Court justices themselves and their inner circles, acclaimed ABC News legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg offers an explosive newsbreaking account of one of the most momentous political watersheds in American history. From the series of Republican nominations that proved deeply frustrating to conservatives to the decades of bruising battles that led to the rise of Justices Roberts and Alito, this is the authoritative story of the conservative effort to shift the direction of the high court-a revelatory look at one of the central fronts of America's culture wars by one of the most widely respected experts on the subject.

Los Angeles Times

The richest and most impressive journalistic look at the [Supreme Court] since Woodward co-wrote The Brethren in 1979.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

A fascinating look at dynamics within the court, showing how personalities and ideology can affect alliances and debates.

The Wall Street Journal

A fresh and detailed account of how the court works and, relatedly, how presidents decide who gets there. . . . A tour de force.

The New Republic

A genuinely spectacular feat of reporting.

The New York Review of Books

More than any recent writer on the Court, [Jan Crawford Greenburg] seems to have mastered the arts of Kremlinology that are necessary to appreciate what goes on in this secretive institution. . . . Fascinating.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

… in a lively new book on the Supreme Court, the ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenberg argues that in one area President Bush has succeeded where his father, as well as Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon, did not, achieving a longtime conservative goal: he has moved the Supreme Court decisively to the right and shaped its direction for the next three to four decades.

The Washington Post - Emily Bazelon

Greenburg ends on a familiar but salient point. In tapping Roberts and Alito, Bush accomplished what has eluded previous Republican presidents: a pair of picks likely to remake the court in his own conservative image. Out of the confirmation process, Bush got his court, Greenburg got her book, and the rest of us get choice details about the court's inner workings.

Library Journal

Law/politics correspondent for ABC, Greenburg picks apart shifting directions in the Rehnquist and Roberts courts. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.



Interesting textbook: Texas Cowboy Cookbook or Tapas

Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

Author: Susan Jacoby

"Jacoby accomplishes her task with clarity, thoroughness, and an engaging passion."


-Los Angeles Times Book Review


At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than two hundred years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution. Moving from nineteenth-century abolitionism and suffragism through the twentieth century's civil liberties, civil rights, and feminist movements, Freethinkers illuminates the neglected achievements of secularists who, allied with tolerant believers, have led the battle for reform in the past and today.

Rich with such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, and the once-famous Robert Green Ingersoll, Freethinkers restores to history the passionate humanists who struggled against those who would undermine the combination of secular government and religious liberty that is the glory of the American system.

The New York Times

Ardent and insightful, Ms. Jacoby seeks to rescue a proud tradition from the indifference of posterity. Her title was shrewdly chosen. "Freethinker" is what rebels against spiritual authority once called themselves, and it ennobles the breed with, if she'll excuse the term, the holiest adjective in the lexicon of American politics. Her pantheon of skeptics includes names like Jefferson, Paine, Darrow and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, author of The Woman's Bible that ridiculed the sexism of the apostles. And she rediscovers such figures as Robert Ingersoll, the Gilded Age orator who drew huge audiences with calls for "a religion of humanity" that would venerate only "inquiry, investigation and thought." — Michael Kazin

The Washington Post

The great virtue of Susan Jacoby's book is that it succeeds so well in its own original intent: showing that secularism, agnosticism and atheism are as American as cherry pie. — Christopher Hitchens

Publishers Weekly

Is America really one nation under God? Not according to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Jacoby (Wild Justice, etc.), who argues that it is America's secularist "freethinkers" who formed the bedrock upon which our nation was built. Jacoby contends that it's one of "the great unresolved paradoxes" that religion occupies such an important place in a nation founded on separation of church and state. She traces the role of "freethinkers," a term first coined in the 17th century, in the formation of America from the writing of the Constitution to some of our greatest social revolutions, including abolition, feminism, labor, civil rights and the dawning of Darwin's theory of evolution. Jacoby has clearly spent much time in the library, and the result is an impressive literary achievement filled with an array of both major and minor figures from American history, like revolutionary propagandist Thomas Paine, presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Robert Green Ingersoll. Her historical work is further flanked by current examples-the Bush White House in an introduction and the views of conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia in a final chapter-that crystallize her concern over secularism's waning influence. Unfortunately, Jacoby's immense research is also the book's Achilles heel. Her core mission to impress upon readers the historical struggle of freethinkers against the religious establishment is at times overwhelmed by the sheer volume of characters and vignettes she offers, many of which, frankly, are not very compelling. Still, Jacoby has done yeoman's work in crafting her message that the values of America's freethinkers belong "at the center, not in the margins" of American life. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Accomplished author and journalist Jacoby (Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge) turns her attention to the history of American free thought. Starting with the deism of America's Founding Fathers, she masterfully chronicles 200 years of religious doubt in the United States, including in her discussion many historical figures overlooked as freethinkers, such as Abraham Lincoln, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Robert Green Ingersol. Also significant is Jacoby's excellent overview of freethinkers' involvement in such issues as abolition, feminism, civil rights, and the separation of church and state. Despite her painstaking research, those familiar with the Founding Fathers will be surprised at her omission of Benjamin Franklin. As an admitted deist and trusted colleague of Jefferson (e.g., see Albert Post's Popular Freethought in America or Walter Isaacon's Benjamin Franklin: An American Life), he would have made Jacoby's chapter on the Founding Fathers much stronger were he included. Despite this small criticism, however, this is a much needed addition to the literature that restores many freethinkers to their rightful place in American history. Highly recommended for academic libraries or larger public libraries.-Brad S. Matthies, Butler Univ. Lib., Indianapolis Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A lively history of American antispiritualism, with a stellar cast. "The first six presidents of the United States did not invoke the blessings of the deity as frequently in their entire public careers as President Bush does each month," writes freelance journalist Jacoby (Half-Jew, 2000). Bless their innocent souls, those six presidents took the constitutional separation of church and state seriously, even as a couple of them-Jefferson and Madison-harbored deistic notions (God may not be dead, but he's probably not well) that weighed against their invoking the divinity. Jacoby hails Thomas Paine as our exemplary "revolutionary secularist," omitting God whenever he could as certain compatriots in the new US worried that unless the chief executive took an oath to some organized Protestant church, "a Turk, a Jew, a Roman Catholic, and what is worse than all, a Universalist, may be President of the United States," as one speaker at the Massachusetts constitutional convention put it. Jacoby examines the opaque religious beliefs of the Founders, recalling that Jefferson excited opposition in the 1800 presidential campaign for his apparent indifference to religion, as well as his remark that "it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." She enlists Abe Lincoln in the secularist roll, although some scholars will object. She traces the origins of state mottos like "In God We Trust" and "one nation under God," the one a sop to clerics during the Civil War, the other one of "a new, bland, and compulsory set of quasi-religious rituals" meant to serve as a Cold War repudiation of Soviet atheism. Jacoby closes by remarkingthat although the line between church and state now seems to be fading, most Americans regard that separation as desirable and "oppose the religious right's attempts to sacralize decisions on such matters as biomedical research." Balm for doubting Thomases-and a welcome addition to American cultural history. Agent: Georges Borchardt



Table of Contents:
Introduction1
1Revolutionary Secularism13
2The Age of Reason and Unreason35
3Lost Connections: Anticlericalism, Abolitionism, and Feminism66
4The Belief and Unbelief of Abraham Lincoln104
5Evolution and Its Discontents124
6The Great Agnostic and the Golden Age of Freethought149
7Dawn of the Culture Wars186
8Unholy Trinity: Athiests, Reds, Darwinists227
9Onward, Christian Soldiers268
10The Best Years of Our Lives292
11Culture Wars Redux317
12Reason Embattled348
AppRobert Ingersoll's Eulogy for Walt Whitman, March 30, 1892367
Notes371
Selected Bibliography389
Acknowledgments399
Index403

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Making Globalization Work or All Hands Down

Making Globalization Work

Author: Joseph E Stiglitz

"A damning denunciation of things as they are, and a platform for how we can do better."—Andrew Leonard, Salon

Four years after he outlined the challenges our increasingly interdependent world was facing in Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph E. Stiglitz offered his agenda for reform. Now in paperback, Making Globalization Work offers inventive solutions to a host of problems, including the indebtedness of developing countries, international fiscal instability, and worldwide pollution. Stiglitz also argues for the reform of global financial institutions, trade agreements, and intellectual property laws, to make them better able to respond to the growing disparity between the richest and poorest countries. Now more than ever before, globalization has gathered the peoples of the world into one community, bringing with it a need to think and act globally. This trenchant, intellectually powerful book is an invaluable step in that process. This paperback edition contains a brand-new preface.

The New York Times - Jeffry A. Frieden

Stiglitz has given us a well-written and informative primer on the major global economic problems. He helps his readers understand exactly what is at stake.

Library Journal

Nobel Prize winner Stiglitz (former chairman, Council of Economic Advisors; Globalization and Its Discontents) identifies six existing indications that globalization has yet to live up to its promise: the pervasiveness of poverty, the need for foreign assistance and debt relief, the aspiration to make trade fair, the limitations of liberalization, the need to protect the environment, and the flawed system of global governance. In addition to reiterating this criticism from his previous megaseller, Stiglitz here presents concrete methods to enable political globalization to proceed in accord with economic globalization. For example, the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization and a host of additional, soon-to-be-created international political organizations need to start democratically representing the interests of developing countries and stop serving as platforms for the "Washington Consensus." The author occasionally slips by adopting the same type of rhetoric that, he argues, has mystified the processes of economic globalization, e.g., when he suggests that a balanced intellectual property regime serves the interests of every nation developed and developing alike. Overall, his new work succeeds admirably at presenting a concrete course of action for strengthening the institutions and processes of political globalization. Accessible to nonspecialists, this book is recommended for all academic libraries. Cynthia Cameros, Teaneck, NJ Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Fighting The Good Fight
Many economists and world leaders agree that globalization is supposed to create higher living standards, increased access to foreign markets, more foreign investment and open borders. But former World Bank Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz argues in his latest book, Making Globalization Work (a self-described sequel to his 2002 book, Globalization and Its Discontents), that globalization is desperately failing the 80 percent of the world's population that lives in developing countries and the 40 percent that lives in poverty.

The Problems
Stiglitz's overall objection is not to globalization itself; it's to how globalization is managed. He argues that the institutions tasked with managing globalization - the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) - help developed nations more than poor nations and place profit ahead of environmental health and better standards of living.

One reason for this, Stiglitz argues, is the United States' excessive influence on the system. The IMF, for example, assigns votes according to economic size, giving the United States effective veto power. Further, the U.S. president appoints the head of the World Bank. This concentration of power has led to what Stiglitz calls "the Washington Consensus," his term for the lock-step policies shared by the IMF, the World Bank and the U.S. Treasury. The result is that these institutions are only really accountable to wealthy countries rather than the poor countries they are tasked with helping.

What's worse, Stiglitz writes, is that when poor countries seek aid, the Washington Consensus attaches economic policies and lending conditions that are often counterproductive and even undermine the sovereignty of those nations. Its requirements often include massive privatization, spending cuts, lower import tariffs and exposure to volatile foreign capital - four things Stiglitz explains are precisely what developing countries don't need when they're in dire straits. Consequently, Stiglitz argues, countries that have followed the advice of this powerful block have failed almost 100 percent of the time to maintain economic stability.

The Solutions
Stiglitz offers a litany of specific reforms to the globalization management system, but, ultimately, they all rest on the (some might say provocative) idea that the regulatory power of government, rather than unfettered capitalism, makes free markets work. Absent this oversight, he writes, markets dissolve into chaos, dishonesty and secrecy.

One of Stiglitz's biggest proposed reforms is to the global reserve system's dependence on Treasury securities, which he argues is actually a mechanism for funding U.S. overconsumption habits. Stiglitz calls for a new, global reserve currency (called "global greenbacks") system that would stabilize the worldwide yin-yang effect of trade surpluses and deficits.

Stiglitz also proposes global regulation that would restrict activities and political instabilities that harm the environment, and would provide recourse when one nation's environmental actions harm other countries. Stiglitz further argues that poor countries are entitled to compensation for maintaining their biodiversity, especially those with rainforests that spawn drugs and sequester carbon dioxide.

Western banks and multinational corporations are also on Stiglitz's list of institutions needing global oversight. He argues that today's thick corporate veil regrettably tends to relieve employees of moral responsibility. Part of the solution to this, he writes, is more leeway regarding global class-action suits and more enforcement of intellectual property laws so that, for example, AIDS drugs become more accessible rather than more profitable.

Ultimately, Stiglitz concedes, the solution to many of the problems of globalization management lies at the feet of poor countries, which must break the bribery cycle between their governments and international companies, sell their natural resources for a fair price, spend - and save - their money wisely and learn to manage currency fluctuations.

Despite all the protest, Stiglitz is clearly still a cautiously optimistic supporter of globalization. But he is confident that the United States cannot continue to control the world's major economic aid institutions without producing results for the poor countries of the world.

Why We Like This Book
Making Globalization Work explores the problems surrounding the management of globalization. It contributes considerably to the political discourse about the role of governments in the free market through its nuts-and-bolts appraisals of NAFTA, the WTO, the Kyoto Protocol and many other elements of today's globalization debate. But the heart of the book is about finding better ways to make globalization work for the hundreds of millions of people who live in developing countries and in poverty. Copyright © 2007 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Kirkus Reviews

If the free market is the answer to the world's woes, then why is so much of the world getting poorer? Nobel Prize-winning economist Stiglitz (The Roaring Nineties, 2003) ventures some persuasive answers. There are many ways to make globalization work, writes Stiglitz. Regrettably, the U.S. and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are not practicing any of them. Indeed, he argues, "the world's sole superpower has simultaneously been pushing for economic globalization and weakening the political foundations necessary to make economic globalization work." The U.S. consistently plays on an unlevel field, demanding that developing nations open their markets on terms dictated by American interests; globalization as it is now practiced demands that sovereign nations become less sovereign, even as it forces upon developing countries a one-size-fits-all economic system that "is inappropriate and often grossly damaging." America's insistence on the primacy of the free market really means a market that is free for the biggest players, though even a theoretically pure free market is not necessarily the best solution in many instances. For example, Stiglitz writes, many of the thriving economies of East Asia, such as China's, are thoroughly managed, while social democracies such as those of Scandinavia channel much of the GDP into long-range, state-controlled financial sectors for the interest of future generations; meanwhile, free-market experiments in the former Soviet Union have proven disastrous except for a few lucky capitalists. Reining in inequalities is one of the foremost tasks for a globalism worthy of the name, Stiglitz suggests; those calling for ThirdWorld debt relief are on the right track. But there is more to it, he adds, including a rethinking of innovation-stifling intellectual property conventions and a restructuring of international institutions to serve their neediest constituents fairly. A thoughtful essay that ought to provoke discussion in certain well-appointed offices, to say nothing of development and aid circles.



Table of Contents:
Ch. 1Another world is possible3
Ch. 2The promise of development25
Ch. 3Making trade fair61
Ch. 4Patents, profits, and people103
Ch. 5Lifting the resource curse133
Ch. 6Saving the planet161
Ch. 7The multinational corporation187
Ch. 8The burden of debt211
Ch. 9Reforming the global reserve system245
Ch. 10Democratizing globalization269

Go to: WorkPlace Studies or Money and the Early Greek Mind

All Hands Down: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the USS Scorpion

Author: Kenneth Sewell

Forty years ago, in May 1968, the submarine USS Scorpion sank in mysterious circumstances with a loss of ninety-nine lives. The tragedy occurred during the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and it followed by only weeks the sinking of a Soviet sub near Hawaii. Now in All Hands Down, drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, many with exclusive sources in the naval and intelligence communities, as well as recently declassified United States and Soviet intelligence files, Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Preisler explain what really happened to Scorpion.

In January 1968, a U.S. intelligence ship, USS Pueblo, was seized by North Korea. Among other items, the North Koreans confiscated a valuable cryptographic unit that was capable of deciphering the Navy's top-secret codes. Unknown to the Navy, a traitor named John Walker had begun supplying the Navy's codes to the KGB. Once the KGB acquired the crypto unit from the North Koreans, the Russians were able to read highly classified naval communications.

In March, a Soviet sub, K-129, mysteriously sank near Hawaii, hundreds of miles from its normal station in the Pacific. Soviet naval leaders mistakenly believed that a U.S. submarine was to blame for the loss, and they planned revenge. A trap was set: several Soviet vessels were gathered in the Atlantic, acting suspiciously. It would be only a matter of time before a U.S. sub was sent to investigate. That sub was Scorpion. Using the top-secret codes and the deciphering machine, the Soviets could intercept and decode communication between the Navy and Scorpion, the final element in carrying out the plannedattack.

All Hands Down shows how the Soviet plan was executed and explains why the truth of the attack has been officially denied for forty years. Sewell and Preisler debunk various official explanations for the tragedy and bring to life the personal stories of some of the men who were lost when Scorpion went to the bottom. This true story, finally told after exhaustive research, is more exciting than any novel.

Publishers Weekly

Controversy has steadily shadowed the 1968 sinking of the U.S. nuclear submarine Scorpion. The navy's official version of accidental sinking on a routine mission was challenged by allegations that the Scorpionwas in fact torpedoed while shadowing a Soviet task force. Further rumors indict the spy John Walker for providing confidential codes to the Soviets, enabling them to track the submarine. Yet another account purports that the Soviets destroyed the Scorpionin retaliation for the sinking of one of their own subs. The two navies eventually called a truce rather than risk further disrupting relations. Sewell, a submarine veteran, and Preisler, a writer of techno-thrillers, add little new evidence in their version of the story; their new data is unfailingly familiar and they never succeed in making a persuasive case for the conspiracy and cover-up they claim occurred. Instead, Sewell and Preisler devote more time to anecdotes about the Scorpion's crew and their families and little vignettes of the routines on board a nuclear sub. What is undeniably useful is the book's demonstration of the high numbers of accidents between ships and aircrafts that were accepted as routine during much of the Cold War. All Hands Downhighlights a truth no less relevant today: international incidents are in good part constructions mutually agreed upon after the event. (Apr.)

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

Edwin B. Burgess - Library Journal

This third recent book on the sinking of a U.S. nuclear attack submarine in 1968 attempts to reconstruct both the tragedy and the events leading up to it. While Stephen Johnson's Silent Steelfailed to identify a cause for the loss of the boat and its 99-man crew, Ed Offley's Scorpion Downbroke through U.S. Navy silence and convincingly postulated that the Scorpionwas sunk deliberately by a Soviet sub in retaliation for the loss of a Soviet sub the month before and that the navy knew this and concealed it to prevent a general naval war from breaking out. Sewell (coauthor with Clint Richmond, Red Star Rogue) and Preisler ("Tom Clancy's Power Plays" series) bring further information: that Robert Ballard of Titanicdeep-sea exploration fame was secretly involved in locating and exploring the Scorpionwreck while working at Woods Hole, using the Titanicas a cover story. They also focus on the John Walker spy case (naval officer Walker was found to have spied for the Soviets from 1968 to the mid-1980s) and the highly damaging intelligence that Walker provided to his Soviet handlers. The authors interweave several detailed narratives of crewmen and their families. The overall sensational tone and the use of reconstructed events and conversations make for a lively narrative, but readers will be better served by Offley's book. Libraries with an interest in naval affairs will no doubt want both books.

Kirkus Reviews

Convincing argument that the 1968 sinking of the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion, long considered an accident, was the result of a Soviet attack. Although not the first to level this accusation, Navy veteran and nuclear engineer Sewell and Tom Clancy stand-in Preisler (Tom Clancy's Power Plays #1, 2004, etc.) make a compelling case, buttressed by research in Soviet archives and interviews with retired officers. Espionage plays a central role in the Scorpion disaster, thanks to traitorous John Walker. The authors recount the oft-told but still mind-boggling story of this junior officer at submarine communications headquarters who sold secrets to the USSR. (He would not be suspected for nearly two decades, until an angry ex-wife informed on him.) Soon after Walker enabled the Soviets to decipher coded American submarine communications, a Soviet missile sub on a still-unknown mission near Hawaii sank with all hands in February 1968. Two weeks later, a spy reported that a damaged U.S. submarine had arrived in Japan. Soviet files reveal and interviews confirm that high Soviet officials believed it had deliberately sunk their vessel, perhaps by ramming. In revenge, they torpedoed the Scorpion on May 27, killing 99 men. Blaming the Soviets would have exacerbated the Cold War, so the Navy's official inquiry quickly dismissed that idea and the Navy spent its time investigating theories involving complex mechanical failures. The authors deliver an engrossing overview of American and Soviet submarine operations, including an unnerving number of encounters that could have ended in shooting. They provide capsule biographies of the Scorpion's captain and many of its crew, their families and theirfriends. Serious readers may skim the fictional recreation of the sinking, but few will be able to resist the juicy details offered about this half-forgotten disaster and its aftermath, including the boasting of old Soviet admirals that they would have won World War III because they knew every move the U.S. Navy made. A satisfying historical whodunit, redolent with Cold War paranoia and tragedy.



Fire Lover or Limits of Power

Fire Lover: A True Story

Author: Joseph Wambaugh

On an October evening in South Pasadena, a horrifying wave of flame swept through a large home improvement center, snuffing out the lives of four innocent people, including a two-year-old boy. Firefighters rushed to the scene, even as a pair of equally suspicious fires broke out in two nearby stores. Silently watching the raging inferno in the midst of the heat, smoke, and chaos was a man respected as one of California's foremost arson investigators, a captain in the Glendale Fire Department ...

From Joseph Wambaugh, the critically acclaimed, nationally bestselling author of The Onion Field, comes the astonishing true story of a nightmarish obsession -- and the hunt for a brilliant psychopath who lived a double life filled with professional tributes and terrifying secrets.

Publishers Weekly

Returning to print after a six-year hiatus, former LAPD detective sergeant and bestselling author Wambaugh (The Onion Field, etc.) focuses on firefighters rather than his usual police beat. It's a surprising switch, but Wambaugh's regular readers will not be disappointed, since sparks fly throughout this potent probe into the life of arson investigator John Leonard Orr. Fascinated by fires in his L.A. childhood, Orr learned fire fighting in the air force. An eccentric loner with few friends and a womanizer with a string of failed marriages, he was rejected by the LAPD and LAFD. In 1974 he joined the Glendale Fire Department, where his gun-toting, crime-crusading capers earned him the label "cop wanna-be" from both police and firemen. Rising in the ranks, Orr became well-known as an arson sleuth. He had a sixth sense for tracking pyros, but there was one serial arsonist, responsible for the deaths of four, who remained elusive. In 1990, during the worst fire in Glendale's history, some noted that Orr's behavior "seemed very peculiar." That same year, Orr was appointed fire captain and began writing a "fact-based novel" about a serial arsonist who turns out to be a firefighter and in it Orr revealed certain facts about the unsolved arson case that he couldn't have known through his work. Was Orr the serial arsonist? Wambaugh recreates these events for a suspenseful, adrenaline-rush account of what one profiler dubbed "probably the most prolific American arsonist" of the 20th century. (May 14) Forecast: Wambaugh's name should sell this title, aided by the scheduling of an HBO movie about Orr (starring Ray Liotta) to run only a few weeks after the publication of the book. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A tale of two men a respected fire chief and a prolific arsonist who turned out to be one and the same. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.



See also: Steaks Chops Roasts and Ribs or New Yorks 50 Best Places to Take Tea

Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

Author: Andrew Bacevich

From an acclaimed conservative historian and former military officer, a bracing call for a pragmatic confrontation with the nation's problems

The Limits of Power identifies a profound triple crisis facing America: the economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad; the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only; U.S. involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic. These pressing problems threaten all of us, Republicans and Democrats. If the nation is to solve its predicament, it will need the revival of a distinctly American approach: the neglected tradition of realism.

Andrew J. Bacevich, uniquely respected across the political spectrum, offers a historical perspective on the illusions that have governed American policy since 1945. The realism he proposes includes respect for power and its limits; sensitivity to unintended consequences; aversion to claims of exceptionalism; skepticism of easy solutions, especially those involving force; and a conviction that the books will have to balance. Only a return to such principles, Bacevich argues, can provide common ground for fixing America’s urgent problems before the damage becomes irreparable.

The Washington Post - Robert G. Kaiser

This compact, meaty volume ought to be on the reading list of every candidate for national office—House, Senate or the White House—in November's elections. In an age of cant and baloney, Andrew Bacevich offers a bracing slap of reality…Bacevich is not running for office, so he is willing to speak bluntly to his countrymen about their selfishness, their hubris, their sanctimony and the grave problems they now face…The Limits of Power is a dense book but gracefully written and easy to read. It is chockablock with provocative ideas and stern judgments. Bacevich's brand of intellectual assuredness is rare in today's public debates. Many of our talking heads and commentators are cocksure, of course, but few combine confidence with knowledge and deep thought the way Bacevich does here.

Publishers Weekly

In this caustic critique of the growing American "penchant for empire" and "sense of entitlement," Bacevich (The New American Militarism) examines the citizenry's complicity in the current "economic, political, and military crisis." A retired army colonel, the author efficiently pillories the recent performance of the armed forces, decrying it as "an expression of domestic dysfunction," with leaders and misguided strategies ushering the nation into "a global war of no exits and no deadlines." Arguing that the tendency to blame solely the military or the Bush administration is as illogical as blaming Herbert Hoover for the Great Depression, Bacevich demonstrates how the civilian population is ultimately culpable; in citizens' appetite for unfettered access to resources, they have tacitly condoned the change of "military service from a civic function into an economic enterprise." Crisp prose, sweeping historical analysis and searing observations on the roots of American decadence elevate this book from mere scolding to an urgent call for rational thinking and measured action, for citizens to wise up and put their house in order. (Sept. 1)

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

Kirkus Reviews

A retired U.S. Army colonel makes the case for a more modest American posture on the world stage, including less use of the military. The United States' recent tendency to flex its muscle is misguided and goes against national tradition, argues Bacevich (History and International Relations/Boston Univ.; The New American Militarism, 2005, etc). The American armed services are stretched too thin and have been sent on too many missions that should not have been launched. Citing theologian and social thinker Reinhold Niebuhr, who favored realism and humility as the guideposts of policymaking, the author finds the approach of many recent presidents, especially George W. Bush, sorely lacking in both. The Bush administration, in his view, has affirmed an "ideology of national security" that sees the United States as the embodiment of freedom in the world and believes that we can only be secure when liberty prevails across the globe. This inflated view of America's importance has dangerous consequences at home and abroad, Bacevich writes: "It imposes no specific obligations. It functions the way ideology so often does-not to divine truth or even to make sense of things, but to provide a highly elastic rationale for action. In the American context, it serves principally to legitimate the exercise of executive power . . . It certainly does not prevent American policymakers from collaborating with debased authoritarian regimes that deny basic freedoms like Hosni Mubarak's Egypt or Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan." The author offers little new information, but ably synthesizes existing scholarship. In spare prose, with rarely a wasted word, he examines and convincingly refutes many conservativeforeign-policy tenets, including those that make the case for preemptive war, which Bacevich finds abhorrent. He does not include references to his own military career and never makes his argument in emotional terms; although the book is dedicated to his son, readers only learn in the acknowledgments that Lieutenant Andrew John Bacevich was killed in action in Iraq. Well-reasoned and eloquently argued. Agent: John Wright/John Wright Literary Associates



Table of Contents:

Introduction War Without Exits 1

1 The Crisis of Profligacy 15

2 The Political Crisis 67

3 The Military Crisis 124

Conclusion: The Limits of Power 170

Notes 183

Acknowledgments 195

Index 197

Saturday, December 27, 2008

The Gathering Storm or The Communist Manifesto

The Gathering Storm, Vol. 1

Author: Winston S Churchill

The step-by-step decline into war, with Churchill becoming prime minister as "the tocsin was about to sound."

"It is our immense good fortune that a man who presided over this crisis in history is able to turn the action he lived through into enduring literature."

Steve Forbes - Forbes Magazine

John Keegan, eminent military historian (disclosure: he has contributed to our sister publication, American Heritage), has put together a brief biography that masterfully covers nearly all aspects of Churchill's illustrious career with knowledgeable insight and sympathy. Keegan writes with a sure hand of Churchill's remarkable military exploits, from his adventures in Cuba in the mid-1890s to his leadership of Britain during World War II. He fully displays the motive power of Churchill's magnificent writings and speeches, and leaves us awestruck by Churchill's strength of will throughout a lifetime of often debilitating illnesses and physical infirmities, as well as shattering career setbacks. Keegan's judgments are for the most part just, although many are debatable. He also gives proper recognition to Churchill's wife, Clementine. (2 Mar 2002)



Go to: Womens Bodies Womens Wisdom or Untangling the Web

The Communist Manifesto

Author: Karl Marx

Critically and textually up-to-date, this new edition of the classic translation (Samuel Moore, 1888) features an introduction and notes by the eminent Marx scholar David McLellan, prefaces written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels subsequent to the original 1848 publication, and corrections of errors made in earlier versions. Regarded as one of the most influential political tracts ever written, The Communist Manifesto serves as the foundation document of the Marxist movement. This summary of the Marxist vision is an incisive account of the world-view Marx and Engels had evolved during their hectic intellectual and political collaboration of the previous few years.



Memo to the President Elect or The Working Poor

Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership

Author: Madeleine Albright

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

New interesting book: Bold Italian or Food for Thought

The Working Poor: Invisible in America

Author: David K Shipler

“Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn, hold them back. The term by which they are usually described, ‘working poor,’ should be an oxymoron. Nobody who works hard should be poor in America.” —from the Introduction

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Arab and Jew, a new book that presents a searing, intimate portrait of working American families struggling against insurmountable odds to escape poverty.

As David K. Shipler makes clear in this powerful, humane study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideology—hard, honest work. But their version of the American Dream is a nightmare: low-paying, dead-end jobs; the profound failure of government to improve upon decaying housing, health care, and education; the failure of families to break the patterns of child abuse and substance abuse. Shipler exposes the interlocking problems by taking us into the sorrowful, infuriating, courageous lives of the poor—white and black, Asian and Latino, citizens and immigrants. We encounter them every day, for they do jobs essential to the American economy.

We meet drifting farmworkers in North Carolina, exploited garment workers in New Hampshire, illegal immigrants trapped in the steaming kitchens of Los Angeles restaurants, addicts who struggle into productive work from the cruel streets of the nation’s capital—each life another aspect of a confounding,far-reaching urgent national crisis. And unlike most works on poverty, this one delves into the calculations of some employers as well—their razor-thin profits, their anxieties about competition from abroad, their frustrations in finding qualified workers.

This impassioned book not only dissects the problems, but makes pointed, informed recommendations for change. It is a book that stands to make a difference.

The New York Times

As a witness Mr. Shipler is indefatigable. Interviewing cashiers and seamstresses, burger flippers and migrant workers a dozen or more times, he has gotten them to open up and share the grim realities of their lives … by exposing the wretched condition of these invisible Americans, he has performed a noble and badly needed service. — Michael Massing

The Washington Post

The Working Poor and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, a book that eloquently covers some of the same ground, should be required reading not just for every member of Congress, but for every eligible voter. Now that this invisible world has been so powerfully brought to light, its consequences can no longer be ignored or denied. — Eric Schlosser

Publishers Weekly

This guided and very personal tour through the lives of the working poor shatters the myth that America is a country in which prosperity and security are the inevitable rewards of gainful employment. Armed with an encyclopedic collection of artfully deployed statistics and individual stories, Shipler, former New York Times reporter and Pulitzer winner for Arab and Jew, identifies and describes the interconnecting obstacles that keep poor workers and those trying to enter the work force after a lifetime on welfare from achieving economic stability. This America is populated by people of all races and ethnicities, whose lives, Shipler effectively shows, are Sisyphean, and that includes the teachers and other professionals who deal with the realities facing the working poor. Dr. Barry Zuckerman, a Boston pediatrician, discovers that landlords do nothing when he calls to tell them that unsafe housing is a factor in his young patients' illnesses; he adds lawyers to his staff, and they get a better response. In seeking out those who employ subsistence wage earners, such as garment-industry shop owners and farmers, Shipler identifies the holes in the social safety net. "The system needs to be straightened out," says one worker who, in 1999, was making $6.80 an hour-80 cents more than when she started factory work in 1970. "They need more resources to be able to help these people who are trying to help themselves." Attention needs to be paid, because Shipler's subjects are too busy working for substandard wages to call attention to themselves. They do not, he writes, "have the luxury of rage." 40,000 first printing. (Feb. 6) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Edna Boardman - KLIATT

When customers are served by associates in a store or restaurant, enter a freshly cleaned hotel room, or choose freshly picked foods at the grocery store, they benefit from the labor of the working poor. Shipler has interviewed persons of many colors and ethnicities to put together a picture of what their lives are like. He notes the effect on their lives of kinship groups, corporations, social attitudes, emergencies, job training programs, family dysfunction, foreign competition, and other impacts. He is chary of theories and ideologies that would put them in neat categories and of judgments that assign blame for their poverty. He looks at the decisions individuals have made (or not made), and the policies and blocks, public and private, that bar access to better living standards. The book is well written, the anecdotes revealing; Shipler does better than most at putting a human face on the statistics that list those who live on the lowest wages in the US. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2004, Random House, Vintage, 329p. notes. index., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

A book by a Pulitzer Prize winner (Arab and Jew), with an announced first printing of 40,000 copies by a prestigious trade publisher and prepub kudos by Bill Bradley and Robert Reich, is sure to capture a certain amount of media attention. If this happens, it will be well deserved. Shipler is informed and impassioned about the plight of the surprisingly diverse and numerous Americans who work but still walk the official poverty line. This conundrum is complex and rife with interlocking problems, including dead-end jobs that offer little or no healthcare benefits and depressing home and workplace environments. Not the least of these burdens is the widely held belief that poverty is related to indolence. Shipler takes a many-faceted view of this Sisyphean bind, and in his final chapter, "Skill and Will," he offers some thoughts on solutions. His writing style is highly effective and often moving, such as when he notes that our forgotten wage earners engage in "a daily struggle to keep themselves from falling over the cliff." Recommended for all collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/03.]-Ellen D. Gilbert, Princeton, NJ Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A damning report on poverty in America. In The Mystery of Capital (2000), economist Hernando de Soto wondered why the Third World's poor lack the fungible assets that their American counterparts hold-assets that keep them from being, well, so poor. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Shipler (A Country of Strangers, 1997) reveals that this may be illusory: for many of the men and women he portrays here, any property of worth has been mortgaged and remortgaged, and when it is sold, often in a hurry and for less than it's worth, any proceeds go to paying down the mountains of debt that the poor accumulate. These American poor-natives and immigrants alike-"suffer in good times and bad," writes Shipler. They are sometimes the victims of addiction, ignorance, and bad choices; in most instances, however, the working poor are single mothers and single wage-earners with several children and few options. The larger culture misunderstands the causes of poverty, Shipler argues, "and is therefore uncertain about the solutions," though the solutions are there: in a surprising moment, a Wal-Mart manager in rural New England reveals that the store could easily afford to pay its employees two dollars an hour more. (One of his interview subjects made $6 an hour in a Vermont factory in the mid-1970s; 25 years later, now a Wal-Mart clerk, she was up to $6.80.) Traveling from big box stores to Los Angeles sweatshops to farms to public-housing projects, Shipler offers memorable portraits of the women and men who figure as afterthoughts in just about every politician's vision of the American future-even though, Shipler notes, had the poor voted, Al Gore would have been swept into office in 2000: "an upsurge inlow-income numbers would have overcome even Florida's biased registration and balloting system." A sobering work of investigation, as incisive-and necessary-as kindred reports by Michael Harrington, Jacob Riis, and Barbara Ehrenreich. First printing of 40,000. Agency: ICM



Table of Contents:
Preface
Introduction: At the Edge of Poverty3
Ch. 1Money and Its Opposite13
Ch. 2Work Doesn't Work39
Ch. 3Importing the Third World77
Ch. 4Harvest of Shame96
Ch. 5The Daunting Workplace121
Ch. 6Sins of the Fathers142
Ch. 7Kinship174
Ch. 8Body and Mind201
Ch. 9Dreams231
Ch. 10Work Works254
Ch. 11Skill and Will285
Notes301
Index307

Friday, December 26, 2008

Churchill or Sweet Land of Liberty

Churchill: A Life

Author: Martin Gilbert

About the Author

Martin Gilbert is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He is well known as the official biographer of Churchill, and as a chronicler of the Holocaust and of Jewish history. He was knighted in 1995.

Publishers Weekly

Author of an eight-volume official biography of Winston Churchill, Gilbert here distills his vast knowledge into a lucid, comprehensive and authoritative life of the man considered by many to have been the outstanding public figure of the 20th century. Photos. (Oct.)

Booknews

In 1988, British historian Gilbert completed the eighth and final volume of the official biography of Churchill (1874-1965). Now, drawing on his 25 years of research and his privileged access to Churchill's personal, political, and secret archives, he presents a single-volume biography of the great statesman that melds the hard facts of the public life and the intimate details of the private man. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

What People Are Saying

Taylor
A stupendous book. He has told the truth.


Margaret Thatcher
One of the greatest histories of our time.




Table of Contents:
Illustrationsix
List of Mapsxv
Prefacexvii
Acknowledgementsxxi
1Childhood1
2Harrow19
3Towards the Army35
4Second Lieutenant51
5In Action75
6To Omdurman and beyond85
7South Africa: Adventure, Capture, Escape107
8Into Parliament133
9Revolt and Responsibilities167
10The Social Field193
11Home Secretary211
12At the Admiralty239
13The Coming of War in 1914263
14War277
15Isolation and Escape309
16In the Trenches331
17'Deep and Ceaseless Torments'361
18Minister of Munitions375
19At the War Office403
20Colonial Secretary431
21Return to the Wilderness455
22At the Exchequer467
23Out of Office491
24The Moment of Truth535
25No Place for Churchill571
26From Munich to War603
27Return to the Admiralty623
28Prime Minister645
29Britain at Bay679
30The Widening War701
31Planning for Victory735
32Illness and Recovery763
33Normandy and Beyond777
34War and Diplomacy803
35'Advance, Britannia!'829
36'An Iron Curtain'843
37Mapping the Past, Guiding the Future871
38Prime Minister in Peacetime899
39Recovery, Last Ambition, Resignation915
40Last Years943
Maps961
Index983

Books about: Versailles or Faith and Politics

Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North

Author: Thomas J Sugru

The struggle for racial equality in the North has been a footnote in most books about civil rights in America. Now this monumental new work from one of the most brilliant historians of his generation sets the record straight. Sweet Land of Liberty is an epic, revelatory account of the abiding quest for justice in states from Illinois to New York, and of how the intense northern struggle differed from and was inspired by the fight down South.

Thomas Sugrue’s panoramic view sweeps from the 1920s to the present–more than eighty of the most decisive years in American history. He uncovers the forgotten stories of battles to open up lunch counters, beaches, and movie theaters in the North; the untold history of struggles against Jim Crow schools in northern towns; the dramatic story of racial conflict in northern cities and suburbs; and the long and tangled histories of integration and black power.

Appearing throughout these tumultuous tales of bigotry and resistance are the people who propelled progress, such as Anna Arnold Hedgeman, a dedicated churchwoman who in the 1930s became both a member of New York’s black elite and an increasingly radical activist; A. Philip Randolph, who as America teetered on the brink of World War II dared to threaten FDR with a march on Washington to protest discrimination–and got the Fair Employment Practices Committee (“the second Emancipation Proclamation”) as a result; Morris Milgram, a white activist who built the Concord Park housing development, the interracial answer to white Levittown; and Herman Ferguson, a mild-mannered New York teacher whose protest of a Queens construction site led him tobecome a key player in the militant Malcolm X’s movement.

Filled with unforgettable characters and riveting incidents, and making use of information and accounts both public and private, such as the writings of obscure African American journalists and the records of civil rights and black power groups, Sweet Land of Liberty creates an indelible history. Thomas Sugrue has written a narrative bound to become the standard source on this essential subject.

Publishers Weekly

According to Sugrue (The Origins of the Urban Crises), most histories of the civil rights movement "focus on the South and the epic battles between nonviolent protestors and the defenders of Jim Crow during the 1950s and 1960s." The author's groundbreaking account covers a wider time frame and turns the focus northward to "the states with the largest black populations outside the south." Sugrue highlights seminal people, books and organizations in his tightly focused study that restores many largely forgotten Northern activists as integral participants in the civil rights movement-such as Philadelphia pastor Leon Sullivan; Roxanne Jones of the "welfare rights movement" and first black woman elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate; and James Forman, advocate for reparations. The National Negro Congress, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the National Black Political Convention share history with the NAACP and the Urban League, as Sugrue traces the phoenixlike risings from the ashes of old organizations into new. Dense with "boycotts, pickets, agitation, riots, lobbying, litigation, and legislation," the book is heavily detailed but consistently readable with unparalleled scope and fresh focus. (Nov.)

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

Thomas J. Davis - Library Journal

The commonplace focus on the Civil Rights Movement as a morality play set in the 1950s and 1960s South neglects the North as a crucial battleground in the struggle for racial equality, argues Bancroft Prize-winning University of Pennsylvania historian Sugrue (The Origins of the Urban Crisis). In his three-part, 14-chapter narrative, he shows that black exclusion, poverty, and racial violence permeated America on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Focusing on an array of individual activists and grassroots organizations that collectively advanced equality in the states having the largest black populations outside the South from the 1920s through the Great Migration and on, Sugrue produces a political history with strong socioeconomic themes, weaving together local, national, and international developments. And he carries his analysis into the so-called post-civil rights era since the 1980s. Diagramming the dimensions of the continuing black crisis, he plumbs fragile gains and deepening racial divides. This splendid read brims with insights broadening and deepening understanding of the black-white mold of modern America. Highly recommended and essential for collections on U.S. history, social movements, race relations, or civil rights.