Christianity & Politics Books

Richard II or In Search of Deep Throat

2009-12-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics 1377-99

Author: Christopher Fletcher

Richard II (1377-99) has long suffered from an unusually unmanly reputation. Over the centuries, he has been habitually associated with lavish courtly expenditure, absolutist ideas, Francophile tendencies, and a love of peace, all of which have been linked to the king's physical effeminacy. Even sympathetic accounts have essentially retained this picture, merely dismissing particular facets of it, or representing Richard's reputation as evidence of praiseworthy dissent from accepted norms of masculinity.
Christopher Fletcher takes a radically different approach, setting the politics of Richard II's reign firmly in the context of late medieval assumptions about the nature of manhood and youth. This makes it possible not only to understand the agenda of the king's critics, but also to suggest a new account of his actions. Far from being the effeminate tyrant of historical imagination, Richard was a typical young nobleman, trying to establish his manhood-and hence his authority to rule-by thoroughly conventional means; first through a military campaign, and then, fatally, through violent revenge against those who attempted to restrain him.
The failure of Richard's subjects to support this aspiration produced a sequence of conflicts with the king, in which his opponents found it convenient to ascribe to him the conventional faults of youth. These critiques derived their force not from the king's real personality, but from the fit between certain contemporary assumptions about youth, effeminacy, and masculinity on the one hand, and the actions of Richard's government-constrained by difficult and complex circumstances-on the other.

Book review: Market Augmenting Government or Learning Team Skills

In Search of Deep Throat: The Greatest Political Mystery of Our Time

Author: Leonard Garment

More than a quarter century after Bob Woodward introduced his Scotch-drinking, cigarette-smoking, garage-skulking friend and source in All the President's Men, the public remains enduringly engrossed by the mystery of Deep Throat's identity. Leonard Garment became fascinated himself and began his own search for Deep Throat. This is the story of that hunt and its successful outcome, a hunt conducted in quintessential Washington fashion: at lunches, dinners, and parties, through the examination of secret, classified documents and testimony, and assisted by liberal doses of political gossip and insider tips from Woodward himself.

Turbulence in World Politics or Surpassing Realism

2009-12-05T07:43:00.000-08:00

Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity

Author: James N Rosenau

In this ambitious work a leading scholar undertakes a full-scale reconceptualization of international relations. Turbulence in World Politics is an entirely new formulation that accounts for the persistent turmoil of today's world, even as it also probes the impact of the microelectronic revolution, the postindustrial order, and the many other fundamental political, economic, and social changes under way since World War II. To develop this formulation, James N. Rosenau digs deep into the workings of communities and the orientations of individuals that culminate in collective action on the world stage. His concern is less with questions of epistemology and methodology and more with the development of a comprehensive theoryone that is different from other paradigms in the field by virtue of its focus on the tumult in contemporary international relations. The book depicts a bifurcation of global politics in which an autonomous multi-centric world has emerged as a competitor of the long established state-centric world. A central theme is that the analytic skills of people everywhere are expanding and thereby altering the context in which international processes unfold. Rosenau shows how the macro structures of global politics have undergone transformations linked to those at the micro level: long-standing structures of authority weaken, collectivities fragment, subgroups become more powerful at the expense of states and governments, national loyalties are redirected, and new issues crowd onto the global agenda. These turbulent dynamics foster the simultaneous centralizing and decentralizing tendencies that are now bifurcating global structures. "Rosenau's new work is an imaginativeleap into world politics in the twenty-first century. There is much here to challenge traditional thought of every persuasion." --Michael Brecher, McGill University

Booknews

Rosenau (political science and international relations, USC) develops a comprehensive theory that accounts for the persistent turmoil of the contemporary world, probing the impact of the microelectronic revolution, the postindustrial order, and many other fundamental political, economic, and social changes since WWII. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

New interesting textbook: Clinical Guide to Pediatric Weight Management and Obesity or Fitness Information for Teens

Surpassing Realism: The Politics of European Integration since 1945

Author: Mark F Gilbert

This accessible text provides a concise political history of European integration from the end of World War II to the present. The European Project raises fascinating and important questions: How did Europe's states overcome their traditional rivalries and quarrels to build supranational institutions? What were the economic and geopolitical forces that drove them? Which individual statesmen contributed most to defining the European project? What are the issues that confronted the EU in the last decade and what problems will the EU face as its leaders consider even more advanced forms of political integration? All these questions are addressed by this engaging text, which offers a clear and readable account of the complex historical process by which Europe's unique polity has been built. Visit our website for update chapter!

Harriet Jacobs or Richard Nixon

2009-12-04T02:31:00.000-08:00

Harriet Jacobs: A Life

Author: Jean Fagan Yellin

Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains the most-read woman's slave narrative of all time. Jean Fagan Yellin recounts the experiences that shaped Incidents-the years Jacobs spent hiding in her grandmother's attic from her sexually abusive master-as well as illuminating the wider world into which Jacobs escaped. Yellin's groundbreaking scholarship restores a life whose sorrows and triumphs reflect the history of the nineteenth century, from slavery to the Civil War, to Reconstruction and beyond. Winner of the 2004 Frederick Douglass Prize, presented by Yale University’s Gilder-Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, awarded to the year’s best non-fiction book on slavery, resistance and abolition, the most prestigious award for the study of the black experience.

The New York Times

To be sure, Harriet Jacobs succeeds as scholarship. — Evelyn C. White

Publishers Weekly

With the 1987 edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, originally published in 1861, Pace University English professor Yellin recovered the real identity of the author behind the pseudonymous Linda Brent: Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897). With this deeply documented and thoroughly engaging biography, she provides a vibrant account of Jacobs's remarkable lives; in a triptych structure it moves from the slave girl, Hatty, to the writer, Linda, to the activist, Mrs. Jacobs. Yellin clarifies error and memory lapse without argument and frames the speculative responsibly. The first life is the best known: Hatty spends nearly seven years hiding in her grandmother's attic to escape the attentions, threats and abuse of her de facto owner. Where Jacobs omitted what "might detract from the story of her freedom struggle," Yellin goes behind her narrative's foreground (the terror of slavery, particularly for women) to restore "all the extras." Dimension and history are given to the Jacobs family and the Norcross family, as well as the Edenton, N.C., community they share. With the second life, Linda's, Yellin delineates the writing, publishing, marketing and reception of Incidents, as she traces Linda's service to and friendship with Cornelia Willis and Amy Post. In the third and least known of the lives, Yellin recounts the postbellum Mrs. Jacobs, who returned South to do relief work during the Civil War, struggled to establish schools and asylums for the black refugees and saw the rise of peonage, Jim Crow and Klan violence. Incidents presented a life of much isolation; Yellin's work recreates its rich milieu, delving deeply into Jacobs's connections to the literary and abolitionist worlds, tracing the full history of her daughter and her brother. This scholarly account, woven in a reader friendly fashion, restores "an heroic woman who lived in an heroic time" to history and to us. Photos. Author tour. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Patricia Moore - KLIATT

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is on the reading lists of most American students. Jean Yellin's biography of its author, then, belongs on the reading list of every teacher who uses the original story of the young female slave who spent seven years hiding in an attic in Edenton, North Carolina in order to protect herself and her children from the wiles of her lascivious master. Yellin not only documents in detail the early life and eventual 1842 escape from slavery of Harriet Jacobs, but also chronicles her pre-Civil War anti-slavery activities and then her post-war activities on behalf of the freedmen of the South. Most interesting, perhaps, are the intense efforts of Harriet and her daughter Louisa on behalf of black refugees in Savannah, Georgia, who were in desperate need of shelter and care at the conclusion of the war. Yellin, who was featured at length on this topic in the 2005 PBS series Slavery and the Making of America, writes with the smooth phrasing of the expert scholar. Her exhaustive (and periodically exhausting) research is documented in over 100 pages of notes. She also provides a select bibliography. Most highly recommended for teachers. (NB: There is an odd erratum on page 36 where Nat Turner's rebellion is dated 1859 instead of 1831.) KLIATT Codes: A*—Exceptional book, recommended for advanced students and adults. 2004, Perseus, 394p. notes. bibliog. index., Ages 17 to adult.

Library Journal

Harriet Jacobs explained that in writing her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, she had "striven faithfully to give a true and just account of [her] own life in slavery." Yellin, biographer of Jacobs and editor of the most recent edition of Incidents, here presents a powerful account of Jacobs's life after many years of research. Jacobs is portrayed as a remarkable woman who, until recently, was largely lost to American memory. Consulting correspondence, diaries, family papers, government records, and newspaper accounts, Yellin pieces together Jacobs's story, paying special attention to the forces that shaped her long life and work, such as her grandmother Molly and her brother John, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the antislavery movement, and the women's rights movement. As Yellin ascertains, Jacobs deserves to be recognized for many reasons: for authoring and publishing a narrative that "became a weapon in the struggle for emancipation," for freeing herself and her children, for working with black refugees in the South during the Civil War, for establishing schools and hospitals, and for working to further the Equal Rights Amendment. The Harriet Jacobs that emerges is, in her own words, "a soul that burned for freedom and heart nerved with determination to suffer even unto death in pursuit of that liberty which without makes life an intolerable burden." Highly recommended for academic libraries.-Kathryn R. Bartelt, Univ. of Evansville Libs., IN Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Graceful, honorable portrait, extensively documented and annotated, of the woman who wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Yellin, who previously edited a modern edition of Jacobs's 1861 classic, makes no bones about being an Old Lefty and, out of that tradition, being drawn to the powerful slave narrative. Many scholars have cast doubt on the authenticity of the book's story and questioned whether Jacobs actually wrote it; Yellin dug deep, pulling together her subject's extant letters (of which there are a gratifyingly substantial number) and deciphering the names of the real characters behind the pseudonyms. She makes it clear where the evidence is scant, but finds a syntactical identity between the letters and the narrative. Yellin fixes Jacobs's early experiences in the social history of Edenton, North Carolina, home to freeborn, emancipated, and slave populations, as well as the white families for whom she worked. The author is rightly wowed by a woman who learned to read despite anti-literacy laws and, unlike Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, actually wrote her own autobiography-with the help of Lydia Maria Child, granted, but in her own words. During the Civil War, Jacobs did relief work for refugees and the poor and wrote about it for Northern newspapers. Later, she helped establish schools, gardens, orphanages, and old-folk homes, operating at ground level as an activist in the true sense, as strong a resister of racism as the ex-slave desperadoes of the antebellum South. Yellin displays a pleasing and unusual ability to be both euphonious and punchy as she weds Jacobs's story to the politics of the times: Nat Turner and David Walker's Appeal, Frederick Douglass's NorthStar, and Samuel Cornish's Rights of All. In her final years, Jacobs ran boardinghouses, fed the poor, even worked cleaning houses, always engaged with life on a fundamental level. Yellin's fine reconstruction of an impressive personality should firmly embed Jacobs in American cultural history. (16-page b&w photo insert, not seen)

New interesting textbook: The Jimmy Fund or Gentle Eating

Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography

Author: Vamik D Volkan

Despite an abundance of literature on Richard Nixon, the man behind the most spectacular crash-and-burn career of modern political history has remained an enigma. What lay behind his obsessive hunger for power and control, his paranoid attacks against enemies real and perceived, his refusal to accept defeat? Why did a man who had achieved so much feel so unfulfilled even at the height of his power? And what drove the president responsible for such triumphs as the opening of relations with China to the depths of the most devastating political scandal in American history?

Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography is the first thoroughgoing psychological portrait of the 37th president, drawing upon telling interviews with Nixon intimates, published and archived materials, while employing a rigorous psychoanalytic methodology. Tracing the development of Nixon's complex psyche, the authors provide new insight not only into his unconscious motivations but also into the way they influenced his political actions, whether shrewd or disastrous.

The authors explore Nixon's difficult upbringing -- his mean-spirited, abusive father and often-absent mother; episodic physical trauma and mental deprivation; the tragic deaths of his two brothers; his rejection by the first woman he hoped to marry; and the long pursuit of his eventual wife, Pat. Nixon emerges as a narcissistic man with an extraordinary sense of purpose, yet one who suffered from inner conflicts and self-destructive tendencies. His desire to heal difficult political conflicts and his need to punish himself continually were attempts to reconcile the crippling contradiction between a grandiose self image and an impoverishedprivate sense of worth. Projecting his own devalued self image onto others, attempting to control and destroy them, Nixon surrendered to the excessive suspiciousness that would eventually lead to his downfall.

Here are the three faces of Nixon's complex psyche -- the grandiose persona, which manifested itself in bold policy moves like "The New Federalism" and the China initiative; the peacemaker, whose desire to heal internal conflicts can be seen in the policies of détente and the "Southern" desegregation strategy; and the paranoid degraded self, which struck out against those who had humiliated him and was responsible for the bombing of Cambodia and the Watergate break-in.

This probing analysis makes intelligible the moments in Nixon's presidency that have provoked much speculation but few answers, from his attempt to talk to Vietnam war protesters during a pre-dawn visit to the Lincoln Memorial to his keeping of the White House tapes. A more nuanced, more humanized Nixon emerges in a book that also provides compelling evidence that the politics of a nation is subject to the unconscious needs, fears, and fantasies of its leaders.

Salman Akhtar

This elegantly written book is not only an exemplary psychobiography but also a powerful document shedding light on the relationship between the inner psychological dynamics of a man and the style of his leadership.

Harold H. Saunders

A brilliant and soundly researched contribution to the literature on leaders. . . . offer[s] a way of thinking not only about this tragic man but about all who lead.

Dean J. Kotolowski

Readable and provocative. . . .Volkan, Itzkowitz and Dod have offered insight into how the personalities of leaders develop and why some leaders fall from grace. Biographers of Bill Clinton take note.

What People Are Saying

Salman Akhtar
A powerful document shedding light on the relationship between the inner psychological dynamics of a man and the style of his leadership

Harold H. Saunders
A brilliant and soundly researched contribution to the literature on leaders.

Bridging Deep South Rivers or Under the Flags of Freedom

2009-12-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

Bridging Deep South Rivers: The Life and Legend of Horace King

Author: John S Lupold

Horace King (1807-1885) built covered bridges over every large river in Georgia, Alabama, and eastern Mississippi. That King, who began life as a slave in Cheraw, South Carolina, received no formal training makes his story all the more remarkable. This is the first major biography of the gifted architect and engineer who used his skills to transcend the limits of slavery and segregation and become a successful entrepreneur and builder. John S. Lupold and Thomas L. French Jr. add considerably to our knowledge of a man whose accomplishments demand wider recognition. As a slave and then as a freedman, King built bridges, courthouses, warehouses, factories, and houses in the three-state area. The authors separate legend from facts as they carefully document King's life in the Chattahoochee Valley on the Georgia-Alabama border. We learn about King's freedom from slavery in 1846, his reluctant support of the Confederacy, and his two terms in Alabama's Reconstruction legislature. In addition, the biography reveals King's relationship with his fellow (white) contractors and investors, especially John Godwin, his master and business partner, and Robert Jemison Jr., the Alabama entrepreneur and legislator who helped secure King's freedom. The story does not end with Horace, however, because he passed his skills on to his three sons, who also became prominent builders and businessmen. In King's world few other blacks had his opportunities to excel. King seized on his chances and became the most celebrated bridge builder in the Deep South. The reader comes away from King's story with respect for the man; insight into the problems of financing, building, and maintaining covered bridges; and a new sense of how essential bridges were to the southern market economy.

Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America

Author: Peter Blanchard

During the wars for independence in Spanish South America (1808-1826), thousands of slaves enlisted under the promise of personal freedom and, in some cases, freedom for other family members. Blacks were recruited by opposing sides in these conflicts and their loyalties rested with whomever they believed would emerge victorious. The prospect of freedom was worth risking one's life for, and wars against Spain presented unprecedented opportunities to attain it.

Much hedging over the slavery issue continued, however, even after the patriots came to power. The prospect of abolition threatened existing political, economic, and social structures, and the new leaders would not encroach upon what were still considered the property rights of powerful slave owners. The patriots attacked the institution of slavery in their rhetoric, yet maintained the status quo in the new nations. It was not until a generation later that slavery would be declared illegal in all of Spain's former mainland colonies.

Through extensive archival research, Blanchard assembles an accessible, comprehensive, and broadly based study to investigate this issue from the perspectives of Royalists, patriots, and slaves. He examines the wartime political, ideological, and social dynamics that led to slave recruitment, and the subsequent repercussions in the immediate postindependence era. Under the Flags of Freedom sheds new light on the vital contribution of slaves to the wars for Latin American independence, which, up until now, has been largely ignored in the histories and collective memories of these nations.

Full Disclosure or The Disinformation Book of Lists

2009-12-01T15:56:00.000-08:00

Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency

Author: Archon Fung

Which SUVs are most likely to rollover? What cities have the unhealthiest drinking water? Which factories are the most dangerous polluters? What cereals are the most nutritious? In recent decades, governments have sought to provide answers to such critical questions through public disclosure to force manufacturers, water authorities, and others to improve their products and practices. Corporate financial disclosure, nutritional labels, and school report cards are examples of such targeted transparency policies. At best, they create a light-handed approach to governance that improves markets, enriches public discourse, and empowers citizens. But such policies are frequently ineffective or counterproductive. Based on an analysis of eighteen U.S. and international policies, Full Disclosure shows that information is often incomplete, incomprehensible, or irrelevant to consumers, investors, workers, and community residents. To be successful, transparency policies must be accurate, keep ahead of disclosers' efforts to find loopholes, and, above all, focus on the needs of ordinary citizens.

Book review: Beach Cuisine or Fresh Cut Fruits and Vegetables

The Disinformation Book of Lists

Author: Russ Kick

Can you name five military leaders who were -transgendered?

Twelve cases of involuntary human experimentation by the U.S. government?

How about the four porn novels written by famous authors, 11 books left out of the Bible and over 50 side effects of NutraSweet that have been reported to the FDA?

In 1977, David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace published The Book of Lists, causing an immediate sensation. Not only did it lead to three direct sequels (in 1980, 1983 and 1993), it also created a new genre. Soon, shelves were lined with The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists (1978), The Book of Sports Lists (1979) and Meredith's Book of Bible Lists (1980), among many others. Using this popular, enduring format, Russ Kick's Disinformation Book of Lists delves into the murkier aspects of politics, current events, business, history, science, art and literature, sex, drugs, death and more. Despite such unusual subject matter, this book presents hard, substantiated facts with full references.

Among the lists presented:

Innocent People Freed from Prison
Members of the Skull & Bones Secret Society at Yale
Drugs Pulled Off the Market After They Killed Too Many People
Legal Substances that Will Get You High
Dead People Surrounding Bill Clinton
Scenes that Were Cut from Movies
Raunchy Songs that Were Never Released
Military Officers, Government Officials, Astronauts, and Airline Personnel Who Say UFOs Are Real
Words and Phrases No Longer Allowed in Textbooks

	Introduction	3
	About the author	5
	Acknowledgments	11
	Drugs
	39 famous people who used drugs	14
	42 famous drinkers of vin mariani	24
	20 famous drinkers of absinthe	26
	A dozen US politicians who have smoked pot	28
	31 products containing hard drugs	29
	9 US companies allowed to manufacture illegal drugs	31
	6 illegal substances that occur naturally in our bodies	33
	12 songs about drugs	35
	16 legal substances that can cause false positives on drug tests	39
	12 strange drugs	41
	82 brands of heroin	47
	42+ things that have been made out of hemp	49
	10 of Chong's bongs	51
	12 ways of alter your consciousness without drugs	52
	Crime and punishment
	13 innocent people who went to prison	58
	36 botched executions	61
	13 last meals requested by executed Texas prisoners	70
	8 handmade prison objects	72
	3 states where cockfighting is legal	74
	14 criminal cops and their "punishments"	75
	Feds and spooks
	25 tips for interrogating a prisoner, from the CIA	80
	7 CIA plots to kill Castro	87
	34 CIA cryptonyms	90
	5 designations of importance used by the CIA	92
	10 CIA front companies	93
	111 people who are the subjects of FBI files	94
	8 bands that are the subjects of FBI files	100
	9 things that will disqualify you from employment with the FBI	101
	17 questions you'll be asked when applying to become an FBI agent	102
	10 oldest still-classified documents at the national archives	104
	War and peace
	23 quotes regarding the 2003 invasion of Iraq	108
	12 arguments against the police state at Guantanamo Bay	111
	13 exotic guns and knives	119
	11 materials that have been made into guns	122
	20 mishaps that might have started nuclear war	123
	13 nuclear tests that spread radiation into civilian areas	133
	46 nuclear tests by the US	136
	33 names of defense department internal investigations	138
	13 programs from DARPA's defunct information awareness office	140
	40 US interventions in Latin America in the 1800s	145
	Corporate responsibility
	36 corporations that ripped off the US government	152
	9 visitors who died at Disneyland	154
	32 cigarette additives	157
	55 companies reportedly doing business with enemy nations	158
	Top 100 corporations laying off US workers due to NAFTA	160
	Sex
	12 erotic works by well-known writers	166
	12 olde-timey porn books	176
	52 items from the Delta Collection of the Library of Congress	178
	12 unorthodox sex practices	181
	6 sex acts that are illegal	184
	21 natural aphrodisiacs	186
	32 famous people involved in triads	187
	23 strange genres of porn movie	192
	63 gay animals	196
	4 unreleased raunchy songs	198
	153 bizarre and revealing spam subject lines leading to sexually oriented messages	200
	11 quotes about sex	207
	Religion
	5 "family-safe" Bibles	210
	18 Biblical atrocities	211
	21 Biblical contradictions	215
	8 books that didn't make it into the Bible	221
	18 celebrities involved with the Church of Scientology	225
	6 celebrities involved with the Church of Satan	226
	87+ people Mormons have baptized by proxy	227
	815 people killed by religious rituals and objects	228
	12 godly people	230
	9 religious quotes	233
	Movies, music and pulp fiction
	16 movies banned in the US	236
	10 unusual forms and genres of music	239
	19 profanely-named bands	247
	25 Iranian rock bands	249
	58 pulp novels	250
	Odds & ends
	15 things that cause or mimic "mental illnesses"	258
	11 super cures your doctor won't tell you about	260
	11 whistle-blowers	268
	23 early cases of involuntary human experimentation	273
	8 stupid politician quotes	276
	12 Amazon reviews of Senator Bill Frist's family history	278
	11 quotes about politics and government	281
	10 reasons why cars suck	283
	3 uncommon sources of power	285
	12 things to do with your body after you're dead	288
	19 suicide notes	289
	10 top magicians of the twentieth century	291
	17 tarot decks	294
	44 substances that soup up your brain	298
	24 toxic chemicals in Bill Moyers	299
	12 acceptable levels of fifth in food	301
	7 edible flowers	303
	References	308

Benjamin Franklin or Building More Effective Unions

2009-11-30T10:44:00.000-08:00

Benjamin Franklin: Writings (The Autobiography, Poor Richard's Almanack, Bagatelles, Pamphlets, Essays, & Letters) (Library of America)

Author: Benjamin Franklin

The Library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone.

Library Journal

The Library of America has produced a witty contribution to the celebration of its own fifth anniversary and the anniversary of the United States Constitution. Included are authoritative versions of Franklin's best-known writings (e.g., The Autobiography ), as well as 57 new attributions. Also included are all prefaces and maxims from the full run of Poor Richard's Almanack , plus a generous and prudent selection of other writings, both personal and public. The material is arranged by the eras of Franklin's long life. Lemay's erudite notes, an excellent index, and the volume's acid-free paper all attest to admirable publishing standards. For most libraries. Sally Linden, Wellesley Coll. Lib., Mass .

School Library Journal

YA A collection of well-known Franklin writings as well as 57 newly attributed pieces, all arranged by period and place. High-school students of American history and literature will appreciate this comprehensive collection.

New interesting book: LEX and YACC or C Standard Library Practical Tips

Building More Effective Unions

Author: Paul F Clark

Employers have long turned to behavioral science for guidance on making their organizations more effective. Labor scholar Paul F. Clark believes union leaders should also take advantage of the valuable discoveries made in this field, and he offers a straightforward account of how they can do so.

Much of the behavioral science research relevant to unions relies on complex statistical analyses and is disseminated through scholarly journals. This clearly written book makes the findings of behavioral science accessible to those committed to building a stronger labor movement. It describes behavioral science's understanding of such topics as organizational commitment and member participation and suggests how this knowledge can best be applied to unions.

Building More Effective Unions offers practical strategies unions can use to their advantage in a number of areas, including:

Union participation
Organization and retention
Union orientation and socialization
Political action
Grievance procedures
Information and communications
Union image-building
Union culture
Union leadership

The book features examples of how unions and their leaders have benefited from putting the principles of behavioral science into practice.

About the Author:
Paul F. Clark is Associate Professor of Labor Studies and Industrial Relations at Pennsylvania State University. He has worked on labor education programs and research projects with many national and local unions over the last twenty years. He is the author of The Miners' Fight for Democracy: Arnold Miller and the Reform of the United Mine Workers.

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction
	List of Union Acronyms
Ch. 1	Behavioral Science and Union Effectiveness	1
Ch. 2	Union Participation: A Model	14
Ch. 3	Organizing and Retaining Members	32
Ch. 4	Union Member Orientation and Socialization	53
Ch. 5	Political Action	71
Ch. 6	Grievance Procedures	90
Ch. 7	Information and Communication Strategies	106
Ch. 8	Union Image-Building	125
Ch. 9	Union Culture	144
Ch. 10	Union Leadership	168
Ch. 11	Conclusion	187
	References	193
	Index	205

The US Constitution for Everyone or Chaos Point

2009-11-29T05:32:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Constitution for Everyone

Author: Jerome Agel

History comes alive-in this illustrated guide to the Constitution and all 27 Amendments.

* Which state refused to send a delegation to the Constitutional Convention?
* Why was the Convention held in secret, with sentries at the door?
* What are the 27 Amendments?

The U.S. Constitution for Everyone relates how the "traitorous" Founding Fatherswrote the nation's supreme laws and how the thirteen Disunited States became a more perfect Union. A must for students of American history and for everyone who'd like to know more about the supreme laws of our nation.

Author Biography: Jerome Agel has written and produced more than 50 major books, including collaborations with Carl Sagan, Stanley Kubrick, Marshall McLuhan and R. Buckminster Fuller.

Author Biography: Mort Gerberg is a cartoonist and author who has written and illustrated 36 books.

Books about: Forgotten Man or The Goal

Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads

Author: Ervin Laszlo

Breakdown or Breakthrough?

We are at a critical juncture in history, a "decision-window" where we face the danger of global collapse--or the opportunity for global renewal. Written by Ervin Laszlo, the founder of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, The Chaos Point provides a concise overview of the present world situation, showing where we are and how we got here.

According to Laszlo, for the next six to seven years--roughly until the end of 2012--we have the opportunity to head off trends that would lead to a critical tipping point. Beyond this "chaos point," we either evolve to a safer, more sustainable world, or the social, economic, and ecological systems that frame our life become overstressed and break down.

The 2012 chaos point need not be the end of the world, but it will certainly be the end of the kind of world we have created. In today's decision-window, we have a unique chance to break through to a new world. This pioneering book tells us what this new world can look like and how each of us can help to achieve it.

The Chaos Point is a healing book. It not only identifies the nature of the malady every person and every society now suffers from, but offers a cure.

Order of the Deaths Head or Suicide of Reason

2009-11-28T00:20:00.000-08:00

Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS

Author: Heinz Hohn

"A monumental achievement." (The New York Times Book Review)

The SS was the terror of Europe. Swearing eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler, it infiltrated every aspect of German life and was responsible for the deaths of millions. This gripping history recounts the strange and, at times, absurd true story of Hitler's SS. It exposes an organization that was not directed by some devilishly efficient system but was the product of accident, inevitability, and the random convergence of criminals, social climbers, and romantics. Above all, this eye-opening book describes in fascinating detail the chaotic political conditions that allowed the SS-despite rivalries and bizarre conditions-to assume and exercise unaccountable power.

Author Biography: Heinz Hљhne, a journalist specializing in Nazi and intelligence history, washead of the Foreign News Department at Der Spiegel. He has authored several books.

Go to: Energía, Ambiente, y Cambio climático

Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West

Author: Lee Harris

Whether by choice or not, the West finds itself in a low-grade yet bitter war with Islamic fanaticism. It is a war the West is singularly ill equipped to fight. The foe is resistant to any of the normal methods of conflict resolution such as negotiation, economic sanctions, or conventional armed confrontation. The Suicide of Reason shows how modern liberal societies, whose political theories are born of the Enlightenment, are unfamiliar with the nature o mass fanaticism. The West can only think of fanaticism as a social pathology, a failure to modernize, rather than as what it is: a variety of social order that is not only fully viable in the modern world but also willing to use weapons to which the West is uniquely vulnerable. A governing philosophy based on reason, tolerance, and consensus cannot defend itself against a strategy of ruthless violence without being radically transformed-or destroyed. Extraordinarily original and thought-provoking, The Suicide of Reason explains the logic of fanatical movements from the Crusades through Nazism to radical Islam; describes how the Enlightenment overcame fanatical thinking in the West; shows why most Western attempts to address the problem are doomed to fail; and offers strategies by which liberal internationalism can defend itself without becoming a mirror of the tribal forces it is trying to defeat.

The New York Times - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Several authors have published books on radical Islam's threat to the West since that shocking morning in September six years ago. With The Suicide of Reason, Lee Harris joins their ranks. But he distinguishes himself by going further than most of his counterparts: he considers the very worst possibility—the destruction of the West by radical Islam. There is a sense of urgency in his writing, a desire to shake awake the leaders of the West, to confront them with their failure to understand that they are engaged in a war with an adversary who fights by the law of the jungle…Harris's book is so engaging that it is difficult to put down, and its haunting assessments make it difficult for a reader to sleep at night.

Sandra Collins - Library Journal

Extremist Islam today, says Harris, represents the revival of earlier fanatical movements-the Crusades, Hitler's Nazis, Stalinist Russia. Harris (Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History) defines a fanatic as "someone who is willing to make a sacrifice in his own self-interest for something outside himself." All such zealous movements, fueled by righteous belief in a cause or an idea, directly threaten the integrity of Western rationalism and reason, he says. He intends here to challenge as ill-conceived Western culture's efforts to grapple with fanatical Islam. Accessible in thought and language, his work presents compelling historical, intellectual, and political arguments. The author contends, for example, that the West is experiencing a leadership crisis because political parties, rather than popular acclaim, supply potential candidates. Harris's thesis is that "an exaggerated and hopelessly unrealistic overestimation of the power of reason alone to settle differences and prevent conflict" amounts to a "suicide of reason," exemplified by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and America's desire to export liberal democracy to the Islamic world. Though his defense of Iran's President Ahmadinejad is more than a bit troubling, this is a thought-provoking and insightful book sure to challenge debate. Recommended.

Preface     ix
Part 1
Fanaticism and the Myth of Modernity     3
The Denial of Fanaticism     15
Fanaticism and Resentment     29
The End of History?     39
Clash or Crash?     55
The Fanaticism of Reason     61
Reason, Fanaticism, and the Struggle for Existence
Demystifying Reason     79
Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Reason     105
The Origins of Popular Cultures of Reason
Condorcet's Tenth Stage     137
Reason and Autonomy     157
Liberal Exceptionalism     165
The Challenge of Islamic Fanaticism
The Logic of Fanaticism     205
The Legacy and Future of Jihad     215
Part 5
Can Carpe Diem Societies Survive?     241
Our New World Disorder     253
Conclusion     265
Index     281

The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War or Handbook of Alternative Fuel Technologies

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

The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War

Author: Yaacov Roi

Why did the Soviet Union spark war in 1967 between Israel and the Arab states by falsely informing Syria and Egypt that Israel was massing troops on the Syrian border? Based on newly available archival sources, The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War answers this controversial question more fully than ever before. Directly opposing the thesis of the recently published Foxbats over Dimona by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, the contributors to this volume argue that Moscow had absolutely no intention of starting a war. The Soviet Union's reason for involvement in the region had more to do with enhancing its own status as a Cold War power than any desire for particular outcomes for Syria and Egypt.

In addition to assessing Soviet involvement in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli Six Day War, this book covers the USSR's relations with Syria and Egypt, Soviet aims, U.S. and Israeli perceptions of Soviet involvement, Soviet intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli War of Attrition (1969-70), and the impact of the conflicts on Soviet-Jewish attitudes. This book as a whole demonstrates how the Soviet Union's actions gave little consideration to the long- or mid-term consequences of their policy, and how firing the first shot compelled them to react to events.

Handbook of Alternative Fuel Technologies

Author: Sunggyu Le

In addition to enabling a clean and energy efficient future, alternative fuel sources are fast becoming a necessity for meeting today's growing demands for low-cost and convenient energy. The Handbook of Alternative Fuel Technologies offers a thorough guide to the science and available technologies for developing alternatives to petroleum fuel sources and petrochemical feedstocks. This handbook focuses on the different intermediates and raw material options that can generate energy output and products equivalent to conventional petroleum sources. It presents short-term options for clean alternative energy sources that complement the development of long-term sustainable energy infrastructures. Detailing the chemical processes for each technology, the text assesses the environmental impact, benefits, and performance of the various processes and fuel products. It also summarizes processing and transportation issues, safety concerns, regulations, and other practical considerations associated with alternative fuels. After presenting a global energy overview, the book describes clean and alternative methods of producing liquid fuels, crude oil, syngas, and methanol from coal, coal slurry, natural gas, resids, oil sand bitumen, and oil shale. It details the chemical reaction mechanisms, biological processes, and unit operations for converting corn, lignocellulosic materials, and biomass into alcoholic fuels. It also covers the processes and thermodynamics of converting various waste materials into energy. The final chapters discuss the science, benefits, and applications of geothermal energy, nuclear energy, and fuel cells. Blending up-to-date technical information with current trendanalyses and feasible implementation strategies, the Handbook of Alternative Fuel Technologies provides an ideal foundation for scientists, engineers, and policymakers interested in developing alternative energy sources.

Devils Highway or How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution

2009-11-25T13:57:00.000-08:00

Devil's Highway: A True Story

Author: Luis Alberto Urrea

"In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, a place called the Devil's Highway. Fathers and sons, brothers and strangers, entered a desert so harsh and desolate that even the Border Patrol is afraid to travel through it. Twelve came back out." Now, Luis Alberto Urrea tells the story of this modern odyssey. He takes us back to the small towns and unpaved cities south of the border, where the poor fall prey to dreams of a better life and the sinister promises of smugglers. We meet the men who will decide to make the crossing along the Devil's Highway and, on the other side of the border, the men who are ready to prevent them from reaching their destination. Urrea reveals exactly what happened when the twenty-six headed into the wasteland, and how they were brutally betrayed by the one man they had trusted most. And from that betrayal came the inferno, a descent into a world of cactus spines, labyrinths of sand, mountains shaped like the teeth of a shark, and a screaming sun so intense that even at midnight the temperature only drops to 97 degrees. And yet, the men would not give up. The Devil's Highway is a story of astonishing courage and strength, of an epic battle against circumstance. These twenty-six men would look the Devil in the eyes - and some of them would not blink.

The Washington Post

Urrea, a poet and novelist who is also a dogged reporter on the border wars, is keenly attuned to such eloquent and awful ironies and uses them to punctuate the The Devil's Highway, a painstaking, unsentimental and oddly lyrical chronology of the traveling party's horrific trek through the Sonora. — Chris Lehmann

Publishers Weekly

In May 2001, 26 Mexican men scrambled across the border and into an area of the Arizona desert known as the Devil's Highway. Only 12 made it safely across. American Book Award-winning writer and poet Urrea (Across the Wire; Six Kinds of Sky; etc.), who was born in Tijuana and now lives outside Chicago, tracks the paths those men took from their home state of Veracruz all the way norte. Their enemies were many: the U.S. Border Patrol ("La Migra"); gung-ho gringo vigilantes bent on taking the law into their own hands; the Mexican Federales; rattlesnakes; severe hypothermia and the remorseless sun, a "110 degree nightmare" that dried their bodies and pounded their brains. In artful yet uncomplicated prose, Urrea captivatingly tells how a dozen men squeezed by to safety, and how 14 others whom the media labeled the Yuma 14 did not. But while many point to the group's smugglers (known as coyotes) as the prime villains of the tragedy, Urrea unloads on, in the words of one Mexican consul, "the politics of stupidity that rules both sides of the border." Mexican and U.S. border policy is backward, Urrea finds, and it does little to stem the flow of immigrants. Since the policy results in Mexicans making the crossing in increasingly forbidding areas, it contributes to the conditions that kill those who attempt it. Confident and full of righteous rage, Urrea's story is a well-crafted m lange of first-person testimony, geographic history, cultural and economic analysis, poetry and an indictment of immigration policy. It may not directly influence the forces behind the U.S.'s southern border travesties, but it does give names and identities to the faceless and maligned "wetbacks" and "pollos," and highlights the brutality and unsustainable nature of the many walls separating the two countries. Maps not seen by PW. (Apr. 2) Forecast: Urrea has received coverage for his previous writing projects in numerous arts-related publications and has a loyal fan base. A six-city author tour and radio interviews will expand his audience further. The book has been optioned as the debut movie of Tucson-based Creative Dreams Inc. and is scheduled to begin filming in October 2004. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This is a book about death and dying along the Mexico-Arizona border-the Devil's Highway. It is not a simple book but instead a powerful account of 26 men from Veracruz, Mexico, who tried to enter the United States illegally in May 2001; 14 died in the Southwest desert as a consequence. Urrea (Wandering Times; Across the Wire) tells the story in the vernacular, adding to the impact of a tragedy that could have been averted. All of the men fell victim to the scalding sun and to dehydration, but the real culprits were the "coyotes" (or middle men) who recruited the Mexicans, taking their money with a promise of jobs in Los Estados Unidos, and the runners who led the crossing. Twelve of the men survived, providing Urrea with testimony of what has been a serious problem in Mexican-U.S. relations-exacerbated by the events of 9/11. Highly recommended for all libraries.-Boyd Childress, Auburn Univ. Lib., AL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The rueful, fate-wracked tale of 26 men who tried to cross into the US from Mexico but chose the wrong time, place, and guide. More than half would die, turned to cinder in the sun-blasted desert of southern Arizona. American Book Award-winner Urrea (Wandering Time, 1999, etc.) tells this grim story wonderfully; like the Border Patrol's trackers, he cuts back and forth, looking for signs, following tracks wherever they might lead. This means relating the various biographies of the "walkers" themselves and discovering what drove them north, from the desire for a new life to a season's work in the orange groves to a job putting a new roof on a house. It means delving into the disastrous Mexican state, with its "catastrophic political malfeasance that forced the walkers to flee their homes and bake to death in the western desert." Urrea notes the shift in tactics, thanks to the Border Patrol's extremely effective interdiction and prevention policies, which now compel guides to take walkers over the most remote and dangerous routes. They will often be abandoned if the going gets too tough, as happened here. Urrea spends time in the ratty border hotels and towns ("Sonoita smells like bad fruit and sewage. Blue clouds of exhaust leak from the dying cars"), and he spends time with the Patrol, especially the trackers, who can read so much from a footprint that it's scary. But not as scary as hyperthermia and its ugly progress: the first stages of stress and fatigue, on through syncope and cramps, to the dreadful sludge of exhaustion and stroke. This is not the peaceful sleep-death brought on by freezing; it's reeling and raging, and when a man's son dies in his arms, "the father lurched away intothe desert, away from the trees, crying out in despair." A horrendous story told with bitter skill, highlighting the whole sordid, greedy mess that attends illegal broader crossings. Agent: Sandy Dijkstra/Sandra Dijkstra Agency

How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution

Author: Richard A Epstein

In this provocative book, Richard Epstein shows how Progressives saw in constitutional interpretation an opportunity to advance their political agenda. They transformed a Constitution that reflected the influence of John Lock and James Madison into one that reflected the ideas of the leading intellectuals of their own time. As a result, they rewrote, because they did not understand, key provisions of the constitutional text.

Exporting American Dreams or Profiles in Courage

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

Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey

Author: Mary L Dudziak

Thurgood Marshall became a living icon of civil rights when he argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1954. Six years later, he was at a crossroads. A rising generation of activists were making sit-ins and demonstrations rather than lawsuits the hallmark of the civil rights movement. What role, he wondered, could he now play? When in 1960 Kenyan independence leaders asked him to help write their constitution, Marshall threw himself into their cause. Here was a new arena in which law might serve as the tool with which to forge a just society.
In Exporting American Dreams , Mary Dudziak recounts with poignancy and power the untold story of Marshall's journey to Africa. African Americans were enslaved when the U.S. constitution was written. In Kenya, Marshall could become something that had not existed in his own country: a black man helping to found a nation. He became friends with Kenyan leaders Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta, serving as advisor to the Kenyans, who needed to demonstrate to Great Britain and to the world that they would treat minority races (whites and Asians) fairly once Africans took power. He crafted a bill of rights, aiding constitutional negotiations that helped enable peaceful regime change, rather than violent resistance.
Marshall's involvement with Kenya's foundation affirmed his faith in law, while also forcing him to understand how the struggle for justice could be compromised by the imperatives of sovereignty. Marshall's beliefs were most sorely tested later in the decade when he became a Supreme Court Justice, even as American cities erupted in flames and civil rights progress stalled. Kenya's first attempt at democracyfaltered, but Marshall's African journey remained a cherished memory of a time and a place when all things seemed possible.

Publishers Weekly

While Marshall is best known for his pivotal role during Brown v. Board of Education and his appointment to the Supreme Court, Dudziak (Cold War Civil Rights) recovers a nearly buried undertaking, "one of the great adventures of his life": Marshall's contributions to the Kenyan Bill of Rights. Marshall arrived in London in January 1960; a month later, the Greensboro, N.C., sit-in began, and Marshall found himself "torn between two continents and two movements." The author effectively sketches those events in the civil rights movement (civil disobedience, urban riots, Black Power) and in Kenya (President Kenyatta's early moderation and subsequent mistreatment of the Asian minority and suppression of opposition) that supported and undermined Marshall's "faith in the law as a vehicle for social change." The tensions between Marshall's desire for equal rights and Kenyatta's priorities of "sovereignty and national unity" are still heartbreakingly unresolved, as are Marshall's great hope for the "entrenchment in Kenya of the rights he still hoped for in America." Dudziak's clarity and careful documentation make her book accessible to the general reader and a valuable tool for African and African-American studies. (July)

Steven Puro - Library Journal

In 1960, many post-independence African nations were on the cusp of political and social revolution. To help structure Kenya's society, the Kenyan government invited prominent civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall to help develop a constitution and bill of rights. Dudziak (law & history, Univ. of Southern California Law Sch.) examines the multicultural implications for both Marshall and the Kenyan leaders as they ventured into uncharted territory. Marshall used his American legal consciousness to solve the problems of Kenyan society as it moved from colonial rule to democratic self-government. Dudziak recognizes the social and political disruptions to Kenya's path to democratic norms, including the recent violent crisis following the disputed 2007 presidential election, and contrasts Kenya's peaceful regime change in the early 1960s with contemporary U.S. racial conflicts in many urban areas. She also examines how the conception of democracy and rights varies among cultures. A central element for Marshall was how to develop ideas that would engage newly independent African political power and yet protect the rights of white minorities. In America, Marshall faced the same problem, but the racial proportions were reversed. This book on a less-studied part of Marshall's career is recommended for libraries collecting in law, legal processes, and African and African American history.

Profiles in Courage: Decisive Moments in the Lives of Celebrated Americans

Author: John F Kennedy

In 1954-1955, John F. Kennedy's active role as a Senator in the affairs of the nation was interrupted for the better part of a year by his convalescence from an operation to correct a disability incurred as skipper of a World War II torpedo boat. He used his "idle" hours to great advantage; he rediscovered, and did intensive research into, the courage and patriotism of a handful of Americans who at crucial moments in history had revealed a special sort of greatness: men who disregarded dreadful consequences to their public and private lives to do that one thing which seemed right in itself. These men ranged from the extraordinarily colorful to the near-drab; from the born aristocrats to the self-made. They were men of various political and regional allegiances—their one overriding loyalty was to the United States and to the right as God gave them to see it.

There was John Quincy Adams, who lost his Senate seat and was repudiated in Boston for his support of his father's enemy Thomas Jefferson; Sam Houston, who performed political acts of courage as dramatic as his heroism on the field of battle; Thomas Hart Benton, whose proud and sarcastic tongue fought against the overwhelming odds that insured his political death; and Edmond Ross who "looked down into his open grave" as he saved President Johnson from an impeachment; and Norris of Nebraska; and Taft of Ohio; and Lamar of Mississippi (who did as much as any one man to heal the wounds of civil war). There was Daniel Webster, scourged for his devotion to Union by the most talented array of constituents ever to attack a Senator. For the most part Kennedy's patriots are United States Senators, but he also paystribute to such men as Governor Altgeld of Illinois and Charles Evans Hughes of New York.

And in the opening and closing chapters, which are as inspiring as they are revealing, Kennedy draws on his personal experience to tell something of the satisfactions and burdens of a Senator's job—of the pressures, both outward and inward—and of the standards by which a man of principle must work and live.

John F. Kennedy has used wonderful skill in transforming the facts of history into dramatic personal stories. There are suspense, color and inspiration here, but first of all there is extraordinary understanding of that intangible thing called courage. Courage such as these men shared, Kennedy makes clear, is central to all morality—a man does what he must in spite of personal consequences—and these exciting stories suggest the thought that, without in the least disparaging the courage with which men die, we should not overlook the true greatness adorning those acts of courage with which men must live.

History Upside Down or Committed

2009-02-20T17:09:00.000-08:00

History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression

Author: David Meir Levi

Forty years ago, a significant part of the political, religious, intellectual, and terrorist leadership of the Arab world declared an all-out war against the documented history of the Middle East and America's role in the Muslim world. Arab PR professionals and spinmeisters have rewritten the record for political and propaganda purposes. Blaming the Victim is the first wave in a counterattack against that Arab war on history.

Book about: The Power of the Mind to Heal or 100 Questions and Answers about Cervical Cancer

Committed: A Rabble-Rouser's Memoir

Author: Dan Mathews

Committed is a bold, offbeat, globe-trotting memoir that shows how the most ridiculed punching bag in high school became an internationally renowned crusader for the most downtrodden individuals of all -- animals. This irresistibly entertaining book recounts the unorthodox coming-of-age that inspired a reluctant party boy to devote his life to a cause, without ever abandoning his sense of mischief and fun.
Mathews is the irreverent force behind the colorful crusades carried out by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), making animal rights the "it" cause with campaigns involving nude protestors, odd costumes, and celebrities as diverse as Pamela Anderson and Sir Paul McCartney. With self-deprecating wit and candor, he reveals the edgy details of his outrageous career, which has found him arrested naked on the streets of Hong Kong, dressed as a carrot outside grade schools in Iowa (where he was pelted with luncheon meats), and impersonating a priest to crash a fashion show in Milan.
From the rock scene in Hollywood and London to the inner sanctums of New York high fashion and from jails in Boston to a psychiatric ward in Paris, Committed spotlights the adventures life can offer when you don't abandon your ideals and imagination with your youth.

Publishers Weekly

Having grown up poor and gay, with a penchant for punk rock and Lawrence Welk, Mathews, who is now campaign chief for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, had a rough start. But his camp, cosmopolitan and crass memoir is like a life lesson from the Island of Misfit Toys: a study of the unwitting heroism and adventures of an outsider dedicated to a cause. Less a treatise than a picaresque tale, his book wouldn't be complete without a bit of persuasion, whether detailing the horrors of the fur industry, factory farming or animal experimentation. But he's as willing to make fun of himself as he is of his many targets—including Vogueeditor Anna Wintour (who, he says, "looks as if she has constant, painful gas") and deli-meat–hurling Iowan children. Then again, this is a man who dresses up regularly in a carrot costume. Aided by humor, luck and friends like Pamela Anderson and Morrissey, Mathews makes clear there is savvy to his controversial methods. "The flair you bring to a protest is as important as the issues themselves—if you want to reach beyond the small core of whoever might care about an issue." Those at odds with Mathews's ideals are bound to find him irritating, but open-minded readers will discover a charming polemicist. (Apr. 17)

Alicia Graybill - Library Journal

Mathews has been with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for more than 20 years, working his way up from receptionist to vice president of promotion, a position through which he has brought global attention to the organization and its mission. He is good at coming up with unusual angles to promote PETA and animal-rights issues, and he devotes much of this autobiography to demonstrating his creativity in doing so. The writing is certainly entertaining and makes for an amusing way to spend an hour or two. Unfortunately, the celebrity names and references fall like hailstones and do almost as much damage, stopping the story's flow dead in its tracks. In the end, the reader feels that Mathews is using the same techniques to promote himself as he does to promote PETA, which is a shame, as his life deserves more respect than that. Still, there is no doubt that this book will sell well in our celebrity-obsessed culture. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ12/06.]

Library Journal

Prologue: Meat Me in St. Louis     1
Atomic Meltdown     11
Attaining Outcast Status     27
"Dan Mathews: We Will Kill You"     43
Young Hustler, Ancient Rome     59
A Reluctant Revolutionary     75
All the Rage     93
DOOFNAC XEMI     111
This Is a Raid     119
An Alpine Diversion     143
Cinderfella     161
Ladies Who Lunch     189
Bedlam     199
Committed     221
Epilogue: Dismal Swamp Thing     243
Acknowledgments     255

Where In the World Is Osama bin Laden or Its Your World

2009-02-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

Where In the World Is Osama bin Laden?

Author: Morgan Spurlock

Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and director Morgan Spurlock, who volunteered his body as a guinea pig for the fast food industry in the hit documentary Super Size Me, now sets his sights even higher in Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

Spurlock is a jittery father-to-be with a simple question: If OBL is behind 9/11 and all the ensuing worldwide chaos, then why can’t we just catch him? And furthermore, why is his message so compelling to so many people? So the intrepid Spurlock kisses his anxious wife goodbye and–armed with a complete lack of knowledge, experience, or expertise–sets out to make the world safe for infantkind and find the most wanted man on earth.

After boning up on his basic knowledge of OBL, Islam, and the Global War on Terror–and learning how to treat “sucking chest wounds” in a “Surviving Hostile Regions” training course–he hits the Osama trail. He zigzags the globe, drawing ever closer to the heart of darkness near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where OBL is rumored to be hiding. Along the way he interviews imams and princes, refugees and soldiers, academics and terrorists. He visits European ghettos where youth aspire to global jihad, breaks the Ramadan fast with Muslims in Cairo, rides in the bomb squad van in Tel Aviv, and writes his blood type on his Kevlar vest at a U.S. base outside of Kandahar. And then the fun really starts.

Companion to the acclaimed documentary, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? delves even deeper. What readers come away with is possibly the first-ever funny book about terrorism, as well as a greater understanding of aconflict that has cast a shadow across America and the world.

It's Your World: If you Don't Like It, Change It: Activism for Teens

Author: Mikki Halpin

You can change the world.

Free Speech. Racism. The Environment. Gay Rights. Bullying and School Safety. Animal Welfare. War. Information about Safe Sex and Birth Control. Free Speech. HIV and AIDS. Women's Rights.

These are the issues you care about -- and now you can do something about them. It's Your World will show you how to act on your beliefs, no matter what they are, and make a difference.

The information inside includes:
• The basics of activism
• Activism projects and outreach ideas
• The 5-minute activist
• How to be an activist at home, at school, and in your community
• Stories from teenagers who have taken on the world -- and won
• Resources including books, movies, and Web sites
• and much, much more

Whether at home, in school, or in your community, you have the power and the ability to create change, even if you aren't old enough to vote. Don't wait until you're eighteen to flex your political muscles -- start right now!

Publishers Weekly

New titles help teens better understand themselves and their world. With advice and real-world examples, It's Your World-If You Don't Like It, Change It: Activism for Teenagers by Mikki Halpin is aimed at teens trying to combat intolerance and injustice in such areas as animal rights, racism, environmental issues and LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning youth) acceptance. Halpin's guide suggests Internet and print resources and contains firsthand accounts from involved high school students. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Gilda R. Daniels - Children's Literature

In this very important election year, Ms. Halpin provides a good primer to plant the seeds of activism at an early age. She includes her ideas on how to address some hot button issues in our society, including racism, civil rights and sexual orientation. Ms. Halpin provides valuable resource information in her lists of web sites, organizations, books, and movies. She also includes ways to be an activist at home, at school and in the community. If the teenager doesn't have time for any of those options, she makes suggestions for "the 5-minute activist," which includes fast ways to make an impact, such as "click to e-mail" or "click to donate" web sites. Another great feature is the sidebars that include accounts from teenagers who are already actively involved. Although this book can serve as a good resource, Ms. Halpin may have bitten off more than she can chew. For example, in the chapter entitled "Fighting Racism," she asks, "Is 'nigger' a bad word?" Entire books have been written to address this issue. It is absolutely impossible to address this and other issues in this book. She rarely provides an historical context for these very difficult issues. Nonetheless, I believe her greatest contribution is in providing the information for the teenagers to arrive at their own conclusions about the issues and develop their own responses. Her unsupported commentary, however, tends to skew the issue and cause more confusion than clarity. Keep the resources, lose the commentary. 2004, Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division, Ages 16 up.

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-Animal rights, racism, war protest, AIDS, school violence and bullying, women's rights, and promoting tolerance are among the topics covered here. Halpin provides basic information about each one and then makes myriad suggestions for action at home, in the community, the "five-minute activist," etc. The ideas are easy to implement. Each section is accompanied by authentic accounts of student experiences, including successes as well as difficulties, in trying to change their school or community or influence a world issue, such as the war in Iraq. Many of the ideas are easily doable-in school violence the suggestion is made to set up "bully boxes" so that students can anonymously and comfortably report incidents of harassment. The discussions end with an annotated list of Web sites, books, and movies while the book concludes with a seven-page resource list for general activism. This is an important book that will empower any young adult who would like to make a difference.-Joanne K. Cecere, Monroe-Woodbury High School, Central Valley, NY Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Common Wealth or American Public Policy

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

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

Author: Jeffrey D Sachs

From one of the world's greatest economic minds, author of the New York Times bestseller The End of Poverty, a clear and vivid map of the road to sustainable and equitable global prosperity and an augury of the global economic collapse that lies ahead if we don't follow it.

The New York Times - Daniel Gross

Even congenital optimists have good reason to suspect that this time the prophets of economic doom may be on point, with the advent of seemingly unstoppable developments like climate change and the explosive growth of China and India. Which is why Sachs's book—lucid, quietly urgent and relentlessly logical—resonates…Sachs smartly describes how we got here, and the path we must take to avert disaster. The director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author of The End of Poverty, Sachs is perhaps the best-known economist writing on developmental issues (or any other kind of issues) today. And this is Bigthink with a capital B.

Publishers Weekly

In this sobering but optimistic manifesto, development economist Sachs (The End of Poverty) argues that the crises facing humanity are daunting-but solutions to them are readily at hand. Sachs focuses on four challenges for the coming decades: heading off global warming and environmental destruction; stabilizing the world's population; ending extreme poverty; and breaking the political logjams that hinder global cooperation on these issues. The author analyses economic data, demographic trends and climate science to create a lucid, accessible and suitably grim exposition of looming problems, but his forte is elaborating concrete, pragmatic, low-cost remedies complete with benchmarks and budgets. Sachs's entire agenda would cost less than 3% of the world's annual income, and he notes that a mere two days' worth of Pentagon spending would fund a comprehensive antimalaria program for Africa, saving countless lives. Forthright government action is the key to avoiding catastrophe, the author contends, not the unilateral, militarized approach to international problems that he claims is pursued by the Bush administration. Combining trenchant analysis with a resounding call to arms, Sachs's book is an important contribution to the debate over the world's future. (Mar.)

Lawrence R. Maxted <P>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. - School Library Journal

In his first book, The End of Poverty, development economist and UN special adviser Sachs laid out how extreme poverty in places like Africa could be alleviated. Here, he identifies and offers strategies for dealing with the leading global threats of the coming decades, such as environmental degradation, overpopulation, and resource depletion, arguing persuasively that much of the threat to humanity comes from those living in extreme poverty. He calls for wealthy nations to invest in efforts to improve the conditions of the extremely poor and thereby lessen the impact of extreme poverty on the planet. He explains in detail the goals that need to be met and how governments, not-for-profits, the private sector, and even individuals, can cooperate to achieve them. He reserves much of his criticism for the United States, which he says spends far too much on military technology that will prove ineffective in dealing with the true threats to our security. Though Sachs avoids jargon and writes clearly, the book would be heavy going for casual readers. Nevertheless, his work is an eloquent plea and a solid argument for global economic and political cooperation. Highly recommended for most libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ4/15/07.]

Kirkus Reviews

Economist Sachs (Earth Institute/Columbia Univ.; The End of Poverty, 2005, etc.) limns social, environmental and economic forces that are reshaping the planet-for better or worse remains to be seen. Thanks to technological and agricultural innovations, Sachs writes, economic growth has reached into every corner of the globe, particularly in Asia, and "the world on average is rapidly getting richer in terms of income per person." At the same time, the population continues to grow, increasingly concentrated in vast cities. More people earning more means more consumption. In the face of this and against the likelihood of resource scarcity, can that growth be sustained? Sachs examines the prospects, suggesting that the greater challenge may be simply to lift the poor nations of the world, mostly in Africa, to some sort of health while improving life everywhere. In that regard, he observes, citizens of the United States have suffered the dismantling of social services, a "great right-wing attack [that] . . . has systematically reduced the scope of the social welfare system in health care, job protection, child support, housing support, and retirement security." Yet, he optimistically adds, the financial cost of making "major corrections" is small relative to the size of the U.S. economy, assuming proper prioritizing-the war in Iraq, for instance, is costing "roughly 1 percent of national income each year in direct outlays" that could otherwise subsidize universal healthcare coverage. In Africa, improvement in public investments-assuming corruption in the system can be removed, that is-can spur private investment and even prompt an economic boom. The future need not be grim, Sachs maintains,but getting to a better one will require concerted international effort, UN leadership and private initiative. A welcome contribution to the sustainable-development literature, accessible to nonspecialist readers but most useful to those with grounding in economics and international policy. Agent: Andrew Wylie/The Wylie Agency

What People Are Saying

Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces. We can address poverty, climate change, and environmental destruction at a very modest cost today with huge benefits for shared and sustainable prosperity and peace in the future, or we can duck the issues today and risk a potentially costly reckoning in later years. Despite the rearguard opposition of some vested interests, policies to help the world's poor and the global environment are in fact the very best economic bargains on the planet.
—Al Gore, Winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and Former Vice President of the United States

Foreword   Edward O. Wilson     xi
New Economics for the Twenty-first Century
Common Challenges, Common Wealth     3
Our Crowded Planet     17
Environmental Sustainability
The Anthropocene     57
Global Solutions to Climate Change     83
Securing Our Water Needs     115
A Home for All Species     139
The Demographic Challenge
Global Population Dynamics     159
Completing the Demographic Transition     183
Prosperity for All
The Strategy of Economic Development     205
Ending Poverty Traps     227
Economic Security in a Changing World     255
Global Problem Solving
Rethinking Foreign Policy     271
Achieving Global Goals     291
The Power of One     313
Acknowledgments     341
List of Acronyms     347
Notes     349
References     361
Index     371

Look this: The Peach Sampler or Taste of Thyme

American Public Policy: Promise and Performance

Author: B Guy Peters

Now considered a classic amongst political experts, "American Public Policy" is an excellent overview of the fundamental processes and content of American public policy. Peters gives a clear exposition of the public policy environment from agenda setting to evaluation, identifying the governmental structures and procedures through which policy is designed and implemented. With characteristic flair for lucid and lively discussion, Peters examines the problems, goals, and important issues in substantive policy areas, including health care, social security and welfare, education, energy, environment, defense and law enforcement.

A new chapter on social policy covering important contemporary topics such as abortion, school prayer, and gay rights enhances the currency of this accomplished review of public policy.

Jonas and Kovners Health Care Delivery in the United States or Political Education

2009-02-16T22:07:00.000-08:00

Jonas and Kovner's Health Care Delivery in the United States: 8th Edition

Author: Anthony R Kovner

Designated a Doody's Core Title!

Winner of an AJN Book of the Year Award!

How do we understand and also assess the health care of America? Where is health care provided? What are the characteristics of those institutions which provide it? Over the short term, how are changes in health care provisions affecting the health of the population, the cost of care, and access to care?

Health Care Delivery in the United States, 8th Edition discusses these and other core issues in the field. Under the editorship of Dr. Kovner and with the addition of Dr. James Knickman, Senior VP of Evaluation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, leading thinkers and practitioners in the field examine how medical knowledge creates new healthcare services. Emerging and recurrent issues from wide perspectives of health policy and public health are also discussed.

With an easy to understand format and a focus on the major core challenges of the delivery of health care, this is the textbook of choice for course work in health care, the handbook for administrators and policy makers, and the standard for in-service training programs.

Interesting book: Individual Differences and Behavior in Organizations or Entrepreneurship in Micro Enterprises

Political Education: National Policy Comes of Age

Author: Christopher T Cross

In this important new book, Christopher Cross traces the evolution of federal education policy during the latter half of the 20th century -- from World War II to the present, including a separate chapter on the new federal law, No Child Left Behind, by Paul Manna. Cross brings to this book his own experience of 32 years in Washington, combined with research done in several presidential libraries and interviews with more than 20 people who held key positions during that time. What emerges is a highly readable chronicle of how the federal role in education has been transformed. Political Education: National Policy Comes of Age is the only book to cover public K-12 education policy in the modern era. Policymakers and practitioners will find this essential reading as they prepare for the changes of a new era of federal influence. Parents and voters will find it helpful in evaluating the proposals that will emerge as political candidates debate policy options.

	Foreword
	Preface
	Acknowledgments
	Introduction: A Policy Primer
1	Setting the Stage: The Early History	1
2	The Truman and Eisenhower Years: Impact Aid and NDEA Pass; Construction Support and General Aid Fail	5
3	The Kennedy and Johnson Years: Failure and, Finally, Success	15
4	The Nixon, Ford, and Carter Years: From Trust to Nailing Everything Down	41
5	The Reagan Years: The Bully Pulpit and Loosening the Strings	71
6	Two Bushes and a Clinton: Remarkable Bipartisanship Expands the Federal Role	91
7	Leaving No Child Behind	126
8	Lessons Learned from a Half-Century of Federal Policy Development	144
9	The Future Federal Role: Observations and Ideas	158
	Notes	173
	References	175
	Suggested Reading	183
	Index	185
	About the Author	194

Moral Capital or Population Control

2009-02-15T16:54:00.000-08:00

Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism

Author: Christopher Leslie Brown

Revisiting the origins of the British antislavery movement of the late eighteenth century, Christopher Leslie Brown challenges prevailing scholarly arguments that locate the roots of abolitionism in economic determinism or bourgeois humanitarianism. Brown instead connects the shift from ideas to action to changing views of empire in Britain, particularly the anxiety spurred by the American Revolution.

Ch. 1	Antislavery without abolitionism	33
Ch. 2	The politics of slavery in the years of crisis	105
Ch. 3	Granville Sharp and the obligations of empire	155
Ch. 4	British concepts of emancipation in the age of the American revolution	209
Ch. 5	Africa, Africans, and the idea of abolition	259
Ch. 6	British evangelicals and Caribbean slavery after the American war	333
Ch. 7	The society of friends and the antislavery identity	391
	Epilogue : moral capital	451

Book review: The Elephant and the Dragon or Ronald Reagan

Population Control

Author: Mosher

For over half a century, policymakers committed to population control have perpetrated a gigantic, costly, and inhumane fraud upon the human race. They have robbed people of the developing countries of their progeny and the people of the developed world of their pocketbooks. Determined to stop population growth at all costs, those Mosher calls "population controllers" have abused women, targeted racial and religious minorities, undermined primary health care programs, and encouraged dictatorial actions if not dictatorship. They have skewed the foreign aid programs of the United States and other developed countries in an anti-natal direction, corrupted dozens of well-intentioned nongovernmental organizations, and impoverished authentic development programs. Blinded by zealotry, they have even embraced the most brutal birth control campaign in history: China's infamous one-child policy, with all its attendant horrors.

There is no workable demographic definition of "overpopulation." Those who argue for its premises conjure up images of poverty-low incomes, poor health, unemployment, malnutrition, overcrowded housing to justify anti-natal programs. The irony is that such policies have in many ways caused what they predicted-a world which is poorer materially, less diverse culturally, less advanced economically, and plagued by disease. The population controllers have not only studiously ignored mounting evidence of their multiple failures; they have avoided the biggest story of them all. Fertility rates are in free fall around the globe.

Movements with billions of dollars at their disposal, not to mention thousands of paid advocates, do not go quietly to their graves. Moreover,many in the movement are not content to merely achieve zero population growth, they want to see negative population numbers. In their view, our current population should be reduced to one or two billion or so. Given that even modest population decline may have serious economic and societal consequences, their publicly funded war on people should be ended now.

About the Author:
Steven W. Mosher is president of Population Research Institute and is recognized as one of the leading authorities on population studies. He is the author of several books and articles

Best Intentions or Prisoner without a Name Cell without a Number

2009-02-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry

Author: Robert Sam Anson

An exploration of how Edmund Perry, a 17 year old black honors student from Harlem, was killed soon after graduation by a young white plain clothes policeman in an alleged mugging attempt.

Publishers Weekly

The fatal shooting of 17-year-old Edmund Perry by New York City police officer Lee Van Houten in June of 1985 drew national headlines. The officer asserted that he was mugged by Perry and another black youth near Harlem. Subsequently, Edmund's brother Jonah, a Cornell undergraduate, was accused of being the second participant, tried and found not guilty. The case created controversy among blacks and whites alike, for the Perry brothers, raised in the ghetto, were educated at private schools; Edmund, graduated from Philips Exeter, was to attend Stanford University that fall. Anson (Exile, etc.) probes the problems that attended the uprooting of the brothers from a deprived background to the upper-class environment of their schools; and he raises questions as to whether the worlds of black and white in the U.S. are capable of reconciliation. In a profound and disturbing study Anson reaches a troubling conclusion about this case: ``The only villain I had found was something amorphous, not a person or a thing, just a difference called race. It was racenot the fact of it, but the consequences flowing from it . . . '' that relegated the slain Edmund, for one, to the ethics of the street. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (May 20)

Library Journal

Journalist Anson has written a compelling account of the life and death of a Harlem teenager. This black adolescent was different, however. He was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Prep School and had been admitted to Stanford University. When he was killed by a white policeman during an alleged mugging attempt in 1985, public reaction, especially among blacks, blamed the police for yet another needless murder of a young black man, in this case a kind of ``black hope.'' Anson uncovered a much more complex story. Perry was trapped between two worldsthe upper-class, high-expectation milieu of Exeter and the ``streets'' of Harlem. He sold drugs at Exeter and tried to fit into Harlem, in part with street crime. Anson tells this tragic story with great empathy. Highly recommended for most libraries. Anthony O. Edmonds, History Dept., Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.

Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number

Author: Jacobo Timerman

The Americas, Ilan Stavans, Series Editor

Winner of a 1982 Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Selected by the New York Times for "Books of the Century"

With a new introduction by Ilan Stavans and a new foreword by Arthur Miller.

Author Biography: Jacobo Timerman (1923-1999) was born in the Ukraine, moved with his family to Argentina in 1928, and was deported to Israel in 1980. He returned to Argentina in 1984. Founder of two Argentine weekly newsmagazines in the 1960s and a commentator on radio and television, he was best-known as the publisher and editor of the newspaper La Opinión from 1971 until his arrest in 1977. An outspoken champion of human rights and freedom of the press, he criticized all repressive governments and organizations, regardless of their political ideologies. His other books include The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon; Cuba: A Journey; and Chile: A Death in the South.

Charles McGrath

....gripping in its human stories, not only of brutality but of courage and love. -- The New York Times Books of the Century

The History of the Idea of Europe or Blood of the Liberals

2009-02-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

The History of the Idea of Europe

Author: Pim den Boer

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the re-emergence of central Europe and moves towards monetary, economic and political union within the European Union, Europe in the 1990s is at a crossroads. This book puts the idea of Europe in its historical context, tracing it back to the ancient Greeks and their association of Europe with political freedom. The first essay shows how Europe became identified with Christendom in the fifteenth century and with "civilization" in the eighteenth, before nineteenth-century reformers and reactionaries made Europe the grounds for their different political purposes. Twentieth century developments are the focus for discussion in the last two essays. Contributors examine a number of "projects" for Europe against the background of the two world wars, considering recent trends towards political and economic integration. This volume provides also an assessment of the contemporary relevance of the European idea.

New interesting textbook: The Savvy Way to Successful Website Promotion or How to Do Everything with PhotoShop 7

Blood of the Liberals

Author: George Packer

An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history

George Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, was a populist congressman from Alabama in the early part of the century--an agrarian liberal in the Jacksonian mold who opposed the New Deal. Packer's father was a Kennedy-era liberal, a law professor and dean at Stanford whose convictions were sorely--and ultimately fatally--tested in the campus upheavals of the 1960s. The inheritor of two sometimes conflicting strains of the great American liberal tradition, Packer discusses the testing of ideals in the lives of his father and grandfather and his own struggle to understand the place of the progressive tradition in our currently polarized political climate. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, this is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.

Library Journal

Packer has produced a fascinating personal history while examining why people become liberals even though their efforts frequently seem extremely futile. The author describes the life and times of his Alabama-born maternal grandfather, Congressman George Huddleston, whose brand of liberalism was rooted in Southern agrarian populism and who often opposed FDR's New Deal. Packer also tells of his father, Herbert, whose Jewish American background placed him squarely in the urban liberal tradition of the mid-20th century. His father's life and career ultimately came to a turbulent climax as an administrator at Stanford University during the late 1960s. Finally, in a brief, informative, and moving autobiographical section, Packer recounts the development of his own social and political views following his father's stroke and suicide. The author attempts to demonstrate the ongoing relevance to today's world of a political philosophy that many believe has little future. Packer's combination of personal and historical perspectives, as well as his considerable skill at conveying them, make this work both challenging and enjoyable. Written for the lay reader, it nonetheless avoids oversimplification. Highly recommended.--Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

The New York Times Book Review - Jack Hitt

[A] remarkable story...Packer nicely threads the day-to-day decisions of his father and grandfather with the larger ideas that possessed them. As the stories of their lives unfold, the often dry history of liberalism (movements, coalitions) gets told at the intimate level of flawed men straining to make an idea of the world mesh with the whimsies of human nature. This book belongs on the shelf next to Angela's Ashes, The Liars' Club, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

The New Yorker

This remarkable memoir stands at the intersectionof personal and political history, observing the development of American liberalism through threegenerations of the author's family....Packer's generous historical sweep, earnest intelligence, and profound commitment to the subject make this a difficult book to resist.

Not a call for liberals' blood, but a recalling of it: the bloodlines of the author's liberal ancestors. His maternal grandfather was George Huddleston, a liberal congressman from Birmingham, Alabama, from the lynching time of the late 1800s through the 1930s' New Deal. And his father, Herbert Packer, was a vice provost at Stanford during its turbulent 1960s. Recalling their personal and professional battles, and his as a Peace Corps volunteer, journalist and card-carrying socialist, Packer tries to present a biography of liberal culture in the United States since the Civil War. By coupling personal details with social trends from each age, Packer shows how liberals in general and his ancestors in particular arrived at their proposed solutions for the problems of race, class and underprivileged that still plague our society. Sometimes his focus is too narrow and his position too personal. But he rightly points out that the conservative backlash to the 1960s' upheaval has grown too extended and entrenched.

Blood of the Liberals	3
Part I: The Man and the Dollar
Chapter 1: A Thomas Jefferson Democrat	13
Chapter 2: Iron and Flesh	33
Chapter 3: The Little Bolsheviki	61
Chapter 4: No Is Always Right	94
Part 2: The Sunlight of Reason
Chapter 5: A Modern Jew	131
Chapter 6: Winds of Freedom	161
Chapter 7: Golden Age	186
Chapter 8: Cults of Irrationality	220
Chapter 9: The Prose and the Passion	261
Part 3: The Age of Disbelief
Chapter 10: Free Ride	289
Chapter 11: Winners and Losers	317
Chapter 12: Twilight of the Gods	332
Chapter 13: Birmingham Dreams	352
Chapter 14: Past Is Prologue	383
Note on Sources	403
Acknowledgments	407

Markets and States in Tropical Africa or American Government

2009-02-12T01:15:00.000-08:00

Markets and States in Tropical Africa: The Political Basis of Agricultural Policies (California Series on Social Choice and Political Economy Series)

Author: Robert H Bates

Most Africans live in rural areas and derive their incomes from farming; but because African governments follow policies that are adverse to most farmers' interests, these countries fail to produce enough food to feed their populations. Markets and States in Tropical Africa analyzes these and other paradoxical features of development in modern Africa and explores how governments have intervened and diverted resources from farmers to other sectors of society. A classic of the field since its publication in 1981, this edition includes a new preface by the author.

American Government

Author: James Q Wilson

In fourteen concise chapters, American Government, Brief Version, provides you with the essential information on constitutional foundations, national institutions, political processes, and public policy.

Presidential Wives or The Effective Public Manager

2009-02-10T20:03:00.000-08:00

Presidential Wives

Author: Paul F Boller

As his previous books Presidential Anecdotes and Presidential Campaigns clearly prove, Paul F. Boller, Jr. has a remarkable eye for the telling details that vitalize and humanize history. Presidential Wives brings that gift to bear on the women our Presidents married by offering a poignant, amusing, dramatic, and illuminating biographical feast which covers every First Lady from Martha Washington to Nancy Reagan.
These vivid and entertaining pages offer encounters with Dolley Madison, whose "unfortunate propensity to snuff-taking" eventually had Washington's other women doing the same; Mary Todd Lincoln, whose harsh opinions of so many of her husband's appointments led him to tell her, "If I listened to you, I should soon be without a cabinet"; and Eleanor Roosevelt, who lamented on the night of FDR's election to his first term that she would no longer have her own identity and then became the greatest of all the women activists to occupy the White House.
As with his earlier books, Boller devotes a chapter to each of his subjects, including a biographical essay followed by a selection of revealing anecdotes. Portraying a diverse group of women--shrinking violets, passionate partisans, spotlight-loving hostesses, and devoted helpmates who remained silent in public but actively advised their husbands in private--Boller once again delightfully demonstrates how much the institution of the presidency and all that surrounds it tell us about ourselves as a nation.

"For anyone interested in a snapshot view of the presidency, this anecdotal history of American presidential wives...is important to read--and certainly fun....Boller's anecdotes are fascinating andamusing."--Letitia Baldrige, The Washington Post Book World
"Boller excels at illuminating the pathos and tragedy that suffused the lives of other presidential wives."--The Chicago Tribune
"Boller's deep insight into [these women's] lives and personalities...[adds] new historical detail to White House folklore."--Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Boller has splendidly fulfilled his purpose of producing a fascinating...account of what it has meant for a woman to be the wife of a president....This collective history of presidential wives calls attention to their significance in the nation's history."--Journal of American History

The Effective Public Manager: Achieving Success in a Changing Government

Author: Steven Cohen

Since it was first published more than a decade ago, The Effective Public Manager has become the standard manual for public administrators and students. This practical provides core concepts to help real-world managers and mangers-to-be meet the demands of their jobs head on rather than work around the constraints of government and gives them the tools to shape events rather than be shaped by them. This thoroughly revised third edition

• Presents an updated and detailed examination of management innovation

• Examines the centrality of government in an era of global communication and transportation, economic interdependence, and the threat of global terrorism

• Contains information on the opportunities and challenges of managing public policy from and with private and nonprofit organizations

Kapap Combat Concepts or The Uncertain Revolution

2009-02-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

KAPAP Combat Concepts: Martial Arts of the Israeli Special Forces

Author: Avi Nardia

The fundamental aspects of Kapap, the martial arts system developed and utilized by Israeli special forces, are detailed in this handy manual. The defensive tactics, hand-to-hand combat moves, and self-defense methods that compose Kapap are all detailed, with special sections covering striking, grappling, pressure points, and weapon defense. Instructions are also provided for incorporating basic Kapap training methods and techniques into preexisting workout routines.

Interesting book: Terrorism or Products Liability

The Uncertain Revolution: Washington and the Continental Army at Morristown

Author: John T Cunningham

Without New Jersey's Watchung Mountains and the towns around Morristown, would the American Revolution have succeeded? Would George Washington's army have survived?

New Jersey's esteemed historian John T. Cunningham explores the harsh
circumstances and geography of this region during the War of Independence. It is an account of American history that has been overlooked and overshadowed until now. But this "geological fortress" — Washington and the Continental Army's winter quarters for four years —— may well be the place where America survived.

In The Uncertain Revolution, John T. Cunningham tells the story of those forgotten winters in Middlebrook and Morristown and of their critical importance to the course of the war. Geographically, the mountains made an excellent defensive position, hiding from the British the disarray of the American army and the horrific conditions. Reports of the strength and numbers of American troops fluctuated wildly as Washington and his officers tried to stave off desertion and mutiny. Washington's army survived a small pox epidemic at Morristown, a season of short supplies at Middlebrook, the most brutal winter of the war in 1779—80, and the war's most dire mutiny on New Year's Day 1781. There's drama —— including the cat—and—mouse game played with the unpredictable British general, George Clinton, and treachery —— with one of his favorite officers, Benedict Arnold. There's also the fierce performance of the New Jersey militia in defense of their homes and farms.

In The Uncertain Revolution Cunningham makes the case for the importance of Morristown and the mountainsto an understanding of the war itself. And just as the history of those harsh winters has long been neglected, so were the physical places over time. The soldiers huts in the mountains at Jockey Hollow disintegrated, and the houses that had served as Washington's headquarters were almost lost to neglect and development. The author's account of their reclamation and eventual incorporation into the America's first National Historical Park in 1933 is a fitting conclusion to his story of Washington in the Watchungs.

Funding Public Schools or Last Samurai

2009-02-08T09:38:00.000-08:00

Funding Public Schools: Politics and Policies

Author: Kenneth K Wong

"Well conceived and well written, this pioneering work should cause much rethinking by both scholars and policy makers."—Herbert J. Walberg, editor of Advances in Educational Productivity

"A very compelling argument for a more effectively aligned and better 'integrated' structure of federal-state-local resource allocation for the schools by one of the most highly regarded scholars in this field. Timely and important, it will be widely read and extremely well received."—Robert Crowson, author of School-Community Relations Under Reform

"Fascinating and insightful. Joins two disparate traditions to bring new illumination about how our cities and schools work."—Terry Nichols Clark, editor of The New Political Culture

Author Biography: Kenneth K. Wong, associate professor in the department of education and the college at the University of Chicago, is the author of City Choices: Education and Housing and coauthor of When Federalism Works.

	Preface
1	Politics of Allocating Resources in Schools	1
2	Politics of Social Targeting at the Federal Level	18
3	Mapping Interstate Variation in State Aid to Schools	42
4	Politics of Leveling Up Spending at the State Level	71
5	The Emerging State Role in Social Targeting	91
6	Local Politics of Equalizing Class Size	122
7	Redesigning School Governance and Resource Allocation: Four Alternative Models	138
	Notes	163
	Bibliography	183
	Index	197

Interesting book: Noodle Know how or Pocket Guide to Good Food

Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori

Author: Mark Ravina

The dramatic arc of Saigo Takamori's life, from his humble origins as a lowly samurai, to national leadership, to his death as a rebel leader, has captivated generations of Japanese readers and now Americans as well - his life is the inspiration for a major Hollywood film, The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. In this vibrant new biography, Mark Ravina, professor of history and Director of East Asian Studies at Emory University, explores the facts behind Hollywood storytelling and Japanese legends, and explains the passion and poignancy of Saigo's life. Known both for his scholarly research and his appearances on The History Channel, Ravina recreates the world in which Saigo lived and died, the last days of the samurai.

The Last Samurai traces Saigo's life from his early days as a tax clerk in far southwestern Japan, through his rise to national prominence as a fierce imperial loyalist. Saigo was twice exiled for his political activities -- sent to Japan's remote southwestern islands where he fully expected to die. But exile only increased his reputation for loyalty, and in 1864 he was brought back to the capital to help his lord fight for the restoration of the emperor. In 1868, Saigo commanded his lord's forces in the battles which toppled the shogunate and he became and leader in the emperor Meiji's new government. But Saigo found only anguish in national leadership. He understood the need for a modern conscript army but longed for the days of the traditional warrior.

Saigo hoped to die in service to the emperor. In 1873, he sought appointment as envoy to Korea, where he planned to demand that the Korean king show deferenceto the Japanese emperor, drawing his sword, if necessary, top defend imperial honor. Denied this chance to show his courage and loyalty, he retreated to his homeland and spent his last years as a schoolteacher, training samurai boys in frugality, honesty, and courage. In 1876, when the government stripped samurai of their swords, Saigo's followers rose in rebellion and Saigo became their reluctant leader. His insurrection became the bloodiest war Japan had seen in centuries, killing over 12,000 men on both sides and nearly bankrupting the new imperial government. The imperial government denounced Saigo as a rebel and a traitor, but their propaganda could not overcome his fame and in 1889, twelve years after his death, the government relented, pardoned Saigo of all crimes, and posthumously restored him to imperial court rank.

In THE LAST SAMURAI, Saigo is as compelling a character as Robert E. Lee was to Americans-a great and noble warrior who followed the dictates of honor and loyalty, even though it meant civil war in a country to which he'd devoted his life. Saigo's life is a fascinating look into Japanese feudal society and a history of a country as it struggled between its long traditions and the dictates of a modern future.

Library Journal

Known as the "Robert E. Lee" of Japan, Saigo- (1828-77) first helped overthrow the feudal Tokugawa regime and establish Meiji Japan in1868, then in 1877 led a bloody, futile uprising against the new government. He feared the impersonal, commercial, and centralized nation would destroy samurai traditions of personal honor, regional loyalty, and social service. Ravina (director, East Asian Studies Program, Emory Univ.) is a careful scholar who nevertheless writes an action-filled story that resonates today. He shows us that Saigo- was no reactionary, though he harked back to the tradition of the socially responsible Confucian warrior who valued community, not class exploitation or individual advancement. Especially interesting is Ravina's presentation of Saigo- 's legacy in popular culture, where he became a folk hero, forcing the government to elevate him posthumously to a reconciling national martyrdom. Fascists and right-wing patriots from the 1930s to today have evoked samurai tradition, but their efforts are exposed as tawdry exploitation by this engrossing and thoughtful history. Highly recommended for all college and larger public libraries. [Interest in this period may be driven by the new Tom Cruise film of same name and period, though it is not based on this book.-Ed.]-Charles W. Hayford, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Missile Contagion or The Uprooted

2009-02-07T04:25:00.000-08:00

Missile Contagion: Cruise Missile Proliferation and the Threat to International Security

Author: Dennis M Gormley

Most books on missile proliferation focus on the spread of ballistic missiles or cruise missiles, not both. Gormley's work, however, explains why cruise missiles are beginning to spread widely, but does so by explaining their spread in the context of ballistic missile proliferation. It therefore treats both ballistic and cruise missile proliferation as related phenomenon. This work also focuses evenhandedly on both nonproliferation and defense policy (including missile defenses and counterforce doctrines) to fashion a set of integrated strategies for dealing with ballistic and cruise missile proliferation. Signs of missile contagion abound. In this study, Gormley argues that a series of rapid and surprising developments since 2005 suggest that the proliferation of missiles capable of delivering either weapons of mass destruction or highly accurate conventional payloads is approaching a critical threshold. The surprising fact is that land-attack cruise missiles, not ballistic missiles, constitute the primary problem. Flying under the radar, both literally and figuratively, land-attack cruise missiles add a dangerous new dimension to protecting U.S. security interests and preventing regional military instability. Gormley asserts that cruise missiles are not destined to supplant ballistic missiles; rather, they are likely to join them, because when both are employed together, they could severely test even the best missile defenses. Worse yet, Gormley argues, land-attack cruise missiles are increasingly being linked to preemptive strike doctrines, which are fueling regional arms races and crisis instability. This work explains why an epidemic of cruise missile proliferation, longforecasted by analysts, has only recently begun to occur. After first assessing the state of ballistic missile proliferation, Gormley explores the role of three factors in shaping the spread of cruise missiles. These include specialized knowledge needed for missile development; narrative messages about reasons for acquiring cruise missiles; and norms of state behavior about missile nonproliferation policy and defense doctrine. This book then addresses the policy adjustments needed to stanch the spread of cruise missiles in the first place, or, barring that, cope militarily with a more demanding missile threat consisting of both cruise and ballistic missiles.

The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People

Author: Oscar Handlin

Awarded the 1952 Pulitzer Prize in history, The Uprooted chronicles the common experiences of the millions of European immigrants who came to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-their fears, their hopes, their expectations. In order to bring forward the human story recorded in government records, newspaper accounts, and personal correspondence, the author chose to write this history as a literary narrative unencumbered with notations and academic jargon. The result is literary history at its best. The New Yorker called it "strong stuff, handled in a masterly and quite moving way," while the New York Times suggested that "The Uprooted is history with a difference--the difference being its concerns with hearts and souls no less than an event."

The book inspired a generation of research in the history of American immigration, but because it emphasizes the depressing conditions faced by immigrants, focuses almost entirely on European peasants, and does not claim to provide a definitive answer to the causes of American immigration, its great value as a well-researched and readable description of the emotional experiences of immigrants, and its ability to evoke the time and place of America at the turn of a century, have sometimes been overlooked. Recognized today as a foundational text in immigration studies, this edition contains a new preface by the author.

Nuclear Weapons or How Starbucks Saved My Life

2009-02-05T23:12:00.000-08:00

Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know

Author: Jeremy Bernstein

Nuclear Weapons is a history of nuclear weapons. From their initial theoretical development at the start of the twentieth century to the recent tests in North Korea, the author seeks to, at each point in the narrative, describe the basic science of nuclear weaponry. At the same time, he offers accounts and anecdotes of the personalities involved, many of whom he has known firsthand. Dr. Bernstein writes in response to what he sees as a widespread misunderstanding throughout the media of the basic workings and potential impact of nuclear weaponry.

Interesting textbook: Reclaiming the Body or Tibetan Healing

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

Author: Michael Gates Gill

The riches-to-rags true story of an advertising executive who had it all, then lost it all-and was finally redeemed by his new job, and his twenty-eight-year-old boss, at Starbucks.

Publishers Weekly

Baker lends his talent to Gill's memoir, the subject of considerable industry buzz and the basis for a 2008 movie starring Tom Hanks. Baker's enunciation and cadence perfectly match the essence of Gill, a well-bred and erudite-yet down-on-his luck-advertising executive who discovers the true meaning of life while working as a Starbucks barista. Baker also delivers especially evocative performances of Gill's hardworking-but fun-loving-young colleagues Kester and Anthony. His portrayal of store manager and mentor Crystal seems slightly underwhelming given her character's pivotal role in the story. All in all, Baker remains true to the spirit of the material, and his rendition of the workplace banter should ring especially true with service industry veterans. Critics quick to dismiss the project for its high-concept elements will probably remain unmoved, but fans of such popular inspirational/motivational memoirs as Tuesdays with Morrieshould find the experience good to the last drop. Simultaneous release with the Gotham hardcover (Reviews, June 4). (Sept.)

Kirkus Reviews

When a formerly high-level exec hits rock bottom, he finds salvation behind the counter at Starbucks. Son of famed New Yorker editor Brendan Gill, the author was unceremoniously fired from J. Walter Thompson after 25 years as a creative director. While trying-and ultimately failing-to run his own consulting business, he engaged in a marriage-ending affair that left him broke as well as unemployed. He subsequently found himself drinking a latte at Starbucks during a "Hiring Open House." When a confident 28-year-old African-American woman offered him a job, Gill found himself transformed from a name-dropping, high-society hobnobber into an everyman who had to relate to people from all walks of life. In the fast-paced world of coffee purveyors, the only thing that counted was his ability to do the job and work alongside the other "partners" (Starbucks-speak for employees). At its core, the narrative is an inspirational story about someone who learned late-but not too late-in life that money and status aren't everything. If Gill is to be believed, Starbucks is a magical realm where people of all races, creeds and lifestyles intermingle, a place where customers treat baristas with respect bordering on hero worship. Unfortunately, what little enlightenment his memoir has to offer is swamped by Gill's mawkish tributes to a mega-corporation. Tom Hanks, whose production company has optioned the book, will have a tough time redeeming this nauseating paean. Way too much sugar. Film Rights to Playtone

What People Are Saying

Thomas Moore
How Starbucks Saved My Life is based on the simple idea that down-to-earth, humbling labor can help you re-orient your values and priorities and give you new life. It will speak to anyone in need of radical surgery on their worldview, and that includes most of us. Sit down with a cup of coffee and this book and entertain yourself toward enlightenment. (Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul, Dark Nights of the Soul, and The Worth of Our Work)

Denis Waitley
I like my Starbucks, but I loved this book. It hit me emotionally and intellectually, right in the gut. The message, what the world needs to embrace most, made my cup runneth over! (Dr. Denis Waitley, author of The Seeds of Greatness)

Wayne Dyer
A great lesson in finding your highest self in the unlikeliest of places-- proof positive that there is no way to happiness-- rather, happiness is the way.

The Essential Chomsky or Defending Mother Earth

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

The Essential Chomsky

Author: Noam Chomsky

In a single volume, the seminal writings of the world's leading philosopher, linguist, and critic, published to coincide with his eightieth birthday.

For the past forty years Noam Chomsky's writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.

Chomsky's many bestselling works—including Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival, Understanding Power, and Failed States—have served as essential touchstones for dissidents, activists, scholars, and concerned citizens on subjects ranging from the media to human rights to intellectual freedom. In particular, Chomsky's scathing critiques of the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East have furnished a widely accepted intellectual inspiration for antiwar movements over nearly four decades.

The Essential Chomsky assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts over the past forty years. Here is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky's thought.

Foreword     vii
A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior     1
Preface to Aspects of the Theory of Syntax     31
Methodological Preliminaries     33
The Responsibility of Intellectuals     39
On Resistance     63
Language and Freedom     75
Notes on Anarchism     92
The Rule of Force in International Affairs     105
Watergate: A Skeptical View     134
The Remaking of History     141
Foreign Policy and the Intelligentsia     160
The United States and East Timor     187
The Origins of the "Special Relationship"     198
Planning for Global Hegemony     223
The View Beyond: Prospects for the Study of Mind     232
Containing the Enemy     257
Introduction to The Minimalist Program     277
New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind     285
Intentional Ignorance and Its Uses     300
A World Without War     325
Reflections on 9-11     341
Language and the Brain     347
United States-Israel-Palestine     368
Imperial Grand Strategy     373
Afterword to Failed States     403
Acknowledgments     415
Permissions     417
Notes     421
Select Bibliography of Works   Noam Chomsky     485
Index     491

Look this: 20 Common Problems or Indian Head Massage

Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental Justice

Author: Jace Weaver

Defending Mother Earth brings together important Native voices to address urgent issues of environmental devastation as they affect the indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. The essays document a range of ecological disasters, including the devastating effects of mining, water pollution, nuclear power facilities, and toxic waste dumps. In an expression of "environmental racism," such hazards are commonly located on or near Indian lands. Many of the authors included in Defending Mother Earth are engaged in struggles to resist these dangers. As their essays consistently demonstrate, these struggles are intimately tied to the assertion of Indian sovereignty and the affirmation of Native culture: the Earth is, indeed, Mother to these nations. In his concluding theological reflection, George Tinker argues that the affirmation of Indian spiritual values, especially the attitude toward the Earth, may hold out a key to the survival of the planet and all its peoples.

Publishers Weekly

This anthology of 11 essays is the result of an unusual conference of Native North American environmental activists held at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver in March 1995. It stands in stark contrast to other such collections, because it includes among its writers none of the more well-known non-Native American environmentalists. As such, it provides an enormously fascinating examination of the present environmental crisis from both academic and administrative perspectives from within the Native American community. Introduced by Russell Means, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, and edited by attorney Jace Weaver, this collection includes contributions from Margaret Sam-Cromarty, who fought the disastrous James Bay project in Canada; Phyllis Young, who fought the ESTI Coal Slurry Pipeline; and, Justine Smith, who opposes Exxon's massive Mole Lake project in Wisconsin. These authors write not only with passion but also with scholarly acumen and logic. This is an important and eloquent work that few books on ecology can match. (Oct.)

Movable Feast or Medicare for the Clueless

2009-02-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

Movable Feast

Author: Kenneth F Kipl

In the last twenty-five years alone, the range of fruits and vegetables, even grains, that is available at most local markets has changed dramatically. Over the last 10,000 years, that change is almost unimaginable. This groundbreaking new work, from the editor of the highly regarded Cambridge World History of Food, examines the exploding global palate. It begins with the transition from foraging to farming that got underway some 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, then examines subsequent transitions in Egypt, Africa south of the Sahara, China, southeast Asia, the Indus Valley Oceanic, Europe, and the Americas. It ends with chapters on genetically modified foods, the fast food industry, the nutritional ailments people have suffered from, famine, the obesity epidemic, and a look at the future on the food front. Food, at its most basic, fuels the human body. At its most refined, food has been elevated to a position of fine art. The path food has taken through history is a fairly straightforward one; the space which it occupies today could not be more fraught. This sweeping narrative covers both ends of the spectrum, reminding us to be grateful for and delighted in a grain of wheat, as well as making us aware of the many questions that remain unanswered about what lies ahead. Did you know. . .
- That beans were likely an agricultural mistake?
- That cheese making was originated in Iran over 6000 years ago?
- That pepper was once worth its weight in gold?
- That sugar is the world's best-selling food, surpassing even wheat?
- That Winston Churchill asserted, in 1942, that tea was more important to his troops than ammunition?
- That chili concarne is one of the earliest examples of food globalization?
- That, by 1880, virtually every major city in America had a Chinese restaurant?
- That white bread was once considered too nutritious?
Kenneth Kiple reveals these facts and more within A Movable Feast.

Publishers Weekly

Recycling much historical material from the magisterial Cambridge World History of Food(which the author co-edited), this slender volume distills 10,000 years of food history into just 300 pages. While the first work was notable for its rich multiplicity of voices and deeply informed scholarship, this one is a bit of a hash, owing to its author's insistence on squeezing a far-ranging narrative into the narrow framework of globalism. Far from being a new economic concept, the globalization of food, asserts Kiple, is as old as agriculture itself (globalization being murkily defined as "a process of homogenization whereby the cuisines of the world have been increasingly untied from regional food production, and one that promises to make the foods of the world available to everyone in the world"). The strongest material examines the spread of agriculture and its ramifications: it's a paradox of civilization that increased food production encourages population growth, which invariably creates food shortages and disease. That said, gastronomes will find scraps to nibble on here and there—who knew, for example, that the Egyptians trained their monkeys to harvest grapes? (June)

1. Last hunters, first farmers;
2. Building the barnyard;
3. Promiscuous plants of the northern fertile crescent;
4. Peripatetic plants of Eastern Asia;
5. Fecund fringes of the northern fertile crescent;
6. Consequences of the Neolithic;
7. Enterprise and empires;
8. Faith and foodstuffs;
9. Empires in the rubble of Rome;
10. Medieval progress and poverty;
11. Spain's New World, the Northern Hemisphere;
12. New world, new foods;
13. New foods in the Southern New World;
14. The Columbian exchange and the Old Worlds;
15. The Columbian exchange and the New Worlds;
16. Sugar and new beverages;
17. Kitchen Hispanization;
18. Producing plenty in paradise;
19. The frontiers of foreign foods;
20. Capitalism, colonialism, and cuisine;
21. Homemade food homogeneity;
22. Notions of nutrients and nutriments;
23. The perils of plenty;
24. The globalization of plenty;
25. Fast food, a hymn to cellulite;
26. Parlous plenty into the twenty-first century;
27. People and plenty in the twenty-first century.

New interesting book: Development Economics or Shooter

Medicare for the Clueless: The Complete Guide to Government Health Benefits

Author: Joan Harkins Conklin

For the more than 39 million people currently on Medicare and the million plus who join each year, navigating the murky rules and regulations of health care coverage can be a full-time job. Not anymore. For ten years, Joan Harkins Conklin has guided people through the Medicare maze, and in this straightforward, comprehensive manual, she'll show you how to sail through the Medicare bureaucracy to access the benefits you need and deserve. Getting doctor bills and hospital accounts paid quickly, making important decisions, knowing your rights, demanding refunds -- it's all here in the only reference that outlines the steps you and your family can take to optimize the program to your benefit. Written by an expert who fully understands the real-life difficulties in dealing with the health care system, Medicare for the Clueless debunks the myths, lays out the facts, and provides clear, efficient steps that put the power of Medicare in your own hands.

Strapped or Christianity Versus Fatalistic Religions in the War Against Poverty

2009-02-02T07:33:00.000-08:00

Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead

Author: Tamara Draut

For the 60 percent of people between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four who find themselves consistently behind the financial eight ball, STRAPPED offers a groundbreaking look at the new obstacle course facing young adults as they try to build careers, buy homes, and start families. As Tamara Draut explains, various economic and social trends over the last thirty years, as well as adverse government policies, have conspired to alter dramatically the process of becoming an adult. The exploding costs of higher education mean that young adults leave college and graduate school with near-crippling student loan debt. A deregulated and predatory financial industry means that they are trapped in debt at usurious interest rates and preyed on by a new breed of legal loan sharks. Depressed wages, rising costs, and inadequate health care increasingly mean that budding families often need two incomes to pay the bills. Soaring property values have made the traditional starter home unattainable. As a result, young adults are starting out their lives way behind; they are literally borrowing their way to adulthood.

Connecting the economic stagnation of today's young adults to broader social and cultural changes in America over the last three decades, STRAPPED will help jumpstart a national conversation about where the country is failing--and how we can make it right again.

Publishers Weekly

It's hard to believe: "Today's college grads are making less than the college grads of thirty years ago." In fact, men aged 25 to 34 with bachelor's degrees are making just $6,000 more than those with high school diplomas did in 1972. This is just one of the many shocking statistics uncovered by Draut, a think-tank adviser and media pundit, in this incisive and revealing look at why today's young adults find financial independence so difficult. With catchy terms such as "debt-for-diploma" and "paycheck paralysis," Draut shows why this age group's ability to accomplish the traditional adult markers of school, career and family is stagnating. Her presentation features the one-two punch of well-sourced data and a series of stories from a diverse group of interview subjects to prove her thesis that depressed wages, inflated educational costs, soaring credit card debt and skyrocketing health and child-care expenses present nearly insurmountable obstacles to young adults' success. While Draut's conclusions take conservative politicians to task, they are hardly polemical, and her analysis and solutions are refreshingly free of glib how-to advice. Her book should be a jarring wake-up call to both the generation affected most by the current economic reality and the policy makers facing the consequences for decades to come. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Student loans, credit card debt, low wages, and the rising cost of living expenses have created the "perfect storm" confronting young adults between the ages of 20 and 30. Draut, who directs the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, headquartered in New York, here paints a sobering picture of how the world has changed for the children of the baby boomer generation who, unlike their parents, are facing staggering amounts of debt. To cope, many are taking jobs they might not want, delaying starting families, or even living with their parents. How did this happen? Draut offers a chronology and carefully documents the causes of these circumstances. While she is cautiously hopeful in outlining various remedies-e.g., college education affordable for anyone who wants one-Draut is also realistic in assessing the lack of political courage required by Washington politicians to provide them. Thus, the outcome is doubtful. Although too many data at times overload her points, the author's thesis that "it is harder and more costly to become an adult" in America today is both inescapable and eloquent. This vital work should be read by anyone who cares about the future of this country. Highly recommended.-Richard Drezen, Washington Post New York Bureau Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

You're not the only one who can barely keep up with the rent, school loans and credit card debt: There's a whole generation out there in exactly the same position. According to Draut, director of the Economic Opportunity Program at liberal think tank Demos, a high proportion of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are caught in an economic crunch with no easy way out. First there's college, the "luxury-priced necessity" that shovels mounds of debt onto young adults before they've even had a chance to get into the job market-which mandates a college degree for anyone who wants to enter it at any semi-professional level. Following graduation comes a one-two punch: the dwindling number of steady, salaried jobs with benefits, combined with the punitive rates on deceptively easy-to-get credit cards. The result: even more debt. The author moves through each element of the crisis, from high-priced homes purchased with huge mortgages to non-subsidized childcare, and she tries to link these factors to young peoples' lack of interest in the news, and non-involvement in politics. Although Draut is a proud member of Generation X and never misses an opportunity to stick it to the Baby Boomers who, she charges, created the situation, she also takes her peers to task for their inattention: "While we weren't keeping tabs on the government, Congress decimated college financial aid, let the minimum wage fall to historic lows, and reengineered the tax code to tax income more than wealth." Alas, this is a rare instance of passionate, accessible prose in a text that more frequently resembles a dust-dry paper. Draut's think-tank day job at least gives her the background to come up with something mostanti-debt screeds lack: a specific plan to fix what's wrong.

Books about: Mental Health Outcome Evaluation or Measuring and Improving Organizational Productivity

Christianity Versus Fatalistic Religions in the War Against Poverty

Author: Udo Middelmann

Most literature and many aid efforts concerned with poverty relief and development function on mathematical assumptions. Those who have more should share with those who have less, thus creating equality. Some would add a moral component saying that those having more are morally wrong and must have gained their surplus from outright theft or unfair trade.

But on the side of the needy, religious and secular efforts see only a material problem. Both neglect the devastating power of bad ideas based in religion and social customs. Yet what anyone believes about the building blocks of life will have results; their ideas are like eye glasses that either distort or bring into focus an objective reality.

Development work must focus on developing peoples ideas. Cultural change must precede material changes.

Comeback or Japans Aggressive Legalism

2009-02-01T02:20:00.000-08:00

Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again

Author: David Frum

With a new Afterword on the results of the 2008 presidential race, an intensely controversial book that the Wall Street Journal says “should be required reading for all GOP candidates.”

David Frum was one of the first Republican insiders to warn the GOP of danger ahead in 2008. In this passionate, urgently readable book, Frum analyzes the conservative crisis—and offers new hope for conservatives in the years to come. On issues from healthcare to terrorism, the environment to abortion, the challenge of China and the problem of childhood obesity, Frum offers exciting new ideas to rejuvenate conservative politics.

Frum’s work has been hailed by Newt Gingrich and denounced by Rush Limbaugh. His ideas have been debated from the pages of The New Yorker to the conference table of the Republican Senate Policy Committee—and they will continue to shape the conservative debate in the long years to come.

Publishers Weekly

In his new book, Frum (The Right Man), former speechwriter to President Bush, offers a conservative blueprint for accommodating challenges central to the next half-century of American life. Drawing on his expert knowledge of domestic politics and foreign policy, Frum argues that Republicans need to evolve with the times in order to win American hearts, minds and elections. After staking out viably conservative positions on the country's most salient political battles such as health care, education, the economy, foreign policy, embryonic stem cell research, taxation and the like, Frum proposes a grand taxation strategy. In lieu of taxes that stifle investment and free enterprise, Frum's platform relies on consumption taxation. His approach aims to accommodate domestic spending obligations such as social security while remaining pro-growth. By aiming taxes at upper-class consumers, Frum takes a provocative, politically challenging stance. The book rebukes the president Frum once called the right man and sets a challenging new course of action for the GOP. (Dec. 31)

Kirkus Reviews

The primary reason for the Republican Party's recent election failures, argues a former Bush speechwriter, is that it has neglected to respond to changing demands. When voters began abandoning the GOP for the Democrats (who now outnumber Republicans three to two), writes Frum (The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, 2003, etc.), conservatives responded by retreating to "obsolete politics," engaging in pointless debates about "issues that are in fact settled." Instead of arguing with voters, he suggests, Republicans should figure out new ways to appeal to the married, middle-class, white, churchgoing Americans who are their natural base. Unfortunately, readers looking for such new ideas will be disappointed. Most of Frum's proposals have long been part of the Republican Party platform he accuses of alienating middle-class Americans: expansion of Bush's unpopular No Child Left Behind Act; abolition of all affirmative-action programs; drastic cuts in immigration; privatization of Social Security; elimination of all taxes on wealth and corporations, including capital-gains and estate taxes on the very wealthy. However, the book does feature one truly innovative proposal: a $50-per-ton carbon tax on those forms of energy that create the greatest environmental harm. Frum makes this proposal not because he respects environmentalists-at one point, he suggests that ecologically concerned voters are among the most "ignorant" in the country-but because he believes America's dependence on oil, including oil produced in America, threatens the nation's economic security. Environmentalist or not, the proposal is sure to cause a stir among Republicans, as much for its underlying premisethat dirty energy sources should be taxed in order to subsidize more-expensive clean energy as for its acknowledgment that concern for the environment is an issue Republicans can't afford to ignore. Lively writing and one intriguingly contrarian proposal salvage an otherwise standard-issue conservative polemic.

Interesting textbook: Teoria Financeira Intermediária

Japan's Aggressive Legalism: Law and Foreign Trade Politics Beyond the WTO

Author: Saadia M Pekkanen

The ways in which law has interacted with concrete interests to reshape Japan's foreign trade politics at the start of the twenty-first century can best be characterized as aggressive legalism. Central to this transformation have been the beneficiaries of this ever more aggressive legalism—Japan's trade-dominant industries with visible stakes in the international economic system. Today, thanks to painstaking and concerted efforts, Japan's aggressive legalism has shifted well beyond its origins in the WTO, and is now not confined to any one multilateral, regional, or bilateral forum. Nor is its thrust limited only to the issues covered in this book, namely, antidumping, safeguards, intellectual property, or investment concerns in FTA diplomacy. Its target is not only the United States, but also rapidly rising new Asian competitors like China; not only foreign governments, but also foreign sectors—even down to specific companies. In the shifting landscape of global and regional realities, aggressive legalism has emerged as the single most cohesive and unquestionably legitimate attempt by Japanese actors to structure favorable outcomes in international trade.

Republic of Fear or Formations of the Secular

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

Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Updated Edition)

Author: Kanan Makiya

First published in 1989, just before the Gulf War broke out, Republic of Fear was the only book that explained the motives of the Saddam Hussein regime in invading and annexing Kuwait. This edition, updated in 1998, has a substantial introduction focusing on the changes in Hussein's regime since the Gulf War.
In 1968 a coup d'état brought into power an extraordinary regime in Iraq, one that stood apart from other regimes in the Middle East. Between 1968 and 1980, this new regime, headed by the Arab Ba'th Socialist party, used ruthless repression and relentless organization to transform the way Iraqis think and react to political questions. In just twelve years, a party of a few thousand people grew to include nearly ten percent of the Iraqi population.
This book describes the experience of Ba'thism from 1968 to 1980 and analyzes the kind of political authority it engendered, culminating in the personality cult around Saddam Hussein. Fear, the author argues, is at the heart of Ba'thi politics and has become the cement for a genuine authority, however bizarre.
Examining Iraqi history in a search for clues to understanding contemporary political affairs, the author illustrates how the quality of Ba'thi pan-Arabism as an ideology, the centrality of the first experience of pan-Arabism in Iraq, and the interaction between the Ba'th and communist parties in Iraq from 1958 to 1968 were crucial in shaping the current regime.
Saddam Hussein's decision to launch all-out war against Iran in September 1980 marks the end of the first phase of this re-shaping of modern Iraqi politics. The Iraq-Iran war is a momentous event in its own right, but for Iraq, the author argues, the wardiverts dissent against the Ba'thi regime by focusing attention on the specter of an enemy beyond Iraq's borders, thus masking a hidden potential for even greater violence inside Iraq.

Books about: Americas Constitution or Imperial Tense

Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity

Author: Talal Asad

“A dark but brilliantly original work, Formations of the Secular is one of the most important books on religion and the modern in recent years.”—H-Net Reviews
“Formations of the Secular is also a difficult if stunningly eloquent book, a response both elusive and forthright to the many shelves of ‘books on terrorism’ which this country’s trade publishers are rushing into print.”—Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction: Thinking about Secularism	1
1	What Might an Anthropology of Secularism Look Like?	21
2	Thinking about Agency and Pain	67
3	Reflections on Cruelty and Torture	100
4	Redeeming the "Human" Through Human Rights	127
5	Muslims as a "Religious Minority" in Europe	159
6	Secularism, Nation-State, Religion	181
7	Reconfigurations of Law and Ethics in Colonial Egypt	205
	Index	257

The Long Road Home or Student Atlas of World Politics

2009-01-29T15:55:00.000-08:00

The Long Road Home: One Step at a Time: A Doonesbury Book

Author: G B Trudeau

Thousands of U.S. soldiers have suffered grievous wounds in Iraq, but only one of them is a Doonesbury character. This special collection chronicles seven months of cutting-edge cartooning, during which B.D.-and readers of the strip-got an up-close schooling in a kind of personal transformation no one seeks.

Deprived not only of leg but also his ubiquitous trademark helmet, B.D. survives first-response Baghdad triage, evacuation to Landstuhl's surgeon-rich environment, and visits by innumerable morale-boosting celebs, both red and blue in hue. He's awed in turn by morphine, take-no-guff nurses, his fellow amps, and his family, including the daughter who hand-delivers succor, one aspirin at a time.

Transferred stateside to Walter Reed's Ward 57, B.D. is inspired by the wisdom of physiatrists, warmed by the dedicated ministrations of real-life fellow-amp heroes like Jim the Milkshake Man, and dazzled by high-tech prostheses that cost more than luxury cars. He's annoyed by his own bouts with self-pity, by the bedside awkwardness of friends more comfortable regarding his stump from e-mail distance, and by Zonk's unwavering commitment to supplementing his care with organic meds.

As their journey continues, B.D. and Boopsie are cared for by Fisher House, a home-next-door-to-the-hospital for families whose lives revolve around therapy. B.D. finds himself painfully engaged in building his future, one sadistically difficult physical therapy session at a time. "To Lash, Helga, and the Marquis!" toast the band of differently limbed brethren, raising their glasses to their PT masters as they prepare for reentry into the ambulatory world.

From rebuilding tissue to rebuilding socialskills to rebuilding lives, B.D's inspiring, insightful, and darkly humorous story confirms that it can take a village, or at least a ward, to raise a soldier when he's gone down. "Thank you for getting blown up," offers one of B.D.'s visiting players. Replies the coach, "Just doing my job."

The New York Times - Kurt Andersen

The Long Road Home, given its absence of any explicit ideological line, reminded me why ''Doonesbury'' has managed to endure so long and to be so fine so much of the time. Trudeau is a great comic writer whose devotion to politics and capacity for moral outrage are apparently undiminished after 37 years, but he is a great comic writer first, with the intellectual honesty that implies … Garry Trudeau, who by all rights should be phoning it in by now, still takes his responsibilities to the strip and his audience seriously, and in service to them still takes large and interesting risks.

George Galuschak - KLIATT

B.D., the Doonesbury character who never takes off his helmet, is wounded in combat in Iraq, and his leg is amputated above the knee; The Long Road Home chronicles the stages of his rehabilitation and eventual return home. This graphic novel is pretty much apolitical, which is a relief, and instead focuses on B.D. and his family—Boopsie (wife), Sam (daughter) and Zonker (nanny). However one feels about Doonesbury (to me, it stopped being funny years ago), The Long Road Home is powerful stuff about a timely issue. Trudeau does a fine job of juxtaposing humor and seriousness; he doesn't preach or get sappy; and he is donating the proceeds from the book to a good cause: Fisher House, an organization that aids families of patients receiving medical care at military and VA medical centers. I also admire the fact that Trudeau is not afraid to let his characters age, change and even die. The Long Road Home contains the aftermath of one combat sequence, and is highly recommended for libraries with graphic novel collections. KLIATT Codes: JSA*—Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2005, Andrews McMeel, 93p. illus., Ages 12 to adult.

New interesting book: Last Call or If Its Not Food Dont Eat It

Student Atlas of World Politics

Author: John L Allen

The STUDENT ATLAS OF WORLD POLITICS is an attractive atlas of current affairs that reflects recent developments in political geography and international relations. The new Seventh Edition includes enlarged and detailed thematic maps. This collection of maps and data, with its emphasis on currency, is particularly useful for exploring the concept of geopolitics and the crucial relationships between geography and world politics.

Politics of Same Sex Marriage or International Business

2009-01-28T10:43:00.000-08:00

Politics of Same-Sex Marriage

Author: Craig A Rimmerman

Same-sex marriage emerged in 2004 as one of the hottest issues of the campaign season. But in a severe blow to gay rights advocates, all eleven states that had the issue on the ballot passed amendments banning the practice, and the subject soon dropped off the media’s radar. This pattern of waxing and waning in the public eye has characterized the debate over same-sex marriage since 1996 and the passing of the Defense of Marriage Act. Since then, court rulings and local legislatures have kept the issue alive in the political sphere, and conservatives and gay rights advocates have made the issue a key battlefield in the culture wars.

The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage brings together an esteemed list of
scholars to explore all facets of this heated issue, including the ideologies and strategies on both sides of the argument, the public’s response, the use of the issue in political campaigns, and how same-sex marriage fits into the broad context of policy cycles and windows of political opportunity. With comprehensive coverage from a variety of different approaches, this volume will be a vital sourcebook for activists, politicians, and scholars alike.

Books about: Twenty Years Crisis 1919 1939 or Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

International Business: Environments and Operations

Author: John Daniels

This classic bestseller discusses the differences faced in international environments, the overall strategies companies can take, and practical alternatives for operating abroad. Its abundance of colorful maps, strong engaging and opening cases, and classic and contemporary examples provide a balanced approach to all functions of business. More than 15 new cases have been added to this edition, all of which engage the reader with hot topical issues; these include Cran Chik, Luikoil, Cisco Systems, Johnson & Johnson, and Global Sofware Piracy. It has excellent coverage of Latin America, and reviews the latest institutional actions, market trends, and company activities. It provides an extensive background section, a comparative environmental frameworks section, a section on theories and institutions (trade and investment), a section on the world financial environment, business-government relationships, operations and tactical alternatives, and a section on managing business internationally. For readers involved in international business, whether they are employees, managers, or owners/CEOs of such corporations. Also an excellent resource for individuals seeking to expand their current businesses to the international market.

1	Globalization and international business	2
2	The cultural environments facing business	44
3	The political and legal environments facing business	86
4	The economic environment	118
5	Globalization and society	160
6	International trade and factor mobility theory	200
7	Governmental influence on trade	238
8	Cross-national cooperation and agreements	266
9	Global foreign exchange and capital market	304
10	The determination of exchange rates	340

The Chinese Economy or Geopolitics

2009-01-27T05:28:00.000-08:00

The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth

Author: Barry Naughton

This comprehensive overview of the modern Chinese economy by a noted expert on China's economic development offers a quality and breadth of coverage not found in any other English-language text. In The Chinese Economy, Barry Naughton provides both an engaging, broadly focused introduction to China's economy since 1949 and original insights based on his own extensive research. The book will be an essential resource for students, teachers, scholars, business people, and policymakers. It is suitable for classroom use for undergraduate or graduate courses.

After presenting background material on the pre-1949 economy and the industrialization, reform, and market transition that have taken place since, the book examines different aspects of the modern Chinese economy. It analyzes patterns of growth and development, including population growth and the one-child family policy; the rural economy, including agriculture and rural industrialization; industrial and technological development in urban areas; international trade and foreign investment; macroeconomic trends and cycles and the financial system; and the largely unaddressed problems of environmental quality and the sustainability of growth.

The text is notable also for placing China's economy in interesting comparative contexts, discussing it in relation to other transitional or developing economies and to such advanced industrial countries as the U.S. and Japan. It provides both a broad historical and macro perspective as well as a focused examination of the actual workings of China's complex and dynamic economic development. Interest in the Chinese economy will only grow as China becomes an increasingly importantplayer on the world's stage. This book will be the standard reference for understanding and teaching about the next economic superpower.

Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Klaus Dodds

In places such as Iraq or Lebanon, moving a few feet on either side of a territorial boundary can be a matter of life or death, dramatically highlighting the connections between geography and politics. This Very Short Introduction illuminates the concept of geopolitics, revealing how a country's location and size as well as its sovereignty and resources all affect how its people understand and interact with the wider world. Using wide-ranging examples, from historical maps to James Bond films and the rhetoric of political leaders like Churchill and George W. Bush, Klaus Dodds describes how people and places are inter-connected with each other, and how our geopolitical outlook molds our understanding of the world. He shows why it is vital that we understand how and why we divide the world into zones and territories--and how these divisions depend on your perspective. The book explains how terrorism, globalization, environmental degradation, and new technologies such as the internet are all challenging the geographical basis of global politics, and it sheds light on the history of terms such as "the iron curtain," "the third world," and "the axis of evil."

Gandhi or Chinas Economic Transformation

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

Gandhi

Author: Beatrice Tanaka

Without question Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. His principles of non-violence and passive resistance, his compassion, his steadfast determination in achieving political and social reform have influenced countless leaders and activists throughout the world. For this volume, editor and illustrator Beatrice Tanaka has culled Gandhi's inspirational text, either written or spoken, on a variety of subjects, including wealth, work, non-violence, civil disobedience, religion, love, and hope - all of which are as pertinent today, or perhaps more so, as the day they were written. Every spread includes not only Gandhi's words, but Beatrice Tanaka's striking black-and-white illustrations, which were created for this volume to complement Gandhi's visionary text.

China's Economic Transformation

Author: Gregory C Chow

In the last two and a half decades, reform in China has resulted in phenomenal economic growth for the world’s most populous country. In this second edition of the successful book, Gregory Chow uses insights gained from over twenty years of teaching and traveling, as well as his work with government officials and academics, to address the transformation, development, and functioning of China’s economy.
Chow combines historical-institutional and theoretical-quantitative approaches to provide a penetrating and comprehensive analysis of the factors that have contributed to China’s economic transformation. Introducing the reader to the inner workings of the Chinese economy and details the process of its transformation into a market economy, Chow observes the economics of institutional changes taking place, the role of China’s government, and the significance of the historic and cultural traditions of the country. Chow’s knowledge of what has happened and what is happening in China helps him identify the major causes of economic change and development.

	List of Figures and Tables
	Preface
	Introduction: The Transformation of China's Economy	1
Pt. I	Historical Background and General Survey	7
1	Economic Lessons from History	9
2	Experiments with Planning and Economic Disruptions	24
3	Economic Reform up to the Mid-1990s	46
4	Further Reform: Problems and Prospects	68
Pt. II	Analysis of the Macroeconomy	87
5	Economic Growth	89
6	Economic Fluctuations	105
7	Macroeconomic Policies	117
8	The Effects of Political Movements on the Macroeconomy	129
Pt. III	Topics in Economic Development	147
9	Consumption	149
10	Western Development and Environmental Policies	168
11	Population	181
12	Human Capital	194
Pt. IV	Analysis of Individual Sectors	217
13	The Banking and Financial System	219
14	Shanghai Stock Price Determination	237
15	The Behavior of State Enterprises	249
16	The Nonstate Sectors	268
17	Foreign Trade	281
18	Foreign Investment	304
Pt. V	Studies of Economic Institutions and Infrastructure	321
19	Use or Misuse of Assets	323
20	The Legal System and the Role of Government	338
21	The Education System and Policy	352
22	Taking Stock and Looking Ahead	367
	Conclusion: Lessons for the Study of Economic Transformation	386
	Index	394

The Cambridge Companion to Hobbess Leviathan or Defending Life

2009-01-24T18:56:00.000-08:00

The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's Leviathan

Author: Patricia Springborg

This Companion makes a new departure in Hobbes scholarship, addressing a philosopher whose impact was as great on Continental European theories of state and legal systems as it was at home. This volume is a systematic attempt to incorporate work from both the Anglophone and Continental traditions, bringing together newly commissioned work by scholars from ten different countries in a topic-by-topic sequence of essays that follows the structure of Leviathan, re-examining the relationship among Hobbes's physics, metaphysics, politics, psychology, and religion. Collectively they showcase important revisionist scholarship that re-examines both the context for Leviathan and its reception, demonstrating the degree to which Hobbes was indebted to the long tradition of European humanist thought. This Cambridge Companion shows that Hobbes's legacy was never lost and that he belongs to a tradition of reflection on political theory and governance that is still alive, both in Europe and in the diaspora.

Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice

Author: Francis J Beckwith

Defending Life is the most comprehensive defense of the prolife position on abortion ever published. It is sophisticated, but still accessible to the ordinary citizen. Without high-pitched rhetoric or appeals to religion, the author offers a careful and respectful case for why the prolife view of human life is correct. He responds to the strongest prochoice arguments found in law, science, philosophy, politics, and the media. He explains and critiques Roe v. Wade, and he explains why virtually all the popular prochoice arguments fail. There is simply nothing like this book.

Acknowledgments     vii
Introduction: Who and What Are We and Can We Know It?     xi
Moral Reasoning, Law, and Politics
Abortion and Moral Argument     3
The Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, and Abortion Law     18
Abortion, Liberalism, and State Neutrality     42
Assessing the Case for Abortion Choice and Against Human Inclusiveness
Science, the Unborn, and Abortion Methods     65
Popular Arguments: Pity, Tolerance, and Ad Hominem     93
The Nature of Humanness and Whether the Unborn Is a Moral Subject     130
Does It Really Matter Whether the Unborn Is a Moral Subject? The Case from Bodily Rights     172
Extending and Concluding the Argument
Cloning, Bioethics, and Reproductive Liberty     203
Conclusion: A Case for Human Inclusiveness     226
Notes     231
Selected Bibliography     287
Index     291

Wake Up Call or Introduction to International Disaster Management

2009-01-23T13:43:00.000-08:00

Wake-Up Call: The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow

Author: Kristen Breitweiser

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

Introduction to International Disaster Management

Author: Damon P Coppola

Written from a global perspective on risk, hazards, and disasters, Introduction to International Disaster Management provides practitioners, educators and students with a comprehensive overview of the players, processes and special issues involved in the management of large-scale natural and technological disasters. The book discusses special issues encountered in the management of international disasters, and explains the various private, non-governmental, national, and international agencies that assist in the preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery to national and regional events.

Concentrating on the four major phases of emergency management — mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery — Introduction to International Disaster Management deals with such timely topics as Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Asian tsunami, and SARS. It also serves as a reference to governmental and other agencies involved in international disaster management activities. This book is the first of its kind to take a global approach to the topic of international disaster management.

* Serves as the first comprehensive resource dealing with the issues of international disaster management
* Contains numerous case studies, examples of Best Practices in international disaster management, and a contact list of the governmental and nongovernmental agencies involved in international disaster management
* Provides a global perspective on risk, hazards, and disasters that is written both for students within disaster management programs and for professionals entering the field

Police Lab or Activists Beyond Borders

2009-01-22T08:30:00.000-08:00

Police Lab: How Forensic Science Tracks Down and Convicts Criminals

Author: David Owen

Is there such a thing as the perfect crime?

In 1979, US Army captain, Jeffrey MacDonald claimed that three "hippies" broke into his house and attacked him and stabbed his wife and daughters. Despite the Army Captain's careful attempts to conceal evidence, forensic scientists were able to prove that MacDonald himself was guilty. Police Lab shows how forensic scientists gather and analyze evidence, examine weapons and bodies and use DNA testing and other techniques to help solve crime. Twenty real-life case studies show forensic scientists in action and demonstrate the fascinating secrets of police labs.

Police Lab includes:

• analyzing physical evidence and weapons
• fraud and forgeries including handwriting analysis
• DNA testing and the future of forensic science
• "forensic facts" sidebars throughout the book explaining how even the smallest detail and shred of evidence can help solve crime
• 20 real-life case studies including: The World Trade Center bombing, O.J. Simpson trial, assassination of John F. Kennedy and the conviction of serial killer Ted Bundy
• more than 200 color photographs

School Library Journal

Gr 6-8-What with CSI one of the more popular shows around, forensic-science methods have made an entrance into many living rooms around the country, and there has been corresponding activity in the previously placid 363.25s. This addition to the genre discusses current methodology interspersed with actual forensic investigations into crimes as diverse as a brutal murder in 1889 to the causes of the gun turret explosion on the USS Iowa in 1989. Poison, strangulation, burning, drowning, shooting, and stabbing are some of the murderous methods explored in the readable text, as are such forensic tools as facial reconstruction, bite matching, ballistics, DNA screening, and the old standby, fingerprinting. Color photos abound, as do "Forensic Fact" and "Crime File" boxes. This title is on a comparable level with Andrea Campbell's more stolid Forensic Science (Chelsea, 1999) and Brian Lane's Crime & Detection (DK, 2000), and more difficult than Charlotte Foltz Jones's chattier Fingerprints and Talking Bones (Delacorte, 1997). Couple Owen's book with Mark P. Friedlander, Jr., and Terry M. Phillips's competent When Objects Talk (Lerner, 2001) and Donna M. Jackson's superb The Bone Detectives (Little, Brown, 1996) and put CSI on TiVo.-Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics

Author: Margaret E Keck

Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink examine a type of pressure group that has been largely ignored by political analysts: networks of activists that coalesce and operate across national frontiers. Their targets may be international organizations or the policies of particular states. Historical examples of such transborder alliances include anti-slavery and woman suffrage campaigns. In the past two decades, transnational activism has had a significant impact in human rights, especially in Latin America, and advocacy networks have strongly influenced environmental politics as well. The authors also examine the emergence of an international campaign around violence against women.

The conventions of the nation-state have shaped our contemporary understanding of the process and politics of social movements. Keck and Sikkink sketch for the first time the dynamics of emergence, strategies, and impact of activists from different nationalities working together on particular issues. This eagerly awaited work will alter the way scholars conceptualize the making of international society and the practice of international politics.

Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States or Fixing Hell

2009-01-21T03:18:00.000-08:00

Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States

Author: Kermit L Hall

The Supreme Court has continued to write constitutional history over the thirteen years since publication of the highly acclaimed first edition of The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court. Two new justices have joined the high court, more than 800 cases have been decided, and a good deal of new scholarship has appeared on many of the topics treated in the Companion. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist presided over the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, and the Court as a whole played a decisive and controversial role in the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. Under Rehnquists's leadership, a bare majority of the justices have rewritten significant areas of the law dealing with federalism, sovereign immunity, and the commerce power.
This new edition includes new entries on key cases and fully updated treatment of crucial areas of constitutional law, such as abortion, freedom of religion, school desegregation, freedom of speech, voting rights, military tribunals, and the rights of the accused. These developments make the second edition of this accessible and authoritative guide essential for judges, lawyers, academics, journalists, and anyone interested in the impact of the Court's decisions on American society.

Library Journal

This oversized, dense volume provides comprehensive coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court, exploring at great depth its history, cases, procedures, and more. Originally published 13 years ago, it has now been considerably updated and expanded, featuring 86 brand new articles and commentaries on 14 new cases. Of the existing articles, about 100 have been revised, among them the entries on impeachment and Justice O'Connor. Editor Hall, a well-regarded legal scholar and historian, has written over 20 books on the American legal and constitutional system, making him highly qualified to tackle such a complex subject in reference format. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This obviously impressive and highly needed collection of over 1000 entries on the Supreme Court is sure to become the standard in the field. Succeeding in their appointed task ``to humanize the high court,'' the editors have assembled an excellent cast of contributors--scholars and legal professionals--who have covered virtually every aspect of the Court's work and its all-important, often controversial role in American law and politics. Entries feature biographies of all the justices and other figures connected with the Court's histories. Other entries discuss the Court's most significant decisions, and chronological essays explore the Court's history and related topics like slavery and the civil rights movement. This fine volume is essential for any serious student of the Court; it belongs in every academic library in the country. Its organization is first-rate and its scope is all-encompassing. Highly recommended.-- Stephen K. Shaw, Northwest Nazarene Coll., Nampa, Id.

School Library Journal

Gr 10 Up-- An extremely thorough treatment of the subject, composed of brief defining entries and lengthy essays by almost 300 contributors, including lawyers, judges, scholars, and journalists, who were charged with the responsibility of making their presentations accessible to a general readership. Entries, arranged alphabetically, cover the internal operations and history of the Court; biographical information on all of the justices plus other relevant historical figures; definitions of basic legal and constitutional terminology; and the process of selecting, nominating, and confirming justices. More than 400 entries examine the Court's most significant decisions. All are signed; those of any length are followed by selective bibliographies of further reading. Every effort has been made to provide adequate cross referencing within the text and at the end of entries. Cases (with proper citation), persons, places, and institutions are indexed. This work will be of value not only to students of the Court and constitutional law, but also to those needing information (interpretive and/or historical) about the major socioeconomic issues of our day. Illustrations, primarily portraits and photographs of the justices, are of good quality and appropriately placed. This is a landmark publication, representing the highest standard of American scholarship. It is strongly recommended for reference collections serving high school students.-- Tess McKellen, Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn

BookList

This convenient and authoritative guide to the Supreme Court succeeds well in accomplishing its goal of providing a political, economic, cultural, and legal history of the Court and, by extension, of the very country itself. In more than 1,000 entries, about 300 contributors interpret the Court to the layperson, providing historical context, evaluation, and explanation of its decisions and procedures. The contributors explain the Court's influence on American life and vice versa. While the editors are all professors of law, browsing through the list of contributors reveals professors of history, political science, and government as well as librarians, justices, attorneys, and archivists Entries are of several types. Biographies treat every justice, every nominee, and many prominent lawyers who argued before the Court. Sheldon Novick's entry on Oliver Wendell Holmes is a masterpiece of interpretation, pointing out Holmes' chief theories and influences on the Court. Conceptual entries define ideas. The entry "Double Jeopardy", for example, provides historical context, relevant cases, and the importance of the idea to the court. Institutional entries treat such matters as the clerks of the justices and the office of chief justice. Entries on the physical surroundings of the Court highlight its location. Longer entries end with brief bibliographies of nontechnical literature The more than 400 entries on Court decisions include a "U.S. Reports" citation, date argued, date decided, and chief spokesman; each entry discusses the impact of the case on American life. Interpretive entries treat substantive topics such as abortion and procedural topics such as the insanity defense. "History of the Court" is a four-part chronological essay. Other historical entries treat such broad subjects as slavery and race and racism--again, always with the interpretive approach that explains the effect of the issue on the Court as well as the Court's effect on the issue. Vocabulary entries provide definitions for basic terms like "writ of mandamus" and such famous phrases as "separate but equal" The companion is thoroughly cross-referenced. Any topic that has its own entry is marked by an asterisk in the text. "See" and "see also" references are plentiful; for example, the entry "Flag Burning" leads to several important cases and to the entry "Symbolic Speech". In a project of this scope, there is always room to quibble. For example, "McCulloch v. Maryland" is fundamental to the discussion in "State Regulation of Commerce", but the entry for the case itself does not refer to the broader entry The companion concludes with case-name and topical indexes as well as extensive appendixes, including the succession of justices, vacancies, appointing presidents, Senate votes of confirmation and rejection, length of service of each justice, and trivia and traditions of the Court. About 100 black-and-white photographs add interest The companion is a unique work. It covers landmark cases and biographies--as do "Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court", second edition ["RBB" My 1 90], and Facts On File's "Reference Guide to the United States Supreme Court" (1986)--but is in a handy A-Z arrangement and lacks the long essays of those two books. It complements but does not replace them "The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States" belongs in every library, high school and up, and on the shelf of the practitioner and the teacher. It will prove to be the standard reference work on the Supreme Court.

Herbert Jacob

THE OXFORD COMPANION is evidently intended as a reference work for students, journalists and other interested readers who wish to learn quickly about one or another aspect of the United States Supreme Court. It is edited by three legal historians (Kermit L. Hall, James W. Ely, and William W. Wiecek) and one political scientist (Joel B. Grossman). It is arranged alphabet- ically by topic with signed articles by 296 (by my count) schol- ars. Some of the articles are several pages long; many occupy a column or less. A large number of the contributors are political scientists. THE OXFORD COMPANION is remarkably comprehensive if one approaches the subject from a legalistic perspective. Readers will find short biographies of all Supreme Court justices. The majority of articles are brief summaries of important cases from ABINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT V. SCHEMP to ZURCHER V. THE STANFORD DAILY. There are also articles on issues such as abortion (by Judith Baer), judicial review (by John Brigham), capital punish- ment (by Lief Carter), speedy trial (by Malcolm Feeley). Some of articles are quite substantial such as the four pieces on the history of the Court which cover 32 pages. Most are brief, encompassing less than a page. Doctrines are identified and discussed as for example, the Preferred Freedoms Doctrine (by C. Herman Pritchett), Exhaustion of Remedies (by Michael F. Sturley), and the Right to Counsel (by Susette M. Talarico). Broad concepts such as capitalism as well as topics such as the New Deal merit a lengthy articles. Important statutes are described separately in brief pieces. There are even articles on the architecture of the Supreme Court building, on Supreme Court buildings, on paintings in the Supreme Court, and on the sculp- ture in the building. Thus, THE OXFORD COMPANION is an attractive source to which to send students for an introductory understanding of particular aspects of the Supreme Court as an institution, of its proce- dures, of its decisions, and of its personnel. However, it suffers from several weaknesses that trouble this reviewer. One fault is that THE OXFORD COMPANION's references to addi- tional sources are spotty at best. Some articles cite several sources (though rarely more than a handful); many offer none at all. For instance, Lief Carter's article (approximately one page) on capital punishment mentions only Hugo Adam Bedau's THE DEATH PENALTY IN AMERICA (1987) and Errol Morris' film, "The Thin Blue Line" (1987). The articles by Lawrence Baum on reversals of Supreme Court decisions by constitutional amendment and by Congressional legislation have none at all. I presume that this was an editorial decision, but I judge it to be a bad one. Such skimpy references will not provide much assistance to students who are embarking on a term paper project. It encourages stu- dents to take the articles in the COMPANION as the last word on the subject. My second concern is that THE OXFORD COMPANION reflects little of the political science research that has occurred over the past half century. James Gibson's article on public opinion is one of the rare articles which are attentive to social science findings about the Court. Most striking is the absence of a focused discussion of interest groups and the Court even though many of the contributors to this body of knowledge write other articles in the COMPANION. Thus Stephen L. Wasby writes an article of less than a page on amicus briefs. Individual inter- est groups may be found such as the American Civil Liberties Union (in an article by Samuel Walker) and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (in brief articles by Mark V. Tushnet and Eric Rise) but students would have to know where to look and will not find much mention of the interest Page 42 follows: group literature. Of the ten articles that Harold J. Spaeth contributes, the closest he (or any other contributor) gets to scaling or judicial attitudes is his article on Justice Scalia. There is no article on voting blocs or the analysis of voting patterns although C. Herman Pritchett contributes eleven articles on individual cases. Stephen Wasby's one-column article on decision-making dynamics (p. 222) has no references. The impact of decisions (also written by Wasby) merits two columns but also has no references (pp. 422-23). The extraordinary influence of the Solicitor General in setting the Court's agenda is mentioned by Lincoln Caplan, but that influence is buried in much trivia about the SG's office. Thus, he contends that "special rela- tionship" between the SG and the Court is illustrated by the custom that when a justice dies, "the Solicitor General is asked to call a meeting of the Supreme Court bar to honor the justice." (p. 803) THE OXFORD COMPANION will prove puzzling to students whose courses introduce them to political analyses of the Court. The concepts which they learn in those courses are not readily found in this book. Although many political scientists contributed to it, readers will have difficulty ascertaining the discipline's contribution to our understanding of the Court. Is it really as small as this volume suggests? Finally, this reviewer is left to wonder why THE OXFORD COMPANION was not published on a CD-ROM. An electronic medium would make THE OXFORD COMPANION far simpler to search and incom- parably easier to update. This is a book destined for library reference rooms where CD-ROMs are now commonly found. I hope the publisher considers such a medium in the near future.

Go to: Microeconomia di attivit� bancarie

Fixing Hell: An Army Psychologist Confronts Abu Ghraib

Author: Larry C James

This is the story of Abu Ghraib that you haven't heard, told by the soldier sent by the Army to restore order and ensure that the abuses that took place there never happen again.

In April 2004, the world was shocked by the brutal pictures of beatings, dog attacks, sex acts, and the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. As the story broke, and the world began to learn about the extent of the horrors that occurred there, the U.S. Army dispatched Colonel Larry James to Abu Ghraib with an overwhelming assignment: to dissect this catastrophe, fix it, and prevent it from being repeated.

A veteran of deployments to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a nationally well-known and respected Army psychologist, Colonel James's expertise made him the one individual capable of taking on this enormous task. Through Colonel James's own experience on the ground, readers will see the tightrope military personnel must walk while fighting in the still new battlefield of the war on terror, the challenge of serving as both a doctor/healer and combatant soldier, and what can-and must-be done to ensure that interrogations are safe, moral, and effective.

At the same time, Colonel James also debunks many of the false stories and media myths surrounding the actions of American soldiers at both Abu Ghraib and GuantanamoBay, and he reveals shining examples of our men and women in uniform striving to serve with honor and integrity in the face of extreme hardship and danger.

An intense and insightful personal narrative, Fixing Hell shows us an essential perspective on Abu Ghraib that we've never seen before.

Foreword   Dr. Philip Zimbardo     xi
Entering Hell     1
Journey to Gitmo     7
An Infidel in Guantanamo     32
Long Flight to Hell     68
House of Strange Fathers     102
Choosing a Path     118
I'm in a Zoo     138
Is This the Day?     165
This Is My Dog     180
Fighting the Terrorist Mind     195
I'm Broken     202
Go to the Basement     229
Facing My Critics     240
Conclusions     257
Epilogue     263
U.S. Military Prisons: A Timeline     269
Acknowledgments     277
Index     279

The Birth of Biopolitics or The Grand Alliance

2009-01-20T00:26:00.000-08:00

The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-79

Author: Michel Foucault

this liberal governmentality. This involves describing the political rationality within which the specific problems of life and population were posed: "Studying liberalism as the general framework of biopolitics".

What are the specific features of the liberal art of government as they were outlined in the Eighteenth century? What crisis of governmentality characterises the present world and what revisions of liberal government has it given rise to? This is the diagnostic task addressed by Foucault's study of the two major twentieth century schools of neo-liberalism: German ordo-liberalism and the neo-liberalism of the Chicago School. In the years he taught at the Collège de France, this was Michel Foucault's sole foray into the field of contemporary history. This course thus raises questions of political philosophy and social policy that are at the heart of current debates about the role and status of neo-liberalism in twentieth century politics. A remarkable feature of these lectures is their discussion of contemporary economic theory and practice, culminating in an analysis of the model of homo oeconomicus.

Foucault's analysis also highlights the paradoxical role played by "society" in relation to government. "Society" is both that in the name of which government strives to limit itself, but it is also the target for permanent governmental intervention to produce, multiply, and guarantee the freedoms required by economic liberalism. Far from being opposed to the State, civil society is thus shown to be the correlate of a liberal technology of government.

Foreword: Francois Ewald and Alessandro Fontana     xiii
10 January 1979     1
Questions of method
Suppose universals do not exist
Summary of the previous year's lectures: the limited objective of the government of raison d'Etat (external politics) and unlimited objective of the police state (internal politics)
Law as principle of the external limitation of raison d'Etat
Perspective of this year's lectures: political economy as principle of the internal limitation of governmental reason
What is at stake in this research: the coupling of a set of practices and a regime of truth and the effects of its inscription in reality
What is liberalism?
17 January 1979     27
Liberalism and the implementation of a new art of government in the eighteenth century
Specific features of the liberal art of government (I): (1) The constitution of the market as site of the formation of truth and not just as domain of jurisdiction
Questions of method. The stakes of research undertaken around madness, the penal order, and sexuality: sketch of a history of "regimes of veridiction"
The nature of a political critique of knowledge (savoir)
(2) The problem of limiting the exercise of power by public authorities. Two types of solution: French juridical radicalism and English utilitarianism
The question of "utility" and limiting the exercise of power by public authorities
Comment on the status of heterogeneity in history: strategic against dialectical logic
The notion of "interest" as operator (operateur) of the new art of government
24 January 1979     51
Specific features of the liberal art of government (II): (3) The problem of European balance and international relations
Economic and political calculation in mercantilism. The principle of the freedom of the market according to the physiocrats and Adam Smith: birth of a new European model
Appearance of a governmental rationality extended to a world scale. Examples: the question of maritime law; the projects of perpetual peace in the eighteenth century
Principles of the new liberal art of government: a "governmental naturalism"; the production of freedom
The problem of liberal arbitration. Its instruments
the management of dangers and the implementation of mechanisms of security
disciplinary controls (Bentham's panopticism)
interventionist policies
The management of liberty and its crises
31 January 1979     75
Phobia of the state
Questions of method: sense and stakes of the bracketing off of a theory of the state in the analysis of mechanisms of power
Neo-liberal governmental practices: German liberalism from 1948 to 1962; American neo-liberalism
German neo-liberalism (I)
Its political-economic context
The scientific council brought together by Erhard in 1947. Its program: abolition of price controls and limitation of governmental interventions
The middle way defined by Erhard in 1948 between anarchy and the "termite state"
Its double meaning
respect for economic freedom as condition of the state's political representativity
the institution of economic freedom as basis for the formation of political sovereignty
Fundamental characteristic of contemporary German governmentality: economic freedom, the source of juridical legitimacy and political consensus
Economic growth, axis of a new historical consciousness enabling the break with the past
Rallying of Christian Democracy and the SPD to liberal politics
The principles of liberal government and the absence of a socialist governmental rationality
7 February 1979     101
German neo-liberalism (II)
Its problem: how can economic freedom both found and limit the state at the same time?
The neo-liberal theorists: W. Eucken, F. Bohm, A. Muller-Armack, F. von Hayek
Max Weber and the problem of the irrational rationality of capitalism. The answers of the Frankfurt School and the Freiburg School
Nazism as necessary field of adversity to the definition of the neo-liberal objective
The obstacles to liberal policy in Germany since the nineteenth century
the protectionist economy according to List
Bismarck's state socialism
the setting up of a planned economy during the First World War
Keynesian interventionism; (e) the economic policy of National Socialism
The neo-liberal critique of National Socialism on the basis of these different elements of German history
Theoretical consequences: extension of this critique to the New Deal and to the Beveridge plans; interventionism and the growth of the power of the state; massification and uniformization, effects of state control
The stake of neo-liberalism: its novelty in comparison with classical liberalism. The theory of pure competition
14 February 1979     129
German neo-liberalism (III)
Usefulness of historical analyses for the present
How is neo-liberalism distinguished from classical liberalism?
Its specific stake: how to model the global exercise of political power on the principles of a market economy, and the transformations that derive from this
The decoupling of the market economy and policies of laissez-faire
The Walter Lippmann colloquium (26 to 30 August 1938)
The problem of the style of governmental action. Three examples
the question of monopolies
the question of "conformable actions (actions conformes)." The bases of economic policy according to W. Eucken. Regulatory actions and organizing actions (actions ordonnatrices)
social policy. The ordoliberal critique of the welfare economy
Society as the point of application of governmental interventions. The "policy of society" (Gesellschaftspolitik)
First aspect of this policy: the formalization of society on the model of the enterprise
Enterprise society and judicial society; two faces of a single phenomenon
21 February 1979     159
Second aspect of the "policy of society" according to the neo-liberals: the problem of law in a society regulated according to the model of the competitive market economy
Return to the Walter Lippmann colloquium
Reflections based on a text by Louis Rougier
(1) The idea of a juridical-economic order. Reciprocity of relations between economic processes and institutional framework
Political stake: the problem of the survival of capitalism
Two complementary problems: the theory of competition and the historical and sociological analysis of capitalism
(2) The question of legal interventionism
Historical reminder: the Rule of law (l'Etat de droit) in the eighteenth century, in opposition to despotism and the police state. Re-elaboration of the notion in the nineteenth century: the question of arbitration between citizens and public authorities. The problem of administrative courts
The neo-liberal project: to introduce the principles of the Rule of law into the economic order
Rule of law and planning according to Hayek
(3) Growth of judicial demand
General conclusion: the specificity of the neo-liberal art of government in Germany. Ordoliberalism faced with the pessimism of Schumpeter
7 March 1979     185
General remarks: (1) The methodological scope of the analysis of micro-powers. (2) The inflationism of state phobia. Its links with ordoliberalism
Two theses on the totalitarian state and the decline of state governmentality in the twentieth century
Remarks on the spread of the German model, in France and in the United States
The German neo-liberal model and the French project of a "social market economy"
The French context of the transition to a neo-liberal economics
French social policy: the example of social security
The separation of the economic and the social according to Giscard d'Estaing
The project of a "negative tax" and its social and political stakes. "Relative" and "absolute" poverty. Abandonment of the policy of full employment
14 March 1979     215
American neo-liberalism (I). Its context
The difference between American and European neo-liberalism
American neo-liberalism as a global claim, utopian focus, and method of thought
Aspects of this neo-liberalism: (1) The theory of human capital. The two processes that it represents
an extension of economic analysis within its own domain: criticism of the classical analysis of labor in terms of the time factor
an extension of economic analysis to domains previously considered to be non-economic
The epistemological transformation produced by neo-liberal analysis: from the analysis of economic processes to the analysis of the internal rationality of human behavior
Work as economic conduct
Its division into capital, abilities, and income
The redefinition of homo oeconomicus as entrepreneur of himself
The notion of "human capital." Its constitutive elements
innate elements and the question of the improvement of genetic human capital
acquired elements and the problem of the formation of human capital (education, health, etcetera)
The interest of these analyses: resumption of the problem of social and economic innovation (Schumpeter). A new conception of the policy of growth
21 March 1979     239
American neo-liberalism (II)
The application of the economic grid to social phenomena
Return to the ordoliberal problematic: the ambiguities of the Gesellschaftspolitik. The generalization of the "enterprise" form in the social field. Economic policy and Vitalpolitik: a society for the market and against the market
The unlimited generalization of the economic form of the market in American neo-liberalism: principle of the intelligibility of individual behavior and critical principle of governmental interventions
Aspects of American neo-liberalism: (2) Delinquency and penal policy
Historical reminder: the problem of the reform of penal law at the end of the eighteenth century. Economic calculation and principle of legality. The parasitic invasion of the law by the norm in the nineteenth century and the birth of criminal anthropology
The neo-liberal analysis: (1) the definition of crime; (2) the description of the criminal subject as homo oeconomicus; (3) the status of the penalty as instrument of law "enforcement." The example of the drugs market
Consequences of this analysis
anthropological erasure of the criminal
putting the disciplinary model out of play
28 March 1979     267
The model of homo oeconomicus
Its generalization to every form of behavior in American neo-liberalism
Economic analysis and behavioral techniques
Homo oeconomicus as the basic element of the new governmental reason appeared in the eighteenth century
Elements for a history of the notion of homo oeconomicus before Walras and Pareto
The subject of interest in English empiricist philosophy (Hume)
The heterogeneity of the subject of interest and the legal subject: (1) The irreducible nature of interest in comparison with juridical will. (2) The contrasting logics of the market and the contract
Second innovation with regard to the juridical model: the economic subject's relationship with political power. Condorcet. Adam Smith's "invisible hand": invisibility of the link between the individual's pursuit of profit and the growth of collective wealth. The non-totalizable nature of the economic world. The sovereign's necessary ignorance
Political economy as critique of governmental reason: rejection of the possibility of an economic sovereign in its two, mercantilist and physiocratic, forms
Political economy as a science lateral to the art of government
4 April 1979     291
Elements for a history of the notion of homo oeconomicus (II)
Return to the problem of the limitation of sovereign power by economic activity
The emergence of a new field, the correlate of the liberal art of government: civil society
Homo oeconomicus and civil society: inseparable elements of liberal governmental technology
Analysis of the notion of "civil society": its evolution from Locke to Ferguson. Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1787). The four essential characteristics of civil society according to Ferguson: (1) it is an historical-natural constant; (2) it assures the spontaneous synthesis of individuals. Paradox of the economic bond; (3) it is a permanent matrix of political power; (4) it is the motor of history
Appearance of a new system of political thought
Theoretical consequences
the question of the relations between state and society. The German, English, and French problematics
the regulation of political power: from the wisdom of the prince to the rational calculations of the governed
General conclusion
Course Summary     317
Course Context     327
Index of Names     333
Index of Concepts and Notions     339

The Grand Alliance

Author: Winston S Churchill

The New York Public Library, in looking back on the greatest books of the past century, called Churchill's history "monumental" and said that the author "drew upon thousands of his own memoranda and documents in British archives, but in the end, this epic is structured on his personal experiences and expresses his courage and astonishing self-confidence."

Legal Considerations for Fire and Emergency Services or The Rise of American Democracy

2009-01-19T13:13:00.000-08:00

Legal Considerations for Fire and Emergency Services

Author: J Curtis Varon

Written by a lawyer who is also an experienced firefighter, this book examines the most challenging legal issues confronting firefighters and emergency service personnel today. Readers will explore such major legal concerns as fire service liability issues, the jurisdiction of OSHA over fire departments, the applicability of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, search and seizure, employment discrimination, residency requirements, sexual harassment, and more. Many of the most significant fires of the past century are also discussed, along with the cases and legal battles that ensued, so readers can make important connections between past events and the legal concepts facing emergency responders today.

Go to: Psychologie de le fait d'Investir

The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

Author: Sean Wilentz

A grand political history in a fresh new style of how the elitist young American republic became a rough-and-tumble democracy.

In this magisterial work, Sean Wilentz traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War. One of our finest writers of history, Wilentz brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew Jackson soon defined this role on the national level, while city democrats, Anti-Masons, fugitive slaves, and a host of others hewed their own local definitions. In these definitions Wilentz recovers the beginnings of a discontent—two starkly opposed democracies, one in the North and another in the South—and the wary balance that lasted until the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked its bloody resolution. 75 illustrations.

The New York Times Sunday Book Review - Gordon S. Wood

This enormous book by Sean Wilentz has been in the works a long time, and the results are nothing less than monumental. An old-fashioned account of the rise of democracy during the first half of the 19th century, it is a tour de force of historical compilation and construction that more than justifies all the articles and monographs on antebellum politics written by historians over the past several decades. Wilentz, the Dayton-Stockton professor of history at Princeton, has drawn extensively on these secondary sources and on his own research. He has brought it all together into a clear and generally readable narrative.

The New York Times - William Grimes

The Rise of American Democracy deserves to be read slowly. Mr. Wilentz takes on an enormous subject and articulates a grand theme, supported by a wealth of detailed scholarship. Inch by inch, he covers a broad expanse of ground, analyzing countless local struggles to widen the voting franchise, dislodge entrenched privilege and make good on the lofty promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Publishers Weekly

As the revolutionary fervor of the war for independence cooled, the new American republic, says Princeton historian Wilentz, might easily have hardened into rule by an aristocracy. Instead, the electoral franchise expanded and the democratic creed transformed every aspect of American society. At its least inspired, this ambitious study is a solid but unremarkable narrative of familiar episodes of electoral politics. But by viewing political history through the prism of democratization, Wilentz often discovers illuminating angles on his subject. His anti-elitist sympathies make for some lively interpretations, especially his defense of the Jacksonian revolt against the Bank of the United States. Wilentz unearths the roots of democratic radicalism in the campaigns for popular reform of state constitutions during the revolutionary and Jacksonian eras, and in the young nation's mess of factional and third-party enthusiasms. And he shows how the democratic ethos came to pervade civil society, most significantly in the Second Great Awakening, "a devotional upsurge... that can only be described as democratic." Wilentz's concluding section on the buildup to the Civil War, which he presents as a battle over the meaning of democracy between the South's "Master Race" localism and the egalitarian nationalism of Lincoln's Republicans, is a tour-de-force, a satisfying summation and validation of his analytical approach. 75 illus. not seen by PW. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Wilentz's account of the rise of American democracy is a triumph of scholarship and industry. Ranging with immense learning from the politics of New York State to the ethnic, class, and moral politics that shaped the emerging mass democracy, Wilentz has prepared a feast for all those drawn to this crucial but little-known era in the United States' past. In spite of its many virtues, the book unfortunately falls short of the kind of transformative work that would open this era to modern readers in the way that the Civil War and Revolutionary War periods have been opened. Eschewing some of the shibboleths of mid-twentieth-century historiography, Wilentz is driven by a sort of historical affirmative action to focus excessively on figures and movements of the period that share key values with the enlightened twenty-first-century academy (applications from antibank, antislavery, pro-labor feminists of color eagerly sought) while neglecting less enlightened figures who, alas, often had more influence at the time. The most striking failure of this kind has to do with Wilentz's near-total neglect of the rise of party organizations and political corruption and influence peddling. The net result is that Wilentz's picture, although finely detailed and masterfully drawn, bears less relationship than it should to the actual flow of American history. The future of the Democratic Party for more than a century would be a coalition of "master race" democracy Southerners and corrupt urban machines in the North, while the Republicans cemented a large popular base to Whig and Federalist economic ideas. Little in Wilentz's book prepares the reader for this anticlimactic result.

Library Journal

A central question of American history is how U.S. democratic institutions developed from the early republic to the beginning of the Civil War. In this informative, thoughtful, and thoroughgoing book, Wilentz (history & American studies, Princeton Univ.; Chants Democratic) demonstrates how multiple meanings that have attached to American ideas of democracy, both as a form of government and as a social construct, were altered in a complex fashion from the egalitarian Jeffersonian view to the populist Lincolnian perspective. He examines events and experiences, in particular the phenomenon of increased popular oversight of state and national government, that led to changing relationships between governors and the governed. Wilentz's themes include the political conflicts found in the development of representative democracy and the implications of the slavery controversy in battles concerning democratic reforms. His clear, insightful narrative conveys new interconnected understandings of main historical dimensions in our national life and will enhance citizens' understanding of the history of American political development. This superb analysis is highly recommended for public and academic libraries. -Steven Puro, St. Louis Univ. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Is the U.S. a democracy, or a republic? As Wilentz (History/Princeton Univ.) shows in this sprawling account, Americans debated the issue from the post-revolutionary era to the Civil War. In classical terms, a republic is governed "through the ministrations of the most worthy, enlightened men," whereas a democracy "dangerously handed power to the impassioned, unenlightened masses." One-time revolutionary firebrand Noah Webster so mistrusted the mob that, he thundered, had he foreseen popular rule, he would never have fought for freedom; even Thomas Jefferson, that most impassioned of democrats, allowed that given a free choice, the public chose wrongly more often than not. Democracy as such was an oxymoron, Wilentz observes, with power limited to white propertied men in the early days of the republic; the extension of rights throughout the 19th century to a wider polity was a matter of fierce fighting, and eventually war. The battle over just who was to be in charge began almost as soon as national freedom was achieved, an early test, Wilentz writes, being the Whisky Rebellion of 1794, fought by country people against an excise tax on distilled liquor imposed by urbanite arch-republican Alexander Hamilton. As the contest expanded, Wilentz notes, some of the differences between country and city people gave way to other divisions, and by the time Andrew Jackson ran for office in 1824, the gulf between North and South was beginning to widen (as, for a time, was that between those who believed in a cash economy and those who argued for the merits of credit). Abraham Lincoln, though deeply committed to democratic values, would insist on the supremacy of federal over states' rights, while thenominally democratic leaders of the South meant to exalt "the supreme political power of local elites." Wilentz shows that none of these battles was new when Lincoln took office; in some respects, they are still being fought today. Wilentz's book, though very long, wastes no words. A well-crafted, highly readable political history.

Breaking Blue or States and Power in Africa

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

Breaking Blue

Author: Timothy Egan

In Breaking Blue, Timothy Egan reports a true story of crime, corruption, and cover-up that reads like a thriller and offers a compelling look at the rough-and-tumble days of the Inland Northwest during the Depression. In Egan's vivid account, follow modern-day lawman Tony Bamonte -- graduate student, logger's son, and Vietnam veteran -- as his investigation plunges him back in time to black-market crime, extortion, and even murder. As he unfolds layer after layer of unsavory detail, Bamonte's determination leads him to the murder weapon -- missing half a century -- and to the ex-cop he's convinced is the murderer.

Publishers Weekly

In 1935, Spokane, Wash., was in the sixth year of the Great Depression. Unemployment was high. Civilian Conservation Corps workers were arriving in droves from the East for the Grand Coulee Dam project. Crime was rampant, and a series of creamery robberies had the town on edge. Then, on Sept. 4, the Pend Oreille County town marshal investigating these crimes was murdered. The mystery of George Conniff's death went unsolved until 1989, when Tony Bamonte, sheriff of Pend Oreille County and a graduate student, inadvertently uncovered information that generations of police had conspired to keep hidden. Egan ( The Good Rain ), Seattle bureau chief for the New York Times, lumbers occasionally, but his account of the reopened investigation generally resonates with regional color. Bamonte's investigation of the killing started as scholarly research, but stepped up when ``a convergence of conscience and coincidence'' suggested that the marshal had been shot by a cop protecting colleagues associated with the robberies. In a deathbed confession, a cop revealed that the Spokane police were involved in more than ``a conspiracy of small corruptions.'' Egan evocatively resurrects the scenes and raw insensitivities of '30s police life in the region, from Mother's Place, the diner where cops plotted their heists, to the Hotel de Gink, where transients stayed. (May)

Library Journal

In the course of preparing a master's thesis on law enforcement in Pend Oreille County, Washington, Sheriff Tony Bamonte discovered new evidence relating to the 1935 murder of Town Marshal George Conniff. Bamonte uncovered documents that implicated another police officer in the murder and also revealed a widespread cover-up by the Spokane Police Department. Already unpopular because of his confrontations with the lumber industry and his criticism of other law-enforcement agencies, Bamonte further angered the police community by disregarding the code that forbids going after a fellow police officer--``breaking blue.'' Tracking down witnesses who verified his suspicions, Bamonte turned his efforts to a search for the murder weapon, a gun thrown into a river more than 50 years earlier. The trail eventually led him to a final surprising discovery, which in turn was capped by an even greater irony. Egan, Seattle bureau chief of the New York Times , tells this remarkable story with a journalist's thoroughness and a novelist's ability to evoke place and character. The tale is rich in history and suspense and is recommended for all crime collections.--Ben Harrison, East Orange P.L., N.J.

Kirkus Reviews

Powerhouse story of an iconoclastic sheriff who cracked through 54 years of police coverups and solved the oldest open murder case in the country. Beginning with a brilliant evocation of 1935 Spokane and Pend Oreille County, Egan (Seattle bureau chief of The New York Times; The Good Rain, 1990) sets the scene for the killing of Spokane town marshal George Conniff, who had surprised men stealing butter from the local creamery. In the fifth year of the Depression, Spokane was full of reluctant hobos—many of them farmers who had fled the dust bowls of the Midwest—living, hungry for food and work, in a Hooverville by the local rail yards. The Spokane police regularly extorted sex, food, and money from these "vagrants" and collected also from the bootleggers, saloons, whorehouses, Chinese lotteries, and opium dens in the "Queen City of the Richest Empire in the Western Hemisphere." When a shortage doubled the price of butter, 6'3" rock-fisted Detective Clyde Ralstin and his partner profitably robbed dairies until the night that Conniff was killed. Ralstin was fingered for the killing by fellow detective Charles Sonnabend, but Sonnabend was ordered by the brass to stop investigating, and Ralstin disappeared. Fifty-four years later, in 1989, 47-year-old Sheriff Anthony Bamonte—former logger, Vietnam vet, Spokane cop—was writing his master's thesis on the ten previous sheriffs of Pend Oreille County and discovered a 1955 deathbed statement by Sonnabend about the coverup. Bamonte began to probe the case and, amazingly, men and women in their 80s and 90s who had known Ralstin came forward. Egan's narration of Bamonte's methodical stalking, of the ring of paranoia tighteningaround Ralstin (living in a tiny Montana town and knowing of the hunt), and of murder refusing to stay buried after 54 years—all make for compulsive, white-knuckle reading. Egan rises into the Most Wanted group of true-crime writers with this smoothly told, exciting account.

Book about: Cuba Cocina or Flavors of India

States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control

Author: Jeffrey Herbst

Theories of international relations, assumed to be universally applicable, have failed to explain the creation of states in Africa. There, the interaction of power and space is dramatically different from what occurred in Europe. In his groundbreaking book, Jeffrey Herbst places the African state-building process in a truly comparative perspective, examining the problem of state consolidation from the precolonial period, through the short but intense interlude of European colonialism, to the modern era of independent states. Herbst's bold contention--that the conditions now facing African state-builders existed long before European penetration of the continent--is sure to provoke controversy, for it runs counter to the prevailing assumption that colonialism changed everything.

In identifying how the African state-building process differs from the European experience, Herbst addresses the fundamental problem confronting African leaders: how to extend authority over sparsely settled lands. Indeed, efforts to exert control over vast, inhospitable territories of low population density and varied environmental and geographical zones have resulted in devastating wars, millions of refugees, and dysfunctional governments perpetrating destructive policies.

Detailing the precise political calculations of distinct African leaders, Herbst isolates the basic dynamics of African state development. In analyzing how these leaders have attempted to consolidate power, he is able to evaluate a variety of policy alternatives for dealing with the fundamental political challenges facing African states today.

What People Are Saying

Charles Tilly
Herbst's arguments will excite controversy among students of African history and politics, who have built up an extensive story about European transformations of African politics. His analysis raises doubts about how deeply those transformations went; rather, he maintains that durable conditions of topography and social structure have long constrained African state formation. Herbst offers an integrated account of state formation, transformation, and deformation in sub-Saharan Africa.

Introduction 3
PART ONE: THE CHALLENGE OF STATE-BUILDING IN AFRICA 9
One The Challenge of State-Building in Africa 11
PART TWO: THE CONSTRUCTION OF STATES IN AFRICA 33
Two Power and Space in Precolonial Africa 35
Three The Europeans and the African Problem 58
Four The Political Kingdom in Independent Africa 97
PART THREE: NATIONAL DESIGN AND DOMESTIC POLITICS 137
Five National Design and the Broadcasting of Power 139
Six Chiefs, States, and the Land 173
PART FOUR: BOUNDARIES AND POWER 199
Seven The Coin of the African Realm 201
Eight The Politics of Migration and Citizenship 227
PART FIVE: CONCLUSION 249
Nine The Past and the Future of State Power in Africa 251
Index 273

September 11 2001 or Global Filipino

2009-01-18T13:47:00.000-08:00

September 11, 2001

Author: The Poynter Institut

On Tuesday September 11, our world changed forever. The United States was attacked by an unknown terrorist organization. Word of this attack spread instantaneously around the world. Billions of people woke up on September 12 to find that the front page of their local newspaper was devoted to the tragedy of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Andrews McMeel Publishing in conjunction with The Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, is proud to announce the immediate publication of September 11, 2001.

This book will be a collection of 150 front pages of major newspapers throughout the world. The net profits earned by Andrews McMeel Publishing and the royalties to The Poynter Institute will be given to the September 11th Fund, administered by the United Way.

Go to: Les fondements de Direction D'investissement avec S&P se lient - dans la carte

Global Filipino: The Authorized Biography of Jose de Venecia

Author: Brett Decker

A Man of the People; A Man for the World

Jose de Venecia Jr., the five-time Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, has been for years a trail-blazer for the Filipino people, Asia, and the world.

In a political arena often plagued by uncertainty, intrigue, scandal, and poverty, he has fought relentlessly to cast off the Philippines unflattering moniker as the sick man of Asia and has sought to bring political, economic, and cultural influence to the dynamic, hard-working people of his homeland. A coalition builder, visionary, and achiever, de Venecia has:

* conceived and implemented the historic dollar-remittance program that keeps the Philippine economy afloat and has become a model for the third world
* provided breakthroughs in the peace accord between Christian and Muslim (MNLF) Filipinos and a second pact between government and military rebels
* pioneered Filipino projects in the Arab world that led to the employment of millions of Filipinos worldwide
* founded the Asian Parliamentary Assembly and the International Conference of Asian Political Parties to create the beginnings of an Asian Parliament and help achieve political and economic integration in Asia
* pushed the Christian-Muslim and Interfaith dialogues approved by the United Nations to help reduce politico-religious tensions and conflict in various parts of the world
* presented his debt for UN MDGs plan, endorsed by G-77 countries but pending at he G-7, to finance the battle against poverty amidst the global financial crisis

Despite all these advancements, Jose de Venecia is still not immune to the turbulence of Philippine politics. In February 2008, he was ousted from theSpeakership after refusing to ignore his conscience and opposed with his son, Joey III, a scandal-wracked government deal involving some very prominent members of the Philippine government.

Through it all, however, de Venecia has continued to serve the people of his great country. De Venecia continues the fight to improve the lives of his fellow countrymen. No matter the ultimate outcome of the current political tumult, what will long linger in the nation's collective consciousness is the recognition that he--more than any one else in his generation--ushered his people into the age of the Global Filipino.

What People Are Saying

Alexander Haig
Speaker de Venecia has played a key role in the Philippine economic resurgence."--(Alexander Haig, U.S. Secretary of State, 1981-1982)

Fidel V. Ramos
"In the pantheon of Philippine democracy which is the oldest in Asia, Speaker de Venecia will reside with those others from the past who spent their lives taking our government to a higher plain. This is because he has nurtured a vision of greatness that beholds a more prominent leadership role for the Philippines on the world stage. It is an inspiring vision, and how he arrived there is an interesting story. In this biography, Brett M. Decker reveals knowledge of the Philippines and devotion to his subject that are only surpassed by Joe de Venecia's own passion for a better Philippines. Global Filipino is a great read about a patriotic Filipino, and I endorse them both with enthusiasm."--(Fidel V. Ramos, President of the Philippines, 1992-1998)

"Jose de Venecia will certainly go down as one of the great Speakers in the history of the [Philippine] Congress. His many successful initiatives in the wider field of regional politics make him one of Asia's leading contemporary statesmen. This biography by Brett Decker is about a man who has constantly reinvented himself to meet the challenges of ever-changing times. Even more important, in the overall way the world works, Jose de Venecia is a good man-and that, I think, is a true testament to character in our rough-and-tumble profession of politics."--(Joseph Ejercito Estrada, President of the Philippines, 1998-2001)

Sustainability by Design or Barack Obama

2009-01-18T02:35:00.000-08:00

Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for Transforming Our Consumer Culture

Author: John R Ehrenfeld

The developed world, increasingly aware of “inconvenient truths” about global warming and sustainability, is turning its attention to possible remedies—eco-efficiency, sustainable development, and corporate social responsibility, among others. But such measures are mere Band-Aids, and they may actually do more harm than good, says John Ehrenfeld, a pioneer in the field of industrial ecology. In this deeply considered book, Ehrenfeld challenges conventional understandings of “solving” environmental problems and offers a radically new set of strategies to attain sustainability.

The book is founded upon this new definition: sustainability is the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on Earth forever. There are obstacles to this hopeful vision, however, and overcoming them will require us to transform our behavior, both individually and collectively. Ehrenfeld identifies problematic cultural attributes—such as the unending consumption that characterizes modern life—and outlines practical steps toward developing sustainability as a mindset. By focusing on the “being” mode of human existence rather than on the unsustainable “having” mode we cling to now, he asserts, a sustainable world is within our reach.

Read also Multiple Sclerosis or Aura Soma

Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest

Author: John K Wilson

Barack Obama is quickly becoming America's most popular politician, and his run for the presidency has brought huge crowds at home and an unprecedented wave of international attention as well. Much more than a biography, this book is a political tour of Obama's legislative experience as well as his ideas about race, religion, and politics. Political writer John K. Wilson, author of four previous books including a study of Newt Gingrich, explores the reaction Obama has received from the left, the right, and the media. As the first presidential candidate from Generation X, Obama has generated an exciting movement of young people to support his campaign as he defines a new kind of broadly popular progressive politics. As improbable as such a quest may be this fresh new candidate may be just the right one to bridge not only generations but ideologies that often divide. Amid all the hype surrounding Obama, this book provides the first in-depth look at what he believes, what he represents, and how he might transform American politics.

Library Journal

Regarding freshman U.S. Senator Barack Obama's quixotic (at least by conventional standards) quest for the Oval Office, these books fall between the usual extremes of unabashedly promotional and critical policy analysis. The more thought-provoking is Steele's (senior fellow, Hoover Inst., Stanford Univ.; White Guilt ), who argues that while he shares much in common with Obama, he is convinced that the senator cannot prevail in his race for the White House. In his brief polemic, almost a literary jazzlike riff on U.S. politics, race relations, and contemporary sociology, Steele examines the significance and implications of Obama's candidacy, concluding that while it is historical-even iconic-he cannot be elected because he is "a bound man." By this he means that although Obama seeks to transcend superficial racial identities, he is in a double-bind, suspended between black racial solidarity and white liberal guilt. Steele admires Obama yet questions his character and policy commitments.

If Steele is an Obama agnostic, Wilson (How the Left Can Win Arguments and Influence People ), who studied law under Obama at the University of Chicago, is an Obama disciple. While Obama's candidacy is perhaps the "improbable quest" that he himself declared it in his announcement speech in 2007, Wilson contends that Obama is the most electorally appealing progressive candidate, one who has truly sparked a grassroots movement. While Steele argues that race may be the downfall of Obama's campaign, Wilson counters that Obama, through his policy proposals and charisma, has transcended race in large measure, and, if elected in 2008, would help the country move further down the road towardwhat Martin Luther King called the "beloved community." With caucuses and primaries upon us, we soon will find out which of these books proves the more deeply insightful. Neither is fully persuasive but each is essential reading for anyone wishing to try to make more sense of contemporary American presidential politics and social policy. Highly recommended for all libraries.-Stephen K. Shaw, Northwest Nazarene Univ., Nampa, ID

Blowing up Russia or The Adams Women

2009-01-17T14:22:00.000-08:00

Blowing up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror

Author: Alexander Litvinenko

Blowing Up Russia contains the allegations of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko against his former spymasters in Moscow which led to his being murdered in London in November 2006. In the book he and historian Yuri Felshtinsky detail how since 1999 the Russian secret service has been hatching a plot to return to the terror that was the hallmark of the KGB. Vividly written and based on Litvinenko's 20 years of insider knowledge of Russian spy campaigns, Blowing Up Russia describes how the successor of the KGB fabricated terrorist attacks and launched a war. Writing about Litvinenko, the surviving co-author recounts how the banning of the book in Russia led to three earlier deaths.

Foreword     ix
Introduction     xxi
Abbreviations and Terms     xxix
The FSB Foments War in Chechnya     1
The Security Services Run Riot     21
Moscow Detectives Take on the FSB     31
Nikolai Patrushev: A Biographical Note     51
The FSB Fiasco in Ryazan     54
The FSB Resorts to Mass Terror: Buinaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk     100
The FSB Against the People     148
The FSB Sets Up Free-Lance Special Operations Groups     185
The FSB Organizes Contract Killings     196
The Secret Services and Abductions     207
The FSB: Reform or Dissolution?     221
In Place of a Conclusion: The FSB in Power     229
Epilogue     232
Appendices
Statement of the President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, February 11, 2002     241
Testimony of Senior Lieutenant Alexei Galkin, November 18, 1999     244
Abu Movsaev's Discussion with a Group of Foreign Journalists on the Testimony of Senior Lieutenant A. Galkin     248
Transcript of the Hearings of the Public Commission for the Investigation of the Apartment-House Bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk and the Ryazan Training Exercise in September 1999. Teleconference: Moscow-London, June 25, 2002     255
An Open Letter to the Commission for the Investigation of the Apartment-House Bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk by Krymshamkhalov and Batchaev     285
A. Litvinenko, Y. Felshtinsky: Letter to S. Kovalyov about A. Gochiyaev's Statement     288
Written Statement by A. Gochiyaev, April 24, 2002     293
Printout of Interview with A. Gochiyaev, August 20, 2002     296
Written Statement by A. Gochiyaev, February 2005     304
About the Authors     309
Index     311

Interesting textbook: Construcción de Paisaje Sostenible:un Guía de Edificio Verde Al aire libre

The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters

Author: Paul C Nagel

From his vast storehouse of knowledge about the Adams family. Nagelpulls out the feminine threads of that tapestry to write all about the Adams women, from Abigail to daughter Nabby, from Louisa Catherine Adams, wife of John Quincy, to Clover Adams, wife of Henry, with others making more than cameo appearances. They all lived exceptional, if not extraordinary, lives, in different ways.

Guests of the Ayatollah or Practicing Peace in Times of War

2009-01-17T04:10:00.000-08:00

Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam

Author: Mark Bowden

On November 4, 1979, a group of radical Islamist students, inspired by revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took fifty-two Americans hostage and kept nearly all of them captive 444 days.

The Iran hostage crisis was a watershed moment in American history. It was America's first showdown with Islamic fundamentalism, a confrontation at the forefront of American policy to this day. It was also a powerful dramatic story that captivated the American people, launched yellow-ribbon campaigns, made celebrities of the hostage's families, and crippled the reelection campaign of President Jimmy Carter.

Mark Bowden tells this sweeping story through the eyes of the hostages, their radical, naïve captors, the soldiers sent on the impossible mission to free them, and the diplomats working to end the crisis. Taking listeners from the Oval Office to the hostages' cells, Guests of the Ayatollah is a remarkably detailed, brilliantly re-created, and suspenseful account of a crisis that gripped and ultimately changed the world.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Mr. Bowden reaffirms his role as tough-guy Cassandra with this hefty replay of the hostage crisis in Iran that began in 1979. Invoking Philip Roth's great aphorism about hindsight ("the terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides"), Mr. Bowden returns to that pivotal 444-day ordeal and reconstructs it with painstaking care.

The Washington Post - Afshin Molavi

… Bowden skillfully evokes the era and the ordeal, putting a human face on the yellow ribbons. And he describes in detail President Carter's vacillations, the failed rescue attempts, and the charlatans and apologists who acted as private intermediaries to seek the hostages' release (and their own photo ops).

Publishers Weekly

Bowden, whose Black Hawk Down won him a National Book Award nomination, turns his sights to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The audio abridgment is generally smooth, though it's often difficult to keep the cast of characters straight: 66 original hostages, dozens of Iranian captors and untold numbers of diplomats, bureaucrats and family members. On audio, such a dizzying array of stories and backstories can become confusing. Bowden is a capable and competent narrator; while there are no tour de force performances here, the reading is solid and consistent, with no annoying vocal tics or other distractions. The real bonus of the audio over the print version is the final disc, which contains several visual enhancements: a PDF map of the embassy compound; a map of Iran, with markings not only for cities but also the landing site of the ill-fated 1980 rescue mission; and, most impressively, almost nine minutes of footage from the Discovery Channel's four-part documentary Guests of the Ayatollah, featuring compelling interviews with surviving members of the rescue team. Simultaneous release with the Atlantic Monthly hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 17). (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

According to his publisher, Bowden (Black Hawk Down) took five years to write this book. It wasn't long enough. His account of the Iran Hostage Crisis is overwritten, sloppy in detail, and seemingly endless. He begins with prose not unlike that of the pulp novels that Garrison Keillor's "Guy Noir" satirizes, and by the time his writing becomes less turgid the reader realizes with horror that there still remains an arduous 500-page slog ahead. Bowden faults the media for failing to explain Iranian hatred of America, but beyond the briefest description of the 1953 CIA-backed coup, he does no better-unlike David Harris in his excellent The Crisis: The President, The Prophet, and the Shah-1979 and the Coming of Militant Islam, a lucid and comprehensive exploration of the tensions in Iran. Already, there is a shelf of books on this topic, many by insiders such as the American charg , the leader of the failed rescue mission, and President Carter's chief of staff. The need for another book is unclear. Though it is a quarter-century old, Robert D. McFadden's No Hiding Place: The New York Times Inside Report on the Hostage Crisis is concise, readable, and far better. Not recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/06.]-Michael O. Eshleman, Kings Mills, OH Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A riveting account of the 444-day Iran hostage crisis of 1979-81. Bowden's (Road Work, 2004, etc.) contention that the capture of the U.S. embassy in Tehran was "the first battle in America's war against militant Islam" needs qualification, for America had been battling by proxy for years. Still, it was the first direct assault on Americans in strength. Those who undertook it viewed the Cold War superpowers as equally evil-surprisingly, the so-called "Muslim Students Following the Imam's Line" had first planned to take over the Soviet embassy in Tehran-and wanted to guide their nation, freshly rid of the much-hated Shah and now governed by a conservative Islamic theocracy, away from Western modernism and toward some recapitulation of the medieval golden age. Led by an inner circle called The Brethren, the militants who stormed the embassy on Nov. 4, 1979, initially planned to stay for three days and broadcast their grievances; once it became apparent that the Ayatollah Khomeini's government was not going to eject them-and the attack, it seems, took most of the mullahs by surprise, too-they stayed on. Using the same you-are-there point of view as he did in Black Hawk Down (1999), Bowden introduces figures on both sides of the struggle: American staffers who revered Persian culture and spoke the language fluently; humorless bureaucrats; gung-ho Marine guards and hardcore Delta Force types; Islamic ideologues convinced-and not without cause-that all Americans in Iran worked for the CIA; real-life students who, after a year of hostage-keeping, came to regard the enterprise as a mistake and drifted away; and, least likable of all, the Tokyo Rose-like Iranian interpreter who to this day insistson the justice of her actions and of the Islamist cause. It's a big book not to put down, but Bowden's latest will tempt readers to keep turning the pages. Altogether excellent-and its revelations of back-channel diplomatic dealings are newsworthy. First printing of 200,000; $150,000 ad/promo

Practicing Peace in Times of War

Author: Pema Chodron

With war and violence flaring all over the world, many of us are left feeling vulnerable and utterly helpless. In this book Pema Chödrön draws on Buddhist teachings to explore the origins of aggression, hatred, and war, explaining that they lie nowhere but within our own hearts and minds. She goes on to explain that the way in which we as individuals respond to challenges in our everyday lives can either perpetuate a culture of violence or create a new culture of compassion.

"War and peace begin in the hearts of individuals," declares Pema Chödrön at the opening of this inspiring and accessible book. She goes on to offer practical techniques any of us can use to work for peace in our own lives, at the level of our habits of thought and action. It's never too late, she tells us, to look within and discover a new way of living and transform not only our personal lives but our whole world.

The Great Turning or Into the Kill Zone

2009-01-16T14:57:00.000-08:00

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community

Author: David C Korten

* Sweeping survey of world history offering a new understanding of the key challenge of our time
* Offers a positive message of hope for a sustainable and just future and a practical strategy for getting there

In The Great Turning, David Korten argues that "Empire," the organization of society through hierarchy and violence has always resulted in misery for the many and fortune for the few, but now it threatens the very future of humanity as Empire has become unsustainable and destructive.

Korten traces the roots of Empire and charts the evolution of its instruments of control, from absolute monarchies to the multinational institutions of the global economy. He describes efforts to develop democratic alternatives to Empire, such as the founding of the United States and shows how elitists with an imperial agenda have undermined the "American experiment."

Empire is not inevitable, and we can turn away from it. Korten draws on evidence from evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, and religious teachings to show that a life-centered, egalitarian, sustainable, democratic "Earth Community" is possible.

Acknowledgments     ix
The Great Turning     3
Prologue: In Search of the Possible     5
Choosing Our Future     25
The Choice     27
The Possibility     41
The Imperative     57
The Opportunity     74
Sorrows of Empire     91
When God Was a Woman     93
Ancient Empire     109
Modern Empire     126
Athenian Experiment     142
America, the Unfinished Project     157
Inauspicious Beginning     159
People Power Rebellion     171
Empire's Victory     181
Struggle for Justice     201
Wake-Up Call     217
Prisons of the Mind     237
The Great Turning     251
Beyond Strict Father versus Aging Clock     253
Creation's Epic Journey     267
Joys of Earth Community     281
Stories for a New Era     302
Birthing Earth Community     313
Leading from Below     315
Building a Political Majority     327
Liberating Creative Potential     341
Change the Story, Change the Future     354
Notes     361
Index     380
About the Author     401

Into the Kill Zone: A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force

Author: David Klinger

What's it like to have the legal sanction to shoot and kill? This compelling and often startling book answers this, and many other questions about the oft-times violent world inhabited by our nation's police officers. Written by a cop-turned university professor who interviewed scores of officers who have shot people in the course of their duties, Into the Kill Zone presents firsthand accounts of the role that deadly force plays in American police work. This brilliantly written book tells how novice officers are trained to think about and use the power they have over life and death, explains how cops live with the awesome responsibility that comes from the barrels of their guns, reports how officers often hold their fire when they clearly could have shot, presents hair-raising accounts of what it's like to be involved in shoot-outs, and details how shooting someone affects officers who pull the trigger. From academy training to post-shooting reactions, this book tells the compelling story of the role that extreme violence plays in the lives of America's cops.

State of War or Man the State and War

2009-01-16T04:45:00.000-08:00

State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration

Author: James Risen

With relentless media coverage, breathtaking events, and extraordinary congressional and independent investigations, it is hard to believe that we still might not know some of the most significant facts about the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet beneath the surface events of the Bush presidency lies a secret history -- a series of hidden events that makes a mockery of current debate.

This hidden history involves domestic spying, abuses of power, and outrageous operations. It includes a CIA that became caught in a political cross fire that it could not withstand, and what it did to respond. It includes a Defense Department that made its own foreign policy, even against the wishes of the commander in chief. It features a president who created a sphere of deniability in which his top aides were briefed on matters of the utmost sensitivity -- but the president was carefully kept in ignorance. State of War reveals this hidden history for the first time, including scandals that will redefine the Bush presidency.

James Risen has covered national security for The New York Times for years. Based on extraordinary sources from top to bottom in Washington and around the world, drawn from dozens of interviews with key figures in the national security community, this book exposes an explosive chain of events:

Contrary to law, and with little oversight, the National Security Administration has been engaged in a massive domestic spying program.
On such sensitive issues as the use of torture, the administration created a zone of deniability: the president's top advisors were briefed, but the president himself was not.
The UnitedStates actually gave nuclear-bomb designs to Iran.
The CIA had overwhelming evidence that Iraq had no nuclear weapons programs during the run-up to the Iraq war. They kept that information to themselves and didn't tell the president.
While the United States has refused to lift a finger, Afghanistan has become a narco-state, supplying 87 percent of the heroin sold on the global market.

These are just a few of the stories told in State of War. Beyond these shocking specifics, Risen describes troubling patterns: Truth-seekers within the CIA were fired or ignored. Long-standing rules were trampled. Assassination squads were trained; war crimes were proposed. Yet for all the aggressiveness of America's spies, a blind eye was turned toward crucial links between al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia, among other sensitive topics.

Not since the revelations of CIA and FBI abuses in the 1970s have so many scandals in the intelligence community come to light. More broadly, Risen's secret history shows how power really works in George W. Bush's presidency.

The New York Times - James Bamford

While Mr. Risen's revelations about the N.S.A. take up only a chapter in State of War, they are the dramatic high point in an illuminating and disturbing book focusing on the Bush administration's use - and perhaps misuse - of power over the past four years. It is a record, Mr. Risen says, that has even caused protests by Mr. Bush's father, former President George H. W. Bush. Mr. Risen writes of a conversation between the two in 2003 in which the current president "angrily hung up the telephone." … obtaining details on an eavesdropping program as secret as the one discussed in State of War is a monumental job of reporting - especially when it is later confirmed by the president himself.

The New York Times Book Review - Walter Isaacson

This explosive little book opens with a scene that is at once amazing and yet not surprising: President Bush angrily hanging up the phone on his father, who "was disturbed that his son was allowing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a cadre of neoconservative ideologues to exert broad influence over foreign policy." The colorful anecdote is symptomatic of State of War. It is riveting, anonymously sourced and feels slightly overdramatized, but it has the odious smell of truth.

The New Yorker

Last month, the author, a Times reporter, broke, with his colleague Eric Lichtblau, the story of President Bush’s authorization of warrantless domestic wiretapping by the N.S.A., in apparent defiance of Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This account doesn’t go much beyond what has been in the Times—indeed, follow-ups have overtaken it—but Risen offers a useful perspective on what the C.I.A. has been doing since September 11th, and some devastating summary judgments. In the Bush years, Risen writes, “no other institution failed in its mission as completely.” George Tenet, the director, pandered to Bush and to Donald Rumsfeld; the agency passed on weapons intelligence that many knew was bad; the abuse of prisoners became accepted. But the main leadership failure Risen sees is that of the President, who, he writes, got from the C.I.A. no more than what he asked for.

Foreign Affairs

Risen has written a short and at times disjointed book packed with startling stories, a number of which appear to be true. It reflects the view that the intelligence community's mission was undermined by Bill Clinton's indifference, a readiness to sacrifice deep research to superficial reportage, a failure to acquire reliable agents in key countries, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet's desire to stay too close to the Bush administration, and, finally, the collapse of standards and safeguards in the readiness to facilitate torture and domestic spying. Risen provides new examples of the shoddiness of the analytic work on Iraq and its interaction with the administration's erroneous rationale and botched occupation. There is also some intriguing material on Iran and Saudi Arabia, the veracity of which is hard to determine. This is the sort of book that focuses on the "secret history" without bothering to explain the known history that would provide context, and Risen is so enamored with anonymous sources from the intelligence community that he does not acknowledge those who have already written well on these topics or consider how their evidence fits with his.

Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis

Author: Kenneth N Waltz

What are the causes of war? To answer this question, Professor Waltz examines the ideas of major thinkers throughout the history of Western civilization. He explores works both by classic political philosophers, such as St. Augustine, Hobbes, Kant, and Rousseau, and by modern psychologists and anthropologists to discover ideas intended to explain war among states and related prescriptions for peace.

Foreign

[A] thoughtful inquiry into the views of classical political theory on the nature and causes of war.

Foreign Affairs

In this thoughtful inquiry into the views of classical political theory on the nature and causes of war, Professor Waltz follows three principal themes or images: war as a consequence of the nature and behavior of man, as an outcome of their internal organization of states, and as a product of international anarchy.

American Political Science Review

It is fortunate that Waltz is not merely a qualified political theorist but also an able student of international politics.

American Political Science Review

It is fortunate that Waltz is not merely a qualified political theorist but also an able student of international politics with a command of the contemporary literature and of the raw data on the subject. He is thus able intellectually to analyze the contributions of the political philosophers and to assess their relevance and adequacy for understanding the real world of international politics.

Booknews

<:st>Reprint of the 1959 original, cited in , with a new four page preface. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Imperial Hubris or Who Let the Dogs In

2009-01-14T07:29:00.000-08:00

Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror

Author: Michael Scheuer

When Imperial Hubris first came out in 2004, the greatest danger for Americans confronting the Islamist threat was to believe-at the urging of U.S. leaders-that Muslims attack us for what we are and what we think rather than for what we do. The now-classic showed that a growing segment of the Islamic world strenuously disapproves of specific U.S. policies and their attendant military, political, and economic implications and demonstrated that they will go to any length, not to destroy our secular, democratic way of life, but to deter what they view as specific attacks on their lands, their communities, and their religion. Imperial Hubris remains a must read for an in-depth look at Al Qaeda and the War on Terror.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Imperial Hubris, the scalding new book by a current Central Intelligence Agency officer — who was able to publish the book on the condition that his real name not be revealed — is an assessment of America's war on terror that is bound to provoke large heapings of controversy, on both the right and the left, among hardliners on Iraq and critics of the administration alike. Readers will doubtless contest some or many of the things Anonymous has to say, but he pulls few punches in this book and gives us a fascinating window on America's war with Al Qaeda — at least as framed by one senior analyst, who seems to have put all bureaucratic niceties aside.

The Washington Post - Richard A. Clarke

For those Americans who had begun to doubt whether the Central Intelligence Agency could produce good analysis, Imperial Hubris clearly demonstrates otherwise. It is a powerful, persuasive analysis of the terrorist threat and the Bush administration's failed efforts to fight it. The CIA carefully vetted the book to ensure that no "sources and methods" were exposed, but the anonymous author -- a current CIA official -- draws effectively on the years he's spent carefully studying detailed intelligence reports from several U.S. and many foreign spy agencies. His criticism is damning.

Publishers Weekly

It's unclear how, in an age when even office workers must sign confidentiality agreements, an alleged CIA Middle Eastern specialist has gotten permission to publish a sprawling, erudite book on the origins and present state of the "war on terror." His main point is that Arab antagonism to the West (and even non-fundamentalist Arab regimes' winking at terrorism) has its root in real grievances that have gone unaddressed by U.S. measures. The actions of the Saudis, and their U.S. supporters, come in for some hard criticism, as does the elevation of Northern Alliance warlords to de facto governors of Afghanistan. The author makes some challenging remarks regarding Israel ("Surely there can be no other historical example of a faraway, theocracy-in-all-but-name of only six million people that ultimately controls the extent and even the occurrence of an important portion of political discourse and national security debate in a country of 270-plus million people that prides itself on religious toleration, separation of church and state, and freedom of speech") while playing down the extent to which the Taliban itself was a corrupt theocratic regime. But his annotated compendia of battles and skirmishes won and lost by the U.S. and al-Qaeda are gripping, and his engagement with his subject has made him a pundit-in-demand. (Aug.) Forecast: This is more a book to shake up policy wonks with facts on the ground than for the general public, but it has already created a stir inside the Beltway and beyond. The book is the author's second; Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam and the Future of America was mostly ignored, but this time around, the Primary Colors approach (necessary to protect the author's identity) has led to much TV and print exposure (with voice and features disguised); expect media-based sales. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Interesting book: Portable Reiki or What Should I Feed My Kids

Who Let the Dogs In?: Incredible Political Animals I Have Known

Author: Molly Ivins

The dazzling, inimitable Molly Ivins is back, with her own personal Hall of Fame of America's most amazing and outlandish politicians -- the wicked, the wise, the witty, and the witless -- drawn from more than twenty years of reporting on the folks who attempt to run our government (in some cases, into the ground).

Who Let the Dogs In? takes us on a wild ride through two decades of political life, from Ronald Reagan, through Big George and Bill Clinton, to our current top dog, known to Ivins readers simply as Dubya. But those are just a few of the political animals who are honored and skewered for our amusement. Ivins also writes hilariously, perceptively, and at times witheringly of John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, H. Ross Perot, Tom DeLay, Ann Richards, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, and the current governor of Texas, who is known as Rick "Goodhair" Perry.

Following close on the heels of her phenomenally successful Bushwhacked and containing an up-to-the-minute Introduction for the campaign season, Who Let the Dogs In? is political writing at its best.

The Washington Post - Edwin M. Yoder, Jr.

Some readers of her pungent prose may be distracted by an occasional unladylike locution, but behind the cornpone pose lurks a keen intelligence, a deadly wit and, not least, a passion for factual reporting.

Publishers Weekly

Two decades of Ivins's smart, acerbic political commentary have been harvested for this highly entertaining collection, which includes a new introduction addressing what she calls our country's current "state of open corruptness and intellectual rot." Though a self-described liberal, Ivins is not inflexibly tendentious. Rather, she is a tonic against the mean-spirited pundits found on both sides. She criticizes the Bush administration plenty, but she also reserves some of her sting for Clinton and Kerry. Ivins's delivery is wonderful. Her crisp yet throaty Texan voice is firm and authoritative, but at the same time inviting and homey, and the twinkle in her eye is aurally palpable through the pluck and elfish spunk in her voice. Those who are wary of picking up this audiobook because it's abridged should think again. There's no question that Ivins (Bushwacked, etc.) is a great oral, as well as literary, entertainer, just as there's no denying her genuine concern over the country's current political situation. "Having fun while fighting for freedom," she says, "is one of my life causes." Simultaneous release with the Random hardcover (Forecasts, July 12). (July)n Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Territory Authority Rights or Torture

2009-01-13T19:56:00.000-08:00

Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages

Author: Saskia Sassen

Where does the nation-state end and globalization begin? In Territory, Authority, Rights, one of the world's leading authorities on globalization shows how the national state made today's global era possible. Saskia Sassen argues that even while globalization is best understood as "denationalization," it continues to be shaped, channeled, and enabled by institutions and networks originally developed with nations in mind, such as the rule of law and respect for private authority. This process of state making produced some of the capabilities enabling the global era. The difference is that these capabilities have become part of new organizing logics: actors other than nation-states deploy them for new purposes. Sassen builds her case by examining how three components of any society in any age--territory, authority, and rights--have changed in themselves and in their interrelationships across three major historical "assemblages": the medieval, the national, and the global.

The book consists of three parts. The first, "Assembling the National," traces the emergence of territoriality in the Middle Ages and considers monarchical divinity as a precursor to sovereign secular authority. The second part, "Disassembling the National," analyzes economic, legal, technological, and political conditions and projects that are shaping new organizing logics. The third part, "Assemblages of a Global Digital Age," examines particular intersections of the new digital technologies with territory, authority, and rights.

Sweeping in scope, rich in detail, and highly readable, Territory, Authority, Rights is a definitive new statement on globalization that will resonatethroughout the social sciences.

1	Introduction	1
2	Territory, authority, and rights in the framing of the national	31
3	Assembling national political economies centered on imperial geographies	74
4	The tipping point : toward new organizing logics	148
5	Denationalized state agendas and privatize norm-making	222
6	Foundational subjects for political membership : today's changed relation to the national state	277
7	Digital networks, state authority, and politics	328
8	Assembling mixed spatial and temporal orders : elements for a theorization	378
9	Conclusion	401

Book review: UNIX Network Programming or Digital Filmmaking Handbook

Torture

Author: Edward Peters

"Torture has ceased to exist," Victor Hugo claimed, with some justification, in 1874. Yet more than a century later, torture is used routinely in one out of every three countries. This book is about torture in Western society from earliest times to the present.

A landmark study since its original publication a decade ago, Torture is now available in an expanded and updated paperback edition. Included for the first time is a broad and disturbing selection of documents charting the historical practice of torture from the ancient Romans to the Khmer Rouge.

"Torture goes beyond the solemn declaration of evil's banality. It offers an explanation of how institutional characteristics--even more strongly than personal ones like sadism or psychosis--produce that evil. It contributes to our understanding--if we dare call it that--of how creatures who begin by crying for their mothers can graduate to bashing in heads."
--Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer

"A masterful analytical history of torture's emergence in Roman law, its insertion into the medieval law of proof, its gradual abolition after 1750, and its dreadful recrudescence in modern times. The book is an exemplary application of historical scholarship to an issue where emotions tend to run ahead of reason."
--Michael Ignatieff, Times Literary Supplement

Edward Peters is Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include The Shadow King, The Magician, the Witch, and the Law, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, Inquisition, and, with Alan C. Kors, Witchcraft in Europe, 1100-1700: A Documentary History, all available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Leviathan or Swim against the Current

2009-01-13T09:43:00.000-08:00

Leviathan

Author: Thomas Hobbes

After the publication of his masterpiece of political theory, Leviathan, Or the Matter, and Power of Commonwealth Ecclesiastic and Civil, in 1651, opponents charged Thomas Hobbes with atheism and banned and burned his books. The English Parliament, in a search for scapegoats, even claimed that the theories found in Leviathan were a likely cause of the Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666.

For the modern reader, though, Hobbes is more recognized for his popular belief that humanity's natural condition is a state of perpetual war, with life being "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Despite frequent challenges by other philosophers, Leviathan's secular theory of absolutism no longer stands out as particularly objectionable. In the description of the organization of states, moreover, we see Hobbes as strikingly current in his use of concepts that we still employ today, including the ideas of natural law, natural rights, and the social contract. Based on this work, one could even argue that Hobbes created English-language philosophy, insofar as Leviathan was the first great philosophical work written in English and one whose impact continues to the present day.

About the Author:
Thomas Hobbes was born on Good Friday in 1588. Despite growing up in an impoverished clerical family, he was precociously intelligent and completed a classical education at Oxford. He decided not to follow in his father's footsteps, though, and instead became a tutor within an aristocratic family. When these royalist political connections and a number of personal writings in support of monarchical authority got Hobbes centrally involved in the turmoil of the English Civil War, he feared for his safety and fled to France in 1640. It was while in exile in France that he wrote Leviathan, the work that cemented Hobbes' philosophical reputation as the pre-eminent modern theorist of secular absolutism.

Part 1	Of Man
1	Of Sense	3
2	Of Imagination	4
3	Of the Consequence or Train of Imaginations	8
4	Of Speech	12
5	Of Reason and Science	18
6	Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions Commonly Called the Passions; and the Speeches by which They Are Expressed	23
7	Of the Ends or Resolutions of Discourse	30
8	Of the Vertues, Commonly Called Intellectual, and Their Contrary Defects	32
9	Of the Severall Subjects of Knowledge	41
10	Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour, and Worthinesse	43
11	Of the Difference of Manners	49
12	Of Religion	54
13	Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery	63
14	Of the First and Second Naturall Lawes and of Contract	66
15	Of Other Laws of Nature	74
16	Of Persons, Authors, and Things Personated	83
Part 2	Of Common-Wealth
17	Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a Common-wealth	87
18	Of the Rights of Soveraignes by Institution	90
19	Of Severall Kinds of Common-wealth by Institution; and of Succession to the Soveraign Power	96
20	Of Dominion Parternall and Despoticall	104
21	Of the Liberty of Subjects	110
22	Of Systems Subject, Politicall, and Private	117
23	Of the Publique Ministers of Soveraign Power	126
24	Of the Nutrition, and Procreation of a Common-wealth	130
25	Of Counsell	134
26	Of Civill Lawes	140
27	Of Crimes, Excuses, and Extenuations	154
28	Of Punishments, and Rewards	164
29	Of Those Things that Weaken, or Tend to the Dissolution of a Common-wealth	170
30	Of the Office of the Soveraign Representative	178
31	Of the Kingdome of God by Nature	189

Look this: Intermediate Accounting Solving Intermediate Accounting Problems Using Lotus 1 2 3 and Excel for Windows or Disconnected

Swim against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow

Author: Jim Hightower

Pssssst! Bookstore browsers!

Don't look around, but the corporate and political powers that be want you to put this book down, right now. It definitely is NOT on their approved list.

Swim against the Current is one of those books that the power elites don't like seeing in stores, much less in your hands—not merely because it challenges their established order, but especially because our book reveals paths that folks like you can use to escape their rigid, hierarchical structures and discover a bit more satisfaction in life.

They prefer that you pick up one of those escapist novels over there across the store, rather than finding out that the greatest escape of all can be from stultifying conventional wisdom. We Americans are constantly harassed into thinking that we can't break the mold that those in charge have made for us. But as a friend of ours puts it: "Those who say it can't be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."

It's the uplifting stories of mavericks that we tell here. They've broken free of the corporate tentacles, free of business-as-usual politics, free of top-down elites. They're figuring out new ways to do commerce, ways to create political channels that empower grassroots Americans, and ways to live their lives.

As these folks show, resistance is not futile . . . it's fertile. Join the fun! Happy reading!

Bold Spirit or Girl Soldier

2009-01-12T20:30:00.000-08:00

Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America

Author: Linda Lawrence Hunt

Helga Estby and her daughter Clara left Spokane, Washington, in April 1896 to walk to New York City on a $10,000 challenge. The money was needed to prevent foreclosure of their mortgage, hopefully saving the family homestead.

Helga was a Norwegian immigrant who married young, bore nine children, and endured fruitless years on the harsh Minnesota prairie before moving West. She and her husband Ole settled in the little Washington farm town of Rockford, only to be wiped out by the nationwide depression of 1893.

Lured by an offer from a mysterious sponsor, Helga was promised funds if she and her daughter walked unaided and unfinanced all the way to New York City. The women "tramped" the railroad lines through Boise, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Omaha before reaching roads and "civilization" in the Midwest. They walked on through Chicago, Pennsylvania, and finally reached New York. On the arduous journey they faced extreme cold and heat, hunger and exposure, and even shot a man in the leg in self-defense. They met with mayors, governors, and other notables, such as, President-elect McKinley on his porch in Ohio.

On Christmas Eve, 1896, the New York World reported their arrival in New York City. What followed was an American tragedy.

Books about: Daily Soup Cookbook or Healthy Mexican Cooking

Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda's Children

Author: Faith J H McDonnell

For several decades a brutal army of rebels has been raiding villages in northern Uganda, kidnapping children and turning them into soldiers or wives of commanders. More than 30,000 children have been abducted over the last twenty years and forced to commit unspeakable crimes.
Grace Akallo was one of these. Her story, which is the story of many Ugandan children, recounts her terrifying experience. This unforgettable book--with historical background and insights from Faith McDonnell, one of the clearest voices in the church today calling for freedom and justice--will inspire readers around the world to take notice, pray, and work to end this tragedy.

Presidential Travel or When Things Fell Apart

2009-01-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

Presidential Travel: The Journey from George Washington to George W. Bush

Author: Richard J Ellis

In office less than half a year, President George Washington undertook an arduous month-long tour of New England to promote his new government and to dispel fears of monarchy. More than two hundred years later, American presidents still regularly traverse the country to advance their political goals and demonstrate their connection to the people.

In this first book-length study of the history of presidential travel, Richard Ellis explores how travel has reflected and shaped the changing relationship between American presidents and the American people. Tracing the evolution of the president from First Citizen to First Celebrity, he spins a lively narrative that details what happens when our leaders hit the road to meet the people.

Presidents, Ellis shows, have long placed travel at the service of politics: Rutherford "the Rover" Hayes visited thirty states and six territories and was the first president to reach the Pacific, while William Howard Taft logged an average of 30,000 rail miles a year. Unearthing previously untold stories of our peripatetic presidents, Ellis also reveals when the public started paying for presidential travel, why nineteenth-century presidents never left the country, and why earlier presidents—such as Andrew Jackson, once punched in the nose on a riverboat—journeyed without protection.

Ellis marks the fine line between accessibility and safety, from John Quincy Adams skinny-dipping in the Potomac to George W. clearing brush in Crawford. Particularly important, Ellis notes, is the advent of air travel. While presidents now travel more widely, they have paradoxically become more remote from the people, as Air Force One flies over townsthrough which presidential trains once rumbled to rousing cheers. Designed to close the gap between president and people, travel now dramatizes the distance that separates the president from the people and reinforces the image of a regal presidency.

As entertaining as it is informative, Ellis's book is a sprightly account that takes readers along on presidential jaunts through the years as our leaders press flesh and kiss babies, ride carriages and trains, plot strategies on board ships and planes, and try to connect with the citizens they represent.

Melissa Johnson - Library Journal

In his latest work, Ellis (politics, Willamette Univ.; Presidential Lightning Rods: The Politics of Blame Avoidance), who has written several books dealing with U.S. politics and political history, rightfully notes that it is unusual that something as important as presidential travel has not been more thoroughly covered; indeed, this is one of the few monographs dedicated to the topic (see also Bob Wither's The President Travels by Train: Politics and Pullmans). The book brings together disparate facts relating to the presidency, including the debate on appropriating government funds for travel and how the Secret Service came to be in charge of protecting the President, as well as the evolving image of the President himself, from veritable clerk of Congress to embodiment of a regal presidency. Ellis captures the essence of Congressional debates on domestic and international presidential travel over the years and outlines some of the partisan rhetoric, from Federalist to the present. Though the writing is at times tediously repetitious, this monograph provides an important look into an underexplored area of American political history and is overall a valuable addition to the collections of academic libraries.

What People Are Saying

Alan Schroeder
Succeeds not only as a history of presidential travel, but also as an inquiry into the complex relationship between American citizens and their chief executive. Original, insightful, and brimming with colorful detail. (Alan Schroeder, author of Celebrity-in-Chief)

James A. Morone
A superb tour of presidential travel and its deeper meanings. Ellis finds a fresh way to see presidents, power, and the American people. The fascinating historical detail adds up to a sober reflection of lost republican ideals. Wise, lively, elegant, fun, and vexing. (James A. Morone, author of Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History)

Fred I. Greenstein
A fascinating and eminently readable work that provides a distinctive perspective on American social and political development. (Fred I. Greenstein, author of The Presidential Difference)

Alan Schroeder

Succeeds not only as a history of presidential travel, but also as an inquiry into the complex relationship between American citizens and their chief executive. Original, insightful, and brimming with colorful detail. (Alan Schroeder, author of Celebrity-in-Chief)

Fred I. Greenstein

A fascinating and eminently readable work that provides a distinctive perspective on American social and political development. (Fred I. Greenstein, author of The Presidential Difference)

James A. Morone

A superb tour of presidential travel and its deeper meanings. Ellis finds a fresh way to see presidents, power, and the American people. The fascinating historical detail adds up to a sober reflection of lost republican ideals. Wise, lively, elegant, fun, and vexing. (James A. Morone, author of Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History)

Interesting book: How to Conduct Surveys or Grant and Sherman

When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa

Author: Robert H Bates

In the later decades of the 20th century, Africa plunged into political chaos. States failed, governments became predators, and citizens took up arms. In When Things Fell Apart, Robert H. Bates advances an explanation of state failure in Africa. In so doing, he not only plumbs the depths of the continent's late-century tragedy, but also the logic of political order and the foundations of the state. This book covers a wide range of territory by drawing on materials from Rwanda, Sudan, Liberia, and Congo. Written to be accessible to the general reader, it is nonetheless a must-read for scholars and policy makers concerned with political conflict and state failure.

Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction
Introduction     3
From Fable to Fact     15
Sowing the Seeds
Political Legacies     33
Policy Choices     55
Subnational Tensions     75
Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart     97
Conclusion     129
Appendix
Cross-National Regressions     143
Bibliography     175
Index     187

Tragedy of Great Power Politics or American Diplomacy

2009-01-11T16:23:00.000-08:00

Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Author: John J Mearsheimer

A decade after the end of the Cold War, both policy makers and academics foresee a new era of peace and prosperity, an era when democracy, open trade, and mutual trust will join hands to banish war from the globe. With insight worthy of The Prince, John Mearsheimer exposes the truth behind this idyllic illusion: in a world where no international authority reigns above states, great powers invariably seek to gain power at each other's expense and to establish themselves as the dominant state.

Choice

This is the definitive work on offensive realism.

Barry R. Posen

A superb book....Mearsheimer has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the behavior of great powers.

Publishers Weekly

The central tenet of the political theory called "offensive realism" is that each state seeks to ensure its survival by maximizing its share of world power. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, sets out to explain, defend and validate offensive realism as the only theory to account for how states actually behave. He proceeds by laying out the theory and its assumptions, then extensively tests the theory against the historical record since the Age of Napoleon. He finds plenty of evidence of what the theory predicts that states seek regional dominance through military strength. Further, whenever a condition of "unbalanced multipolarity" exists (i.e., when three or more states compete in a region, and one of them has the potential to dominate the others), the likelihood of war rises dramatically. If history validates offensive realism, then the theory should yield predictions about the future of world politics and the chances of renewed global conflict. Here Mearsheimer ventures into controversial terrain. Far from seeing the end of the Cold War as ushering in an age of peace and cooperation, the author believes the next 20 years have a high potential for war. China emerges as the most destabilizing force, and the author urges the U.S. to do all it can to retard China's economic growth. Since offensive realism is an academic movement, readers will expect some jargon ("buckpassing," "hegemon"), but the terms are defined and the language is accessible. This book will appeal to all devotees of political science, and especially to partisans of the "tough-minded" (in William James's sense) approach to history. Maps. (Oct.) Copyright 2001 Cahners BusinessInformation.

Library Journal

Mearsheimer (political science, Univ. of Chicago), an articulate spokesman for the realist school of international politics, here serves up a theory dubbed "offensive realism." Because of the anarchic structure of the international system, he contends, the great powers compete perpetually to become the "hegemon," or dominant state in the world and thus to obtain that elusive quantity called security. Theories of the "democratic peace" have no place in this gloomy world, and the internal makeup of a state has little bearing on its international behavior. Readers of an idealist bent will be distressed to discover that America's grand endeavors of the 20th century the world wars and the Cold War sprang not from altruism but from amoral calculations of power. And the future will be no different: China and the United States are fated to become adversaries as Chinese power waxes, regardless of whether the Asian behemoth evolves in an authoritarian or a more benign direction. One of the finest works of the realist school, this belongs in all academic collections. James R. Holmes, Ph.D. candidate, Fletcher Sch. of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts Univ., Medford, MA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Freelance journalist Mearsheimer (Political Science/Univ. of Chicago) argues that powerful states obey rules centuries old, rules that he believes should prescribe as well as predict a state's behavior. Mearsheimer calls his theory "offensive realism." Since there is no pervasive and powerful global government (the UN is a pale, frail imitation of one), states have obeyed-and should obey-a simple imperative: survival. In this deeply conservative, Darwinian view of the world, the states most likely to survive are those that can both achieve regional hegemony (as the US has done) and prevent other states from doing so anywhere else. (Mearsheimer argues that there has never been, and likely never will be, a global hegemon.) He asserts that there are two kinds of power: latent (population, wealth) and military. And the best kind of military force is a huge, well-equipped, well-trained army. Naval and air forces are at best supplementary and cannot on their own win a war (Nelson's massive victory at Trafalgar, for example, antedated Waterloo by ten years). Mearsheimer points out repeatedly what he calls "the stopping power of water"-the notion that the US and the UK, for example, are relatively safe because they are protected by sizable bodies of water. And because he believes China is now the principal threat to the US, he declares we should attempt to slow the Chinese economy (and thus retard its military capability) rather than invite it into the family of nations. To validate his theses, he examines every major-power conflict since the Napoleonic era-slighting only the effect of prominent individuals (Napoleon, Hitler-were France and Germany just waiting for them?). Mearsheimer has donean astonishing amount of research for this provocative, important study (there are 130 pages of endnotes) and tosses into the trash-bin of history any effete Enlightenment notions about the potential perfectibility of our species. Our nations, he concludes, are like ourselves: territorial, feral, canine, vulpine. A seminal book: controversial, scholarly, compelling-and ultimately frightening. (9 maps, 24 tables)

Look this: Encyclopedia of Heart Diseases or The Absmart Fitness Plan

American Diplomacy (Expanded Edition)

Author: George F Kennan

Drawing on his diplomatic experience and expertise, George F. Kennan offers an informed, plain-spoken appraisal of United States foreign policy. His evaluations of diplomatic history and international relations cut to the heart of policy issues much debated today.
This expanded edition retains the lectures and essays first published in 1951 as American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 and adds two lectures delivered in 1984 as well as a new preface by the author. In these additional pieces, Kennan explains how some of his ideas have changed over the years. He confronts the events and topics that have come to occupy American opinion in the last thirty years, including the development and significance of the Cold War, the escalation of the nuclear arms race, and the American involvement in Vietnam.
"A book about foreign policy by a man who really knows something about foreign policy."—James Reston,New York Times Book Review
"These celebrated lectures, delivered at the University of Chicago in 1950, were for many years the most widely read account of American diplomacy in the first half of the twentieth century. . . . The second edition of the work contains two lectures from 1984 that reconsider the themes of American Diplomacy"—Foreign Affairs, Significant Books of the Last 75 Years.

Foreword, 1985
Foreword
Part I
Charles R. Walgreen Foundation Lectures
I. The War with Spain
II. Mr. Hippisley and the Open Door
III. America and the Orient
IV. World War I
V. World War II
VI. Diplomacy in the Modern World
Part II
The Sources of Soviet Conduct
America and the Russian Future
Part III
Grinnell Lectures
I. Reflections on the Walgreen Lectures
II. American Diplomacy and the Military

Mistress of the Elgin Marbles or At the Center of the Storm

2009-01-11T06:10:00.000-08:00

Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin

Author: Susan Nagel

The remarkable Mary Nisbet was the Countess of Elgin in Romantic-era Scotland and the wife of the seventh Earl of Elgin. When Mary accompanied her husband to diplomatic duty in Turkey, she changed history. She helped bring the smallpox vaccine to the Middle East, struck a seemingly impossible deal with Napoleon, and arranged the removal of famous marbles from the Parthenon. But all of her accomplishments would be overshadowed, however, by her scandalous divorce. Drawing from Mary's own letters, scholar Susan Nagel tells Mary's enthralling, inspiring, and suspenseful story in vibrant detail.

Publishers Weekly

The lively and sharp-witted Scottish heiress Mary Nisbet (1778-1855) shone as the wife of Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin and Ambassador Extraordinaire to the Ottoman Empire-whose name became associated with the Parthenon friezes brought to England. In the earliest years of marriage, Mary was her husband's staunchest ally and participant in his diplomatic work, as her diaries and letters reveal. As Nagel shows, following Elgin's incarceration under Napoleon and after the tragic loss of their only son as an infant, Mary's feelings for Elgin began to cool. She resisted his demand for another heir, and their relationship collapsed when Elgin discovered Mary's affair with his best friend. The glamorous couple's marriage ended in scandal and a humiliating public divorce. Nagel, who has written for the stage, screen and scholarly journals, creates a sympathetic and emotionally charged portrait of Mary, tracing in vivid detail the couple's travels, the diplomatic challenges they faced and their growing marital tensions. Elgin's acquisition of the notorious "Elgin marbles" makes for dramatic reading, but the biography's chief merit is its wealth of domestic and intimate detail and Nagel's ability to chart the course of an elite marriage with insight and compassion yet without sentimentality. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. Agent, Tina Bennett. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Perceptive biography of an aristocrat Scottish lady who broke social, political, and diplomatic ground. With a clarity graced by a trove of surviving letters, ably selected and deciphered, Nagel (Humanities/Marymount Manhattan College) follows her subject's rise and fall. Born late in the 18th century into the wealthiest family in Scotland, Mary Nisbet did not have unlimited access to her monies. So she married Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, a dashing, intelligent striver perennially short of funds. Though her husband is now better known than she, thanks to the marbles he famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) removed from the Parthenon and transported to Britain, Mary actually had an equally strong-and more positive-impact than Thomas during their lifetimes. In Constantinople, where he was first posted as ambassador, Mary won the hearts of the sultan, Captain Pasha, and the Grand Vizier with her ample supply of brio and dash. In Athens, shocked to see how greatly the Parthenon had suffered from Alaric the Visigoth to the Venetians-it had been used for target practice and as a public toilet; vandalized hunks of the temple had been carted off to every corner of Europe-Ambassador Elgin used the British passion for Hellenistic antiquities to open purse strings back in England and finance the marbles' relocation. Nagel suggests that Elgin believed "he was rescuing history . . . instead of leaving them to wither and disintegrate," but his act was not roundly applauded; not only the Greeks but Lord Byron himself thought it scandalous. While her husband was increasingly away from home, involved in one diplomatic imbroglio after another, Mary found herself caught in theaffections of Robert Ferguson, a close family friend. When uncovered by Elgin, the affair resulted in Mary losing custody of her children and Elgin losing his bankroll, devastating blows for each. A unique life related with animation, admiration, and affection, but also faithfully and unfancifully. (16-page b&w photo insert, not seen)Agent: Tina Bennett/Janklow & Nesbit

Book review: Stratégie D'information D'entreprise et Direction :Texte et Cas

At the Center of the Storm

Author: George Tenet

In the whirlwind of accusations and recriminations that has attended the post-9/11 world, one man's vital testimony has been conspicuously absent. Candid and compelling, AT THE CENTER OF THE STORM is George Tenet's memoir of his life at the CIA -- a revelatory look at the inner workings of America's top intelligence agency and its dealings with national leaders at home and abroad. With unparalleled knowledge and breadth, Tenet illuminates how the country was prepared -- and not prepared -- to deal with a world full of new and deadly threats.

Beginning with his installation as Director of Central Intelligence in 1997, Tenet unfolds the momentous events that led up to 9/11: his declaration of war on Al Qaeda in 1998, CIA operations inside Afghanistan, the worldwide operational plan to fight terror, his warnings to White House officials in the spring and summer of 2001, and the plan for a response laid down just six days after the attack. Tenet also reveals the CIA's efforts since 9/11 to hunt down the fugitive members of Al Qaeda's leadership.

In his gripping narration of the run-up to the war in Iraq, Tenet provides fresh insights and background, including a privileged account of how the famous "sixteen words" made it into the President's State of the Union speech, the real context of his own now-famous "slam-dunk" comment, and the CIA's views of the rise of an Iraqi insurgency.

Finally, in addition to the backstage story of the headline events, Tenet will offer his thoughts on the future of U.S. intelligence and its role in foreign-policy decisions, setting forth an informed plan for how we can forge a more secure world.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Alternately withholding and aggrieved, earnest and disingenuous, At the Center of the Storm is interesting less for any stunning new revelations than for fleshing out a portrait of the Bush White House already sketched by reporters and former administration members. Mr. Tenet depicts an administration riven by factional fighting between the State and Defense Departments, hard-liners and more pragmatic realists, an administration given to out-of-channels policymaking, and ad hoc, improvisatory decision-making.

Publishers Weekly

Former CIA director Tenet leaves the main vocal duties for this audio in the capable hands of Conger (who also recently narrated The Reagan Diaries). Yet in reading both the brief introduction and lengthy-but highly compelling-afterword, Tenet demonstrates a command of the spoken word that makes one wonder why he did not handle his own narration. However, the two men project a compatible style and tone, conveying deeply personal emotion within the boundaries of professionalism and decorum. Tenet does not shy away from acknowledging his own responsibility in controversies involving terrorism and the Iraq War, but he also takes several key political leaders to task for scapegoating the intelligence community in the wake of unpopular policy. The musical interludes at the start and end of each CD serve to maintain the cloak and dagger ambience. Those who prefer to skim the surface of news events may find the length taxing, but listeners ready to move beyond the headlines and into a wider world of nuanced complexity will be more than satisfied. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover. (July)

Library Journal

Principal Characters     ix
Preface     xxv
Part I
The Towpath     3
The Burning Platform     19
Shot Out of a Cannon     43
Waging Peace     80
Beyond Wye     112
Arafat     132
Part II
Gathering Storm     149
"They're Coming Here"     201
9/11     246
"We're at War"     268
Missed Opportunities     291
Into the Sanctuary     314
Threat Matrix     346
They Want to Change History     393
The Merchant of Death and the Colonel     428
Part III
Casus Belli     457
"The One Issue That Everyone Could Agree On"     487
No Authority, Direction, or Control     516
Slam Dunk     545
Taking "the Case" Public     558
Diplomacy by Other Means     582
The Hunt for WMD     606
Mission Not Accomplished     630
Sixteen Words     680
Going     722
Afterword     739
Glossary     769
Acknowledgments     779
Index     787

We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land or The Closing of the Western Mind

2009-01-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work

Author: Jimmy Carter

In this urgent, balanced, and passionate book, Nobel Peace Laureate and former President Jimmy Carter argues that the present moment is a unique time for achieving peace in the Middle East -- and he offers a bold and comprehensive plan to do just that.

President Carter has been a student of the biblical Holy Land all his life. For the last three decades, as president of the United States and as founder of The Carter Center, he has studied the complex and interrelated issues of the region's conflicts and has been actively involved in reconciling them. He knows the leaders of all factions in the region who will need to play key roles, and he sees encouraging signs among them.

Carter describes the history of previous peace efforts and why they fell short. He argues persuasively that the road to a peace agreement is now open and that it has broad international and regional support. Most of all, since there will be no progress without courageous and sustained U.S. leadership, he says the time for progress is now. President Barack Obama is committed to a personal effort to exert that leadership, starting early in his administration.

This is President Carter's call for action, and he lays out a practical and doable path to peace.

Book about: Reinventare il vostro bordo: Una guida graduale a realizzare controllo di politica

The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

Author: Charles Freeman

A radical and powerful reappraisal of the impact of Constantine’s adoption of Christianity on the later Roman world, and on the subsequent development both of Christianity and of Western civilization.

When the Emperor Contstantine converted to Christianity in 368 AD, he changed the course of European history in ways that continue to have repercussions to the present day. Adopting those aspects of the religion that suited his purposes, he turned Rome on a course from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilization of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority, whether that of the Bible, or the writings of Ptolemy in astronomy and of Galen and Hippocrates in medicine. Only a thousand years later, with the advent of the Renaissance and the emergence of modern science, did Europe begin to free itself from the effects of Constantine's decision, yet the effects of his establishment of Christianity as a state religion remain with us, in many respects, today. Brilliantly wide-ranging and ambitious, this is a major work of history.

The New York Times

It is not easy to make an interesting or even comprehensible subject out of the angry controversies about the Trinity that preoccupied early Christians. But [Freeman] manages it. Faced with the paradox inherent in the notion of God-become-man, Christians explored dozens of ingenious theories to explain the relationship between Jesus and God … Although the most important Christian thinkers, from St. Paul to Augustine, did everything they could to stifle the rationalist tradition they sought to displace, as Freeman effectively demonstrates, it is impossible to lay the aptly named Dark Ages entirely at their door. Just why the lights went out when they did remains something of a mystery. — Anthony Gottlieb

Publishers Weekly

Freeman repeats an oft-told tale of the rise of Christianity and the supposed demise of philosophy in a book that is fascinating, frustrating and flawed. He contends that as the Christian faith developed in the first four centuries it gradually triumphed over the reigning Hellenistic and Roman philosophies. Christianity's power culminated when Constantine declared it the official state religion in 312. Freeman points to Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, as the figure who showed Constantine that the bishopric could wield power over the state. From then until the Middle Ages, Freeman argues, the church ruled triumphant, successfully squelching any challenges to its religious and political authority. Yet Freeman (The Greek Achievement) fails to show that faith became totally dominant over reason. First, he asserts that Paul of Tarsus, whom many think of as the founder of Christianity, condemned the Hellenistic philosophy of his time. Freeman is wrong about this, for the rhetorical style and the social context of Paul's letters show just how dependent he was on the philosophy around him. Second, Freeman glosses over the tremendous influence of Clement of Alexandria's open embrace of philosophy as a way of understanding the Christian faith. Third, the creeds that the church developed in the fourth century depended deeply on philosophical language and categories in an effort to make the faith understandable to its followers. Finally, Augustine's notions of original sin and the two cities depended directly on Plato's philosophy; Augustine even admits in the Confessions that Cicero was his model. While Freeman tells a good story, his arguments fail to be convincing. 16 pages of illus. Not seen by PW, 1 map. (Oct. 12) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A vigorous study of the death and rebirth of empirical thought in the Western tradition. English classicist Freeman (The Greek Achievement, 1999, etc.) charts two great strains of thought in antiquity. The first, exemplified by the work of Greek thinkers and artists such as Euripides and Aristotle, allowed that some things in the universe may well be unknowable, but that shouldn't stop humans from asking about them; the second, the province of Christian thinkers such as Jerome and Augustine, held that only God can know the unknowable, and humans have no business nosing around in such matters. The first Freeman dubs "reason," the second "faith," and even if the two often blended in the work of thinkers like Plato and Aquinas, they were often opposed to each other. With the ascendancy of Christianity in the Roman world, Freeman observes, "the principles of empirical observation or logic were overruled in the conviction that all knowledge comes from God and even, in the writings of Augustine, that the human mind, burdened with Adam's original sin, is incapable of thinking for itself." He notes at least part of the reason for the triumph of unquestioning faith was the inability of early Christian communities to agree on terms by which they could rationally explore the divine; part, however, was purely political: namely, the dawning awareness on the part of Constantine and other emperors that any dissension among the various Christian churches posed a source of jeopardy to their supposedly divinely sanctioned rule. (Thus, in due course, the doctrine of papal infallibility.) The strained competition between faith and reason played out over the centuries, Freeman shows, until by the end of thefourth century "the freedom to explore the nature of God was becoming restricted to the point of extinction," essentially crushing the Greek tradition until its revival, a millennium later, in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. A lucid, accessible contribution to intellectual history, and a worthy companion to Elaine Pagels's recent Beyond Belief (p. 290).

Lincoln or Protagoras Philebus and Gorgias

2009-01-10T00:24:00.000-08:00

Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer

Author: Fred Kaplan

For Abraham Lincoln, whether he was composing love letters, speeches, or legal arguments, words mattered. In Lincoln, acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan explores the life of America's sixteenth president through his use of language as a vehicle both to express complex ideas and feelings and as an instrument of persuasion and empowerment. Like the other great canonical writers of American literature — a status he is gradually attaining — Lincoln had a literary career that is inseparable from his life story. An admirer and avid reader of Burns, Byron, Shakespeare, and the Old Testament, Lincoln was the most literary of our presidents. His views on love, liberty, and human nature were shaped by his reading and knowledge of literature.

Since Lincoln, no president has written his own words and addressed his audience with equal and enduring effectiveness. Kaplan focuses on the elements that shaped Lincoln's mental and imaginative world; how his writings molded his identity, relationships, and career; and how they simultaneously generated both the distinctive political figure he became and the public discourse of the nation. This unique account of Lincoln's life and career highlights the shortcomings of the modern presidency, reminding us, through Lincoln's legacy and appreciation for language, that the careful and honest use of words is a necessity for successful democracy.

Illuminating and engrossing, Lincoln brilliantly chronicles Abraham Lincoln's genius with language.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

The literature about Abraham Lincoln is so vast as to defy comprehension, yet historians and other scholars—not to mention novelists, poets, artists, sculptors, even composers—continue to find new and revealing things to say about this greatest of all Americans. Fred Kaplan's Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, is the latest case in point, a book that is certain to become essential to our understanding of the 16th president. To be sure, many others before Kaplan have dealt in various ways with Lincoln's love of literature and writing, but no one has explored the subject so deeply or found so much meaning in it.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Mr. Kaplan does a persuasive, highly perceptive job of explicating the influences that various authors had on Lincoln's thinking, as well as the role that writing played in helping the young Illinois politician articulate an identity of his own. In fact, as Mr. Kaplan sees it, language "was the tool by which" Lincoln "explored and defined himself," and as president he would try to find a language to "harness and implement" his political ideas "in a country whose alternative narrative would lead, he believed, to betrayal and disaster."

Publishers Weekly

In this intriguing biography, English professor and literary biographer Kaplan (The Singular Mark Twain) analyzes Abraham Lincoln's writings, from the great civic anthems of his presidency to love letters, legal briefs, poems and notebook jottings, and finds a first-rate literary talent-a master storyteller with an earthy wit, sharp logic and an ear for poetic phrasing. From wide reading, Kaplan contends, Lincoln gleaned influences-an Aesopian moralism, a biblical sense of providence, a Byronic melancholy, a Shakespearean understanding of human complexity-that shaped his approach to issues and, through his words, the nation's attitude toward slavery and war. Kaplan sometimes overdoes his critical exegeses of Lincoln's more forgettable efforts ("[Lincoln's] comic depiction of what happens when two people of the same sex are bedded has a heterodox clarity that reveals his familiarity with bodily realities") but many of these readings, like his recasting as free verse a speech on agricultural improvements, are eye-opening. The result is a fresh, revealing study of both Lincoln's language and character. (Nov. 3)

Randall M. Miller - Library Journal

Kaplan (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, English, Queens Coll. & Graduate Ctr., CUNY; Henry James) argues that Lincoln's devotion to the integrity of language gave him a rare credibility as lawyer, legislator, public figure, and President and that Lincoln worked assiduously to master writing as a means of thought as well as expression. To track Lincoln's trajectory as a writer, Kaplan scours what Lincoln read and wrote to discover the roots of his ideas and style variously in scripture, Shakespeare, Byron, other English poets, Burns, historians, satirists, Aesop's fables, American folktales, speeches, etc. Lincoln came to prize clear, common speech as vital to conveying moral vision and democratic principles. His genius for the telling detail and for storytelling itself ensured that his listeners and readers would take hold of his argument. His purpose, says Kaplan, was to persuade rather than to stir emotion. In light of today's political subversion of language, Kaplan's work points the way to our own resetting of the democratic compass thus to direct our path as a free people. For all libraries that serve the public interest.

Kirkus Reviews

How the 16th president used-and transformed-the English language. Famously self-taught, Lincoln's understanding of and familiarity with the language depended to a large degree on his reading, and Kaplan (The Singular Mark Twain, 2003, etc.) offers a thorough survey of all the sources that informed the young autodidact. From early influences like the Bible and Dilworth's Speller, to particular favorites like Poe's "The Raven," to the Enlightenment essayists and poets Pope and Milton, to Romantics Burns and Byron and, above all, Shakespeare, Lincoln heard background rhythms he would later masterfully adapt to his own emerging personal voice. Kaplan looks at halting childhood exercises; early political speeches and circulars; love letters and letters to friends; stabs at poetry (overpraised by Kaplan); eulogies for Zachary Taylor and Henry Clay; addresses to Congress; and even a brief to the Supreme Court in Broadwell v. Lewis. The author effectively demonstrates how Lincoln brought elements of his own personality-melancholy and humor, lawyerly precision and clarity, down-to-earth language and intellectual intensity-to prose that came to be defined as quintessentially American. Although the immortal presidential addresses receive scant attention here-perhaps because they've been exhaustively covered in fine books like Harold Holzer's Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President (2004) and Garry Wills's Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America (1992)-by the time Kaplan places Lincoln in the White House, readers require no further guide to Lincoln's methods, nor any further convincing about the man's linguistic brilliance. A highly readable, ofteninsightful analysis of an unequaled prose master for whom writing was "the supreme artifact of human genius."Agent: Georges Borchardt

Reading Lincoln's Words 1 Ch. 1 "All the Books He Could Lay His Hands On," 1809-1825 3 Ch. 2 Shakespeare, 1825-1834 30 Ch. 3 Burns, Byron, and Love Letters, 1834-1837 60 Ch. 4 "How Miserably Things Seem to Be Arranged," 1837-1842 99 Ch. 5 "Were I President," 1842-1849 144 Ch. 6 "Honest Seeking," 1849-1854 198 Ch. 7 "The Current of Events," 1855-1861 242 Ch. 8 The Master of Language and the Presidency, 1861-1865 294 Annotated Bibliography 357 Notes 363 Acknowledgments 385 Index 387

Book about: Weight Loss Kit For Dummies or Stretching in the Office

Protagoras, Philebus, and Gorgias

Author: Plato

Is virtue teachable? What should we value as an ideal? Is pleasure or perception the highest good that ought to be the object of our lives? Three of Plato's most important dialogues are brought together in a single volume to address these concerns which continue to occupy serious minds today. In the Protagoras Plato attempts to answer questions about the nature of virtue and whether it is inherent in humans or a subject capable of being taught. In the Philebus he addresses the nature and content of the good and whether wisdom or pleasure is to be preferred. The Gorgias applies what is learned from the previous discussions to address larger issues, such as the proper functioning of society and the state and the individual's appropriate place within them.

On Revolution or Mind Set

2009-01-09T12:11:00.000-08:00

On Revolution

Author: Hannah Arendt

Tracing the gradual evolution of revolutions since the American and French examples, Arendt predicts the changing relationship between war and revolution and the crucial role such combustive movements will play in the future of international relations.

New interesting book: Le Directeur de 4 dimensions :les Stratégies de Disque pour Diriger les Différents Gens des Meilleures Façons

Mind Set!: Reset Your Thinking and See the Future

Author: John Naisbitt

In his seminal works Megatrends and Megatrends 2000, John Naisbitt proved himself one of the most far-sighted and accurate observers of our fast-changing world.

Mind Set! goes beyond that—Mind Set! discloses the secret of forecasting. John Naisbitt gives away the keys to the kingdom, opening the door to the insights that let him understand today's world and see the opportunities of tomorrow. He selected his most effective tools, 11 Mind Sets, and applies them by guiding the reader through the five forces that will dominate the next decades of the 21st century.

Ilustrated by stories about Galileo and Einstein to today's icons and rebels in business, science, and sports, Mind Set! opens your eyes to see beyond media headlines, political slogans, and personal opinions, to select and judge what will form the pictures of the future.

Read by Eric Conger

Publishers Weekly

When Megatrends was first published nearly a quarter-century ago, Naisbitt was hailed as a cutting-edge futurist. Today, however, he's more like your crotchety grandpa, complaining about how he can't get through the voice-mail system to talk to a real person. Naisbitt's latest book reads like a manuscript that's been stuck in a drawer since 1985, as his insights into the future-corporations are becoming more powerful than nation states, video games are an art form-are embarrassingly behind the times. Although he touts 11 principles to help readers cultivate forward-looking thinking, these turn out to be banal guidelines like "focus on the score of the game" and "don't add unless you subtract." Tangential rants about hysterical environmentalists and free market capitalism as the only way to organize modern society reveal a creeping conservative mindset, but even here Naisbitt is bringing up the rear, touting Friedrich Hayek long after everyone else has moved on to Leo Strauss. In his eighth predictive tract, the author coasts on his reputation. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This latest by Naisbitt (Megatrends) identifies various mind-sets that will enable readers to prepare for the future and understand the global changes that are underway. He shares the values and rules he has developed to discipline his own mind and to filter information, illustrating that it's how we receive information that moves us forward or holds us back. In Part 1, "Mind Sets," readers learn how using mind-sets like "Understand how powerful it is not to have to be right," "Don't add unless you subtract," and "Don't get so far ahead of the parade that they don't know you're in it" can organize, instruct, and transform their lives, personally and professionally. Part 2, "Pictures of the Future," deals with major trends and global shifts, e.g., where Europe is headed and what may be the Next Big Thing as hyped by the media. The key that Naisbitt is offering here is awareness. Once readers are aware of their limitations, imposed by a lifetime of repetition and culturally inherited mind-sets, they can use the author's mind-sets to open themselves to the future. Business collections will want to add. Susan C. Awe, Univ. of New Mexico Lib. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Gotham or Brewing Justice

2009-01-09T00:59:00.000-08:00

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

Author: Edwin G Burrows

To European explorers, it was Eden, a paradise of waist-high grasses, towering stands of walnut, maple, chestnut, and oak, and forests that teemed with bears, wolves, raccoons, beavers, otters, and foxes. Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe.
In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the birth of the skyscraper. Here too is a cast of thousands--the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Clement Moore, who saved Greenwich Village from the city'sstreet-grid plan; Herman Melville, who painted disillusioned portraits of city life; and Walt Whitman, who happily celebrated that same life. We meet the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Boss Tweed and his nemesis, cartoonist Thomas Nast; Emma Goldman and Nellie Bly; Jacob Riis and Horace Greeley; police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt; Colonel Waring and his "white angels" (who revolutionized the sanitation department); millionaires John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst; and hundreds more who left their mark on this great city.
The events and people who crowd these pages guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America, and a book that will mesmerize everyone interested in the peaks and valleys of American life as found in the greatest city on earth. Gotham is a dazzling read, a fast-paced, brilliant narrative that carries the reader along as it threads hundreds of stories into one great blockbuster of a book.

New York Magazine - Ariel Levy

The fruit of 20 years of collective labor . . . .a whopping 1,416 pages (and it's only the first volume!).

ForeWord Magazine - Pete Skinner

Gotham is monumental but never overwhelming: It is the work of master literary masons. The narrative is Romanesque in its integrity and solidity of structure but reflects a Gothic precision in its detailing...The authors' clear and supple prose brings clarity and strength to their treatment of these basic themes. Their insertion of key data and supporting citations into clean, fast-moving prose is masterful. This is history with a beating heart; the players command the stage, the documentation lurks in the wings...no reader will leave Gotham disappointed...For individuals with any interest at all in New York City, this book is an unbeatable investment in knowledge and reward.

Entertainment Weekly

...[A] novelistic narrative...

Timothy J. Gilfoyle

The city's complexity has frightened...historians....few historians today attempt synthetic and comprehensive interpretations of this magnitude....persuasively argue that New York was "crucially shaped by...an evolving global economy" from its foundingas New Amsterdamin 1626....For Burrows and Wallace...New York's story is the nation's. —The Atlantic Monthly

L.A. Times Book Review - Tom Vanderbilt

In their colossal history of New York from its founding until 1898, authors Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace present New York as a city where a sense ofpalce is best understood through time....the narrative of Gotham hovers over the city, drifting along thematic currecnt, occasionally catching a cataclysmic gust; it drops in for a vivid close-up only to reascend, with equal aplomb, for a global panorama.

Library Journal

As grand-scale and ambitious as New York City itself, this book was 20 years in the making, but anyone interested in American or urban history will find it worth the wait. The authors, both New York academics, start with the teeming islands and waterways Europeans first encountered in New York harbor and move right up to the consolidation of the five boroughs to create "an imperial city." An almost frightening amount of research went into preparing the highly detailed text, but the result is a real saga that proves why New York is still the greatest city in the world. (LJ 9/15/98)

Entertainment Weekly

...[A] novelistic narrative...

Bloomsbury Review

Gotham has violence, sex, riots, political corruption, building booms, fires, romance, culture. . . .Extremely well written. . .compelling. . .beats most fiction in its ability to enchant and surprise.

The New Yorker - Paul Goldberger

Gotham is a spectacle, a cavalcade, a parade in which people move on and off the stage with astonishing rapidity, and the scene shifts constantly from politics to fiannce and on to art and social reform and city planning and transportation. The book is at once a history of feminism, of social policy, of marketing, of public works, of health care, of architecture, of government, of religion, of philanthropy, and of culture....A massive scholarly achievement.

The Atlantic Monthly - Timothy J. Gilfoyle

The city's complexity has frightened...historians....few historians today attempt synthetic and comprehensive interpretations of this magnitude....persuasively argue that New York was "crucially shaped by...an evolving global economy" from its founding, as New Amsterdam, in 1626....For Burrows and Wallace...New York's story is the nation's.

What People Are Saying

Kenneth T. Jackson
An epic narrative worthy of the world's greatest city, Gotham is a marvelously-written and sweeping book that is based throughout on the latest scholarship.
— Editor-in-Chief, The Encyclopedia of New York City

Brooke Astor
I was transported back in time. I was fascinated as door after door was mentally opened as I turned page after page. I have never read a book that tells so interestingly who we are and how we got where we are.

Edward Robb Ellis
Gotham is a masterpiece. It is the best history of New York City ever written. It will be read a century from now.

Jane Alexander
If you thought you knew something about the city of New York, think again. Gotham is a page-turner, a fascinating, dramatic and compelling tale of the world's greatest city. You will not walk its streets again without calling to mind the stories that make New York what it is today. The authors have given us a history as real and palpable as if the events just occurred. It is a stunning work.

Rick Burns
There was Melville, Ahab, and the great white whale, and now Burrows and Wallace and this, the first of two massive volumes on what remains perhaps the last great leviathan of American history: New York. There has simply never been anything quite like this extraordinarily ambitious and capacious history of the city. Analytically penetrating; indefatigably scholarly in its painstaking accumulation of detail and event; and for all its size written with remarkable energy and grace, it must stand as the definitive narrative reference work for scholars, students and anyone else obsessed with the endlessly fascinating sprawl of New York's four-century-long history.

Book about: Martha Washingtons Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats or Easy Way to Artisan Breads and Pastries

Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival

Author: Daniel Jaffe

Fair trade is a fast-growing alternative market intended to bring better prices and greater social justice to small farmers around the world. But is it working? This vivid study of coffee farmers in Mexico offers the first thorough investigation of the social, economic, and environmental benefits of fair trade. Based on extensive research in Zapotec indigenous communities in the state of Oaxaca, Brewing Justice follows the members of the cooperative Michiza, whose organic coffee is sold on the international fair trade market. It compares these families to conventional farming families in the same region, who depend on local middlemen and are vulnerable to the fluctuations of the world coffee market. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book carries readers into the lives of these coffee producer households and their communities, offering a nuanced analysis of both the effects of fair trade on everyday life and the limits of its impact. Brewing Justice paints a clear picture of the complex dynamics of the fair trade market and its relationship to the global economy. Drawing on interviews with dozens of fair trade leaders, the book also explores the changing politics of this international movement, including the challenges posed by the entry of transnational corporations into the fair trade system. It concludes by offering recommendations for strengthening and protecting the integrity of fair trade.

List of Figures     vii
List of Tables     ix
Preface     xi
Introduction     1
A Movement of a Market?     11
Coffee, Commodities, Crisis     36
One Region, Two Markets     58
The Difference a Market Makes: Livelihoods and Labor     93
A Sustainable Cup? Fair Trade, Shade-Grown Coffee, and Organic Production     133
Eating and Staying on the Land: Food Security Migration     165
Dancing with the Devil?     199
"Mejor, Pero No Muy Bien Que Digamos": The Limits of Fair Trade     232
Strengthening Fair Trade     247
Conclusion     259
Acknowledgments     267
Research-Methods     271
Notes     285
Bibliography     307
Index     319

Death in the Haymarket or Fair Game

2009-01-08T14:47:00.000-08:00

Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America

Author: James R Green

On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded at a Chicago labor rally, wounding dozens of policemen, seven of whom eventually died. Coming in the midst of the largest national strike Americans had ever seen, the bombing created mass hysteria and led to a sensational trial, which culminated in four controversial executions. The trial seized headlines across the country, created the nation’s first red scare and dealt a blow to the labor movement from which it would take decades to recover.

Death in the Haymarket brings these remarkable events to life, re-creating a tempestuous moment in American social history. James Green recounts the rise of the first great labor movement in the wake of the Civil War and brings to life the epic twenty-year battle for the eight-hour workday. He shows how the movement overcame numerous setbacks to orchestrate a series of strikes that swept the country in 1886, positioning the unions for a hard-won victory on the eve of the Haymarket tragedy.

As he captures the frustrations, tensions and heady victories, Green also gives us a rich portrait of Chicago, the Midwestern powerhouse of the Gilded Age. We see the great factories and their wealthy owners, including men such as George Pullman, and we get an intimate view of the communities of immigrant employees who worked for them. Throughout, we are reminded of the increasing power of newspapers as, led by the legendary Chicago Tribune editor Joseph Medill, they stirred up popular fears of the immigrants and radicals who led the unions.

Blending a gripping narrative, outsized characters and a panoramic portrait of a major social movement, Death in the Haymarket is an importantaddition to the history of American capitalism and a moving story about the class tensions at the heart of Gilded Age America.

Publishers Weekly

As Green thoroughly documents, the bloody Haymarket riot of May 4, 1886, changed the history of American labor and created a panic among Americans about (often foreign-born) "radicals and reformers" and union activists. The Haymarket demonstration, to protest police brutality during labor unrest in Chicago, remained peaceful until police moved in, whereupon a bomb was thrown by an individual never positively identified, killing seven policemen and wounding 60 others. Shortly after, labor leaders August Spies and Albert Parsons, along with six more alleged anarchists, stood convicted of murder on sparse evidence. Four of them went to the gallows in 1887; another committed suicide. The surviving three received pardons in 1893. The Knights of Labor, at that time America's largest and most energetic union, received the blame for the riot, despite a lack of conclusive evidence , and many Knights locals migrated to the less radical American Federation of Labor. Labor historian Green (Taking History to Heart) eloquently chronicles all this, producing what will surely be the definitive word on the Haymarket affair for this generation. Green is particularly strong in documenting the episode's long aftermath, especially the decades-long efforts of the white Parsons's black wife to exonerate her husband. B&w illus. (Mar. 7) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

Good books about Haymarket have been written before, but University of Massachusetts professor Green has written a book with several important virtues: it's engaging to read, historically careful and thorough, not too long, and attractively packaged. First, as one newspaper review explained, "no one has told the story more thoroughly, incisively or elegantly than Green." Green's story of domestic terrorism and class discontent is political and social history with contemporary relevance—relevance that he surely but subtly draws our attention to (see the long subtitle). His judgments are thoughtful and carefully tied to historical evidence and context. The endnotes help set a model for student research and writing; the index is nicely organized as well. Also, this book fits comfortably in the hand and the many small b/w illustrations are thoughtfully integrated into the text. The book has been written and assembled to engage and educate student as well as adult readers. My one quibble for student research use is something many history books today do, stressing narrative over chronology with chapter titles that don't help guide students to the elements they most need to access.

Library Journal

Green (history, Univ. of Massachusetts; Taking History to Heart: The Power of the Past in Building Social Movements) writes of the post-Civil War labor agitation in Chicago that culminated in the May 1886 Haymarket Square riot, when an incendiary device tossed by a still-unidentified individual caused police to open fire and led to the death of several people, including eight policemen. The bombing fueled criticism of the dissenting press by the powers that be in a class-divided polity and produced a rallying cry for the labor movement, which was seeking, among other things, an eight-hour workday. Eight mostly foreign-born anarchists were convicted of the crime, because of their speeches and writings. Four of them were hanged, one's sentence was commuted, and three were famously pardoned by Gov. John Peter Altgeld because of lack of evidence. Green tells readers little that is new, instead mining printed sources and offering the accepted and only logical interpretation of the conspiracy-driven trial as a miscarriage of justice. He states that "the memory of the Haymarket anarchists [has] endured" as a tale about labor folk heroes, so he does not bring these figures to life. Recommended for labor history collections that would benefit from a recent monograph on this seminal event and for those seeking to expand their holdings in Chicago studies.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

List of Maps     ix
Prologue     3
For Once in Common Front     15
A Paradise for Workers and Speculators     28
We May Not Always Be So Secure     39
A Liberty-Thirsty People     53
The Inevitable Uprising     69
The Flame That Makes the Kettle Boil     85
A Brutal and Inventive Vitality     102
The International     126
The Great Upheaval     145
A Storm of Strikes     160
A Night of Terror     174
The Strangest Frenzy     192
Every Man on the Jury Was an American     209
You Are Being Weighed in the Balance     231
The Law Is Vindicated     247
The Judgment of History     274
Epilogue     301
Notes     321
Acknowledgments     363
Illustration Credits     367
Index     369

Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House

Author: Valerie Plame Wilson

On 14 July 2003 in his syndicated column in The Washington Post, Robert Novak identified "Wilson's wife" publicly as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction" named "Valerie Plame". The column was a response to another, published by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," in which Ambassador Wilson stated that the George W. Bush administration exaggerated unreliable claims that Iraq intended to purchase uranium yellowcake to support the administration's arguments that Iraq was proliferating weapons of mass destruction so as to justify its preemptive war in Iraq.

Novak's public disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's classified covert CIA identity led to a CIA leak grand jury investigation, resulting in the indictment and successful prosecution of Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- Assistant to the President of the United States, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs from 2001 to 2005 -- for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators.

Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House is a memoir that covers Mrs. Wilson tenure in the CIA, the leak of her secret identity, and the subsequent scandal. The book provoked a lawsuit even before its launching. In May, the publisher and Valerie Wilson sued J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, and Michael V. Hayden, Director of the CIA, arguing that the CIA was "unconstitutionally interfering with the publication of her memoir, Fair Game, which is set to be published in October, by not allowing Plame to mention the dates she served in the CIA, even though those dates are public information."

The agency insisted that her dates of service remained classified and were not mentioned in the book, in spite of a letter published in the Congressional Record and available on the Library of Congress website from the C.I.A. to Ms. Wilson about her retirement benefits saying that she had worked for the agency since November 1985. The judged decided in favor of the agency. The CIA publication review board explained that the manuscript was "replete with statements" that "become classified when they are linked with a specific time frame", but cleared the way for the memoir to be published.

Publishers Weekly

The government redacted much of the significant information in the first section of Wilson's memoir, which concerns her career in the CIA. In print, a black bar omitted the words and passages; on audio, a tone does the deleting. Once the novelty of the beeps wears off, the incompleteness of Wilson's narrative, at first tantalizing, becomes frustrating. The constant interruptions make it difficult for a listener to assemble a coherent story. Once Wilson's identity is leaked by White House insiders, the memoir's redactions cease for the most part. Unfortunately, her distress over the attempted destruction of her and her husband's professional reputations is considerably less riveting than her spy career. Whiles neither a prose stylist or an actress, Wilson reads clearly, with immediacy and sincerity and a note of barely suppressed anger. Laura Rozen's afterword (occupying the last two CDs) fills in the gaps removed by the CIA. It's intriguing and considerably more polished. The two narratives create an interesting, if not entirely satisfying, account of a disturbing contemporary scandal. Simultaneous release with the Simon & Schuster hardcover (reviewed online). (Nov.)

Rethinking the Great Depression or Thinking Points

2009-01-08T01:34:00.000-08:00

Rethinking the Great Depression: A New View of Its Causes and Consequences

Author: Gene Smiley

Smiley draws upon recent advances in economic analysis to present a clear and nontechnical portrait of the Great Depression.

Journal of Southern History

...Cogent discussion of the knotty topics of monetary policy and international exchange.... Forceful presentation.

Business History Review

...A slender but engaging volume, one approachable by the nonspecialist.

CLAREMONT REVIEW OF BOOKS

...An engaging, balanced, and perceptive short book.... Smiley brilliantly describes this tragedy and its long-term consequences

Public Choice

...A book of equal value both to laypersons and to professional economists.... Well written.

Booknews

Smiley (economics, Marquette U.) argues that the Great Depression was caused by too much government intervention in the economy, rather than too little regulation. He contends that tariffs and the reliance on the gold standard caused what should have been a minor recession into a depression and suggests that the New Deal policies of the Roosevelt administration caused the problem to linger for much longer than it should have. The New Deal legislation that has been left in place in the wake of the Great Depression continues to cause problems for the economy and should be scrapped, he concludes. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

What People Are Saying

CHOICE
Economist Smiley...has produced a...slim and readable volume...in language that should be clear and understandable to students.

LIBERTY
...Economic historian Gene Smiley has performed a valuable service for all readers, academic and general.... A concise description of the economic influences and course of the Great Depression...

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE
Incorporates the findings of recent scholarship into an accessible survey of the economic events of the 1930s...

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
This is a careful, systematic review of literature on the Great Depression, not a once over treatment.... The book is well written, strives for comprehensiveness and balance....

THE HISTORIAN
...A clear, engaging, jargon-free style.... A good job of outlining the key events of the period for nonspecialists.

Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision

Author: George Lakoff

Two years ago George Lakoff published the bestselling Don’t Think of an Elephant! Its account of the conservative monopoly on effective framing touched off a national discussion about political language. It also gave rise to a chorus of pleas for more:

* What is the progressive vision of America;

* Why progressive values are America’s values;

* How frames are necessary to serve the truth;

* Why sloganeering alone doesn’t work;

* How progressives trap themselves and how they can escape those traps; and

* How political arguments and narratives can be put together to counter the Right.

Thinking Points satisfies that call with a bold, concise, and systematic explanation of how conservatives think and use language—and how progressives can fight back . Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute offer a new understanding of the so-called political center and explain why the most effective way to appeal to those who identify themselves as moderates or conservatives is to remain true to progressive values.

This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to participate in shaping an America that serves the common good.

Library Journal

Lakoff (cognitivie science & linguistics, Univ. of California, Berkeley; Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate) argues that progressives do not know how to communicate with ordinary Americans, while conservatives use evocative language and stories that attract voters. Here he teaches progressives how to reconnect with their fellow citizens. He insists that progressives must enunciate what they believe, explain how their values underlie their politics, and thus re-engage Americans in a shared vision. In short, to regain power, progressives must reframe the political discourse and, by accepting the conservative terms of debate, respond by attacking "tax cuts" or the "war on terror" rather than by talking about the need for healthcare or ending the war in Iraq. Part of this reframing consists in substituting progressive politics of empathy and responsibility for the conservative worldview built on authority and control. A philosophical look at American political dialog, this book also shows activists how to discuss progressive issues in positive terms rather than using the negative vocabulary of conservatives. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

	The reign of Ronald Reagan and Big George	3
	The Clinton years	57
	Texas animals	141
	Shrub	197
	Heroes and heels (and Madonna)	273

	Preface : why we must reopen closed debates
1	Introduction	1
2	The classical liberal synthesis	14
A	First principles	14
B	The old court federalism	19
C	Economic liberties and property rights	35
3	The progressive era	52
A	Federalism revisited	53
B	Individual rights	77
4	The post-progressive period	111
5	Progressivism today	117

1	"Who authorized putting him on pain medication?"	11
2	The program	39
3	Casus belli	61
4	The hunt for WMD	85
5	Skeptics and zealots	109
6	Spinning war and peace	125
7	Losing Afghanistan	149
8	In denial : oil, terrorism, and Saudi Arabia	173
9	A rogue operation	193

	Preface
1	Prosperity Gives Way to the Great Depression	3
2	What Caused the Great Depression?	31
3	The First New Deal, 1933-1935	71
4	The Recovery Aborted, 1935-1939	105
5	The Legacy of the Great Depression	133
	A Note on Sources	164
	Index	170

Christianity & Politics Books

Richard II or In Search of Deep Throat

Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics 1377-99

In Search of Deep Throat: The Greatest Political Mystery of Our Time

Turbulence in World Politics or Surpassing Realism

Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity

Booknews

Surpassing Realism: The Politics of European Integration since 1945

Harriet Jacobs or Richard Nixon

Harriet Jacobs: A Life

The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Patricia Moore - KLIATT

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography

Salman Akhtar

Harold H. Saunders

Dean J. Kotolowski

What People Are Saying

Bridging Deep South Rivers or Under the Flags of Freedom

Bridging Deep South Rivers: The Life and Legend of Horace King

Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America

Table of Contents:

Full Disclosure or The Disinformation Book of Lists

Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency

The Disinformation Book of Lists

Table of Contents:

Benjamin Franklin or Building More Effective Unions

Benjamin Franklin: Writings (The Autobiography, Poor Richard's Almanack, Bagatelles, Pamphlets, Essays, & Letters) (Library of America)

Library Journal

School Library Journal

Building More Effective Unions

Table of Contents:

The US Constitution for Everyone or Chaos Point

The U.S. Constitution for Everyone

Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads

Order of the Deaths Head or Suicide of Reason

Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS

Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West

The New York Times - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Sandra Collins - Library Journal

Table of Contents:

The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War or Handbook of Alternative Fuel Technologies

The Soviet Union and the June 1967 Six Day War

Table of Contents:

Handbook of Alternative Fuel Technologies

Devils Highway or How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution

Devil's Highway: A True Story

The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution

Table of Contents:

Exporting American Dreams or Profiles in Courage

Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey

Publishers Weekly

Steven Puro - Library Journal

Table of Contents:

Profiles in Courage: Decisive Moments in the Lives of Celebrated Americans

History Upside Down or Committed

History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression

Committed: A Rabble-Rouser's Memoir

Publishers Weekly

Alicia Graybill - Library Journal

Library Journal

Table of Contents:

Where In the World Is Osama bin Laden or Its Your World

Where In the World Is Osama bin Laden?

It's Your World: If you Don't Like It, Change It: Activism for Teens

Publishers Weekly

Gilda R. Daniels - Children's Literature

School Library Journal

Common Wealth or American Public Policy

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

The New York Times - Daniel Gross

Publishers Weekly

Lawrence R. Maxted <P>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. - School Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

Lawrence R. Maxted <P>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. - School Library Journal