Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Constitutional Chaos or Ron Paul Speaks

Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws

Author: Andrew P Napolitano

In this incisive and insightful book, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano peels back the legal veneer and shows how politicians, judges, prosecutors, and bureaucrats are trampling the U.S. Constitution in the name of law and order and fighting terrorism. Napolitano reveals how they:

  • silence the First Amendment
  • shoot holes in the Second
  • break some laws to enforce others
  • entrap citizens
  • steal private property
  • seize evidence without warrant
  • imprison without charge
  • kill without cause

Pundits on the right, left, and center have praised Constitutional Chaos for its penetrating examination of our rights and liberties in the post-9/11 world.

"Has the war on terrorism taken away some of your rights? In a non-ideological way, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano answers that crucial question. This book will open your eyes."-Bill O'Reilly

"This book is a wake-up call for all who value personal freedom and limited government."-Rush Limbaugh

"In all of the American media, Judge Napolitano is the most persistent, uncompromising guardian of both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. . ."-Nat Hentoff

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is Fox News Channel's senior judicial analyst, seen by millions on The Big Story with John Gibson, The O'Reilly Factor, Fox and Friends, and other shows. His articles and commentaries have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newark Star Ledger, and other national publications.



Table of Contents:
Introduction : breaking the law
1Breaking the law to enforce it1
2Attacking the innocent22
3Creating crime33
4Grabbing guns, endangering citizens50
5Filching property65
6Gagging free speech79
7Bribing witnesses, buying convictions94
8Assaulting the people108
9Personal odyssey125
10The justice department's terror tactics133
11Throwing away the jail house key153
12Don't go to Guantanamo170
13What can we do?185
AppIntroduction to the U.S. Constitution191
The Constitution of the United States198

Go to: Calculator Puzzles Tricks and Games or Planet Google

Ron Paul Speaks

Author: Philip Haddad

Ron Paul has emerged from nowhere to become America's dark horse darling. College students, techies, Generations Y through Z, and the many people who usually don't care are coalescing behind libertarian crusader Congressman Ron Paul.

To the confoundment of the pundits and talking heads, Congressman Paul has become one of the top fundraisers in a crowded field of presidential wannabes. But none of the money comes from special interests. It's derived entirely from tens of thousands of Americans who want to see this unlikely outsider prevail against the daunting odds.



Swim against the Current or The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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!



Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction     1
Business     5
Business without Greed     7
Fair Trade     14
Cooperation Works     19
Socially Responsible     29
Putting Workers in Charge     42
The Good (Business) Life     51
Banking on Change     58
Connections for Part One     66
Politics     73
Shape Up, America!     75
Run for It!     83
Clean Elections     92
Democracy School     105
Build It!     111
Granny Power     122
The Politics of Fun     127
Connections for Part Two     134
Life     139
Take Charge!     141
How We Live     151
A Mass Movement Arises     158
Flowers in the Field     164
The Conscience of an Evangelical     176
Connections for Part Three     188
Final Thoughts     193
DeMarco's Reading List     197
Index     201

Look this: Public Spaces Private Lives or Economy Environment Development Knowledge

The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library Series)

Author: Jane Jacobs

Thirty years after its publication, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was described by The New York Times as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning....[It] can also be seen in a much larger context.  It is first of all a work of literature; the descriptions of street life as a kind of ballet and the bitingly satiric account of traditional planning theory can still be read for pleasure even by those who long ago absorbed and appropriated the book's arguments."  Jane Jacobs, an editor and writer on architecture in New York City in the early sixties, argued that urban diversity and vitality were being destroyed by powerful architects and city planners.  Rigorous, sane, and delightfully epigrammatic, Jacobs's small masterpiece is a blueprint for the humanistic management of cities.  It is sensible, knowledgeable, readable, indispensable.  The author has written a new foreword for this Modern Library edition.

What People Are Saying

Jane Jacobs
Whenever and wherever societies have flourished and prospered rather than stagnated and decayed, creative and workable cities have been at the core of the phenomenon.... Decaying cities, declining economies, and mounting social troubles travel together. The combination is not coincidental.




Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Why Geography Matters or The Wars Against Napoleon

Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism

Author: Harm de Blij

Over the next half century, the human population, divided by culture and economics and armed with weapons of mass destruction, will expand to nearly 9 billion people. Abrupt climate change may throw the global system into chaos; China will emerge as a superpower; and Islamic terrorism and insurgency will threaten vital American interests. How can we understand these and other global challenges? Harm de Blij has a simple answer: by improving our understanding of the world's geography.
In Why Geography Matters, de Blij demonstrates how geography's perspectives yield unique and penetrating insights into the interconnections that mark our shrinking world. Preparing for climate change, averting a cold war with China, defeating terrorism: all of this requires geographic knowledge. De Blij also makes an urgent call to restore geography to America's educational curriculum. He shows how and why the U.S. has become the world's most geographically illiterate society of consequence, and demonstrates the great risk this poses to America's national security.
Peppering his writing with anecdotes from his own professional travels, de Blij provides an original treatise that is as engaging as it is eye opening. Casual or professional readers in areas such as education, politics, or national security will find themselves with a stimulating new perspective on geography as it continues to affect our world.



New interesting textbook: Good Housekeeping Dinner for a Dollar or Cordials from Your Kitchen

The Wars Against Napoleon: Debunking the Myth of the Napoleonic Wars

Author: Michel Franceschi

Popular and scholarly history presents a one-dimensional image of Napoleon as an inveterate instigator of war who repeatedly sought large-scale military conquests. General Franceschi and Ben Weider dismantle this false conclusion in The Wars Against Napoleon, a brilliantly written and researched study that turns our understanding of the French emperor on its head.

Avoiding the simplistic clichés and rudimentary caricatures many historians use when discussing Napoleon, Franceschi and Weider argue persuasively that the caricature of the megalomaniac conqueror who bled Europe white to satisfy his delirious ambitions and insatiable love for war is groundless. By carefully scrutinizing the facts of the period and scrupulously avoiding the sometimes confusing cause and effect of major historical events, they paint a compelling portrait of a fundamentally pacifist Napoleon, one completely at odds with modern scholarly thought.

This rigorous intellectual presentation is based upon three principal themes. The first explains how an unavoidable belligerent situation existed after the French Revolution of 1789. The new France inherited by Napoleon was faced with the implacable hatred of reactionary European monarchies determined to restore the ancient regime. All-out war was therefore inevitable unless France renounced the modern world to which it had just painfully given birth. The second theme emphasizes Napoleon's determined efforts ("bordering on an obsession," argue the authors) to avoid this inevitable conflict. The political strategy of the Consulate and the Empire was based on the intangible principle of preventing or avoiding these wars, not on conquering territory.Finally, the authors examine, conflict by conflict, the evidence that Napoleon never declared war. As he later explained at Saint Helena, it was he who was always attacked-not the other way around. His adversaries pressured and even forced the Emperor to employ his unequalled military genius. After each of his memorable victories Napoleon offered concessions, often extravagant ones, to the defeated enemy for the sole purpose of avoiding another war.

Lavishly illustrated, persuasively argued, and carefully illustrated with original maps and battle diagrams, The Wars Against Napoleon presents a courageous and uniquely accurate historical idea that will surely arouse vigorous debate within the international historical community.

Publishers Weekly

Franceschi, a retired French army officer and special historical consultant to the International Napoleonic Society (INS), and Weider (The Murder of Napoleon), a businessman and founder of the INS, seek to recast Napoleon Bonaparte as a "peaceful creative genius"-even a "pacifist"-in this provocative apologia. The authors set out to debunk the "myth" that Napoleon's "inexhaustible ambition" was responsible for the eponymous wars that marked his rule in France. Rather, the authors argue, Napoleon was not only "the person least responsible" but also the victim of Revolutionary France's enemies. The authors' favorite villain is the "warmongering" British, but they also apportion blame among Prussia, Spain, Austria and Russia. Napoleon's only ambition was the "great work of reconstructing France," and "the unchanging foundation" of his foreign policy was "the principle of preventing war." They also excuse him for French battlefield losses and attribute the Waterloo defeat to "the most inopportune of thunderstorms." Franceschi and Weider's one-sided, revisionist defense of Bonaparte as "a sensitive soul" with a "pacifist disposition" promises to be controversial. Illus. (Jan. 31)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Skirmish Magazine

supported with maps and diagrams, this courageous book is a very intriguing read.

War Books Out Now

thought-provoking, stimulating and challenging

David Lee Poremba - Library Journal

According to these authors, it is a myth of the Napoleonic wars that Napoleon was a megalomaniacal conqueror who bled Europe dry in order to satisfy his insatiable love for war. Certainly, such is the most widely printed and accepted description of Napoleon's motive. After all, history is written by the victors. In this book, however, retired French general Franceschi and Weider (coauthor with Sten Forshufvud, Assassination at St. Helena Revisited) present a compelling revisionist portrait of Napoleon as fundamentally pacifist. They base this on three sound themes: first, that the European monarchies were thoroughly opposed to the continuance of revolutionary France; second, that Napoleon made constant determined efforts to avoid the inevitable conflicts; and third, that Napoleon never declared war, as he himself stated in exile on St. Helena. In each of these areas the authors argue strongly, persuasively, and intellectually for what is, essentially, the other side of the usual story. They will surely provoke debate within the historical community wherever there is interest in this period. Recommended for all libraries adding to their Napoleonic collections. (Illustrations not seen.)

What People Are Saying

Jerry D. Morelock
"Weider and Franceschi's outstanding new "must read" book shatters the myth of the so-called "Napoleonic Wars" and compels a long-overdue reevaluation of the image of Napoleon as simply a "war loving conqueror."--(Jerry D. Morelock, PhD, ARMCHAIR GENERAL Editor in Chief.)




United States Constitution or Unbowed

United States Constitution (SparkCharts)

Author: SparkNotes Editors

SparkChartsTM—created by Harvard students for students everywhere—serve as study companions and reference tools that cover a wide range of college and graduate school subjects, including Business, Computer Programming, Medicine, Law, Foreign Language, Humanities, and Science. Titles like How to Study, Microsoft Word for Windows, Microsoft Powerpoint for Windows, and HTML give you what it takes to find success in school and beyond. Outlines and summaries cover key points, while diagrams and tables make difficult concepts easier to digest. 

This four-page chart summarizes the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and amendments 11 to 27 in modern-day English. The original text of the preamble and Bill of Rights are also included. Cross-references and notes are provided where relevant.



Books about: Oh Sew Easy Table Toppers or Discovering Wine Country

Unbowed: A Memoir

Author: Wangari Maathai

In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people’s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save Kenya’s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country. Infused with her unique luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai’s remarkable story of courage, faith, and the power of persistence is destined to inspire generations to come.

KLIATT

Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Prize in 2004, recounts her struggles in an inspirational memoir. Born in Kenya in 1940 in a traditional mud-walled house with no electricity or running water, Maathai had to deal with poverty, racism and old traditions including polygamy. She was fortunate in her mother, who protected and supported her in her dreams to become educated and a leader of her people. She began her journey during the '50s at St. Cecilia's Intermediate Primary School, a place safe from the Mau Mau insurgency, which ended when Kenya won its independence from Britain in 1963. Maathai completed her doctorate in 1971 and became the director of the Kenya Red Cross and the Kenya Association of University Women. She founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, which encouraged rural women to plant trees in order to save the land from the depredations of rampant logging. To date they have planted millions of trees in Kenya. Maathai also became involved in politics, an act that landed her in jail more than once. She married and divorced and lost her beloved mother. Her story is one of rugged determination in the face of opposition and courage in the face of danger. She will be an inspiration to high school students, especially girls. Age Range: Ages 15 to adult. REVIEWER: Janet Julian (Vol. 42, No. 1)

James Thorsen - Library Journal

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Kenyan environmental and political activist Maathai, currently an assistant minister in the Ministry for the Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife, Kenya, here offers an autobiography written with honesty, humility, and depth. She relates her early interest in the natural world, her formal studies at a Catholic school far from home, the terror as the Mau Mau rebellion began, and her U.S. college studies in biology. Although she encountered incidents of racial discrimination, her U.S. education proved to be a liberating experience. Having earned a master's in biology in 1965, she was asked to return to the newly independent Kenya to work as a lab assistant at the University of Nairobi and complete her Ph.D. She founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, providing rural women with work planting trees to reforest Kenya, and moved into political activism as well. Her achievements, accomplished as they were in the face of incarceration by those in power, will astonish the reader. Maathai's fairness, activism, and determination to make her country and the continent she loves healthy again are palpable. For all academic libraries as well as public libraries with African collections. [For an interview with Maathai, see "Fall Editors' Picks," LJ9/1/06.—Ed.]



Monday, December 29, 2008

Generation of Swine or Secrets of the Temple

Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s

Author: Hunter S Thompson

Generation of Swine, the second volume of the legendary Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's bestselling "Gonzo Papers," was first published in 1988 and is now back in print.

Here, against a backdrop of late-night tattoo sessions and soldier-of-fortune trade shows, Dr. Thompson is at his apocalyptic best -- covering emblematic events such as the 1987-88 presidential campaign, with Vice President George Bush, Sr., fighting for his life against Republican competitors like Alexander Haig, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson; detailing the GOP's obsession with drugs and drug abuse; while at the same time capturing momentous social phenomena as they occurred, like the rise of cable, satellite TV, and CNN -- 24 hours of mainline news. Showcasing his inimitable talent for social and political analysis, Generation of Swine is vintage Thompson -- eerily prescient, incisive, and enduring.

The New York Times - Herbert Mitgang

Mr. Thompson calls the present generation a ''Generation of Swine.'' With that phrase as his title and premise, he takes no prisoners. A reader can go through the 300-plus pages of the book and look in vain for qualifying journalistic words. Mr. Thompson doesn't write measured prose. It's - well, gonzo.

Publishers Weekly

Thompson may be correct in assuming that the greed and immorality pervading the American social landscape are obscene, but his surreal, half-demented style has hardened into a pose. These columns from the San Francisco Examiner prove only that journalism can become dated quickly. The author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas calls Colonel Khadafy smarter than Ronald Reagan and takes potshots at television news, Gary Hart, Ed Meese, evangelists, Michael Dukakis, Pat Robertson and the Iran-contra hearings. He predicts that the Democrats will self-destruct in the 1988 presidential campaign. People he dislikes are described as ``money-sucking animals,'' ``brainless freaks,'' ``geeks,'' ``greed-crazed lunatics'' and so on. Thompson's flaccid diatribes seem designed to instill a sense of smug superiority in the reader. (June)

Library Journal

Thompson's outrageous reporting style, called ``Gonzo journalism,'' was the rage in the early 1970s. The protest generation cleaved to his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ( LJ 8/72) and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ' 72 ( LJ 6/1/73), both genuinely funny and often perceptive social and political commentaries. This new effort, a collection of 100 short pieces originally published as a column in the San Francisco Examiner over the past two years, tries to recapture the old ebullience, but much of it falls flat. Still, Thompson's fansthere are manywill savor his wild words on Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Al Haig, Ollie North, George Bush, TV preachers, et al. Kenneth F. Kister, Pinellas Park P.L., Fla.



Book review: 125 Best Toaster Oven Recipes or Lipsmackin Backpackin

Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country

Author: William Greider

This ground-breaking best-seller reveals for the first time how the mighty and mysterious Federal Reserve operates -- and how it manipulated and transformed both the American economy and the world's during the last eight crucial years. Based on extensive interviews with all the major players, Secrets of the Temple takes us inside the government institution that is in some ways more secretive than the CIA and more powerful than the President or Congress.

Publishers Weekly

In this penetrating study of the Federal Reserve Board in the Reagan era, Rolling Stone writer Greider (The Education of David Stockman) views the ``Fed'' chairman (until recently Paul Volcker) as the ``second most powerful'' officer of government, the high priest of a temple as mysterious as money itself, its processes unknown to the public and yet to be fully understood by any modern president. Controlling the money supply by secretly buying and selling government bonds and thus affecting interest rates, the Fed can manipulate billions in business profits or losses and millions in worker employment and stock, bond or bank account values, the author explains. Greider's conclusions are startling at times. The Fed, he maintains, could have prevented the 1929 crash. He also asserts the ``awkward little secret'' that the federal government deliberately induces recessions, usually to bring down inflation and interest rates. A time-consuming but extremely informative read. (November 30)

Library Journal

The recent retirement of Paul Volcker as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System seems an appropriate time to look at the man and at the system itself. William R. Neikirk's Volcker ( LJ 10/15/87) brought out the subject's personality, convictions, and modus operandi. Greider ( The Education of David Stockman, LJ 10/15/82) touches on these characteristics, but focuses on the system's influence on world economy. Greider throws much light on how our nation's unelected managers of monetary policy make day-to-day decisions. A very readable narrative, recommended for academic and public libraries. M. Balachandran, Univ. of Illinois Lib., Urbana-Champaign



Table of Contents:
Part 1Secrets of the Temple
1The Choice of Wall Street11
2In the Temple48
3A Pact with the Devil75
4Behavior Modification124
5The Liberal Apology154
6The Roller Coaster181
Part 2The Money Question
7The God Almighty Dollar225
8Democratic Money243
9The Great Compromise268
10Leaning Against the Wind304
Part 3The Liquidation
11A Car with Two Drivers351
12That Old-Time Religion405
13Slaughter of the Innocents450
14The Turn495
Part 4The Restoration of Capital
15A Game of Chicken537
16Winners and Losers570
17"Morning Again in America"605
18The Triumph of Money668
Appendices719
Reference Notes733
Acknowledgments767
Index769

Globality or If Democrats Had Any Brains Theyd Be Republicans

Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything

Author: Harold L Sirkin

Globalization is about Americans outsourcing product development and services to other countries. Globality is the next step, where rapidly developing economies from around the world are now competing with us head to head. The authors present a strong case that the economic climate in which we have lived is going to change in unprecedented ways.

Over the past five years, Hal Sirkin, Jim Hemerling and Arindam Bhattacharya of the prestigious Boston Consulting Group have completed an exhaustive study of more than 3,000 companies operating in the new emerging market economies of China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia and Eastern Europe. Sirkin, Hemerling and Bhattacharya believe that these companies that seem obscure today will be the GMs, Monsantos, Apples, Proctor and Gambles and Toyotas of the future.
Sooner than we think, we will either end up working for these foreign-based companies or, even worse, have to compete with them. Globality will describe how these new companies have come to power, and how, in the West, we will have to step up our game if we are to compete with these new, lean, hungry businesses.

Publishers Weekly

In this bold, well-reasoned book, financial consultants Sirkin, Hemerling and Bhattacharya introduce their concept of "globality," the next stage of globalization. Following the hundreds of emerging-market companies that have benefited from the migration of production to their lower-cost shores, the authors assert that the flow of opportunity is now changing; it is developing into the equivalent of a corporate tsunami that could threaten the existence of some of the most established companies in the developed world. The emerging companies in India, China and Mexico have absorbed and applied lessons from their outsourcing experiences and are in a position to challenge the very companies they first partnered with. The authors explore the strategic changes companies in developed nations must make to meet this new reality. Vibrant case studies enliven this book, which will appeal to businesspeople and those simply trying to understand why the world of business is suddenly so different. (June 11)

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

What People Are Saying

Jeff Henley
"Globality carries an important message for any company that conducts, or wants to conduct, business in the worldwide market and succeed: you must face and overcome a series of challenges unlike any you have experienced before. Sirkin, Hemerling, and Bhattacharya tell us how it can be done."--(Jeff Henley, Chairman of the Board, Oracle Corporation)




Interesting book: Project Managing E Learning or Promoting Your Music

If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

Author: Ann Coulter

“Uttering lines that send liberals into paroxysms of rage, otherwise known as ‘citing facts,’ is the spice of life. When I see the hot spittle flying from their mouths and the veins bulging and pulsing above their eyes, well, that’s when I feel truly alive.”

So begins If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, Ann Coulter’s funniest, most devastating, and, yes, most outrageous book to date.

Coulter has become the brightest star in the conservative firmament thanks to her razor-sharp reasoning and biting wit. Of course, practically any time she opens her mouth, liberal elites denounce Ann, insisting that “She’s gone too far!” and hopefully predicting that this time it will bring a crashing end to her career.

Now you can read all the quotes that have so outraged her enemies and so delighted her legions of fans. More than just the definitive collection of Coulterisms, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans includes dozens of brand-new commentaries written by Coulter and hundreds of never-before-published quotations. This is Ann at her best, covering every topic from A to Z. Here you’ll read Coulter’s take on:

• Her politics: “As far as I’m concerned, I’m a middle-of-the-road moderate and the rest of you are crazy.”
• Hillary Clinton: “Hillary wants to be the first woman president, which would also make her the first woman in a Clinton administration to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office instead of under it.”
• The environment: “God gave us the earth. Wehave dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’”
• Religion: “It’s become increasingly difficult to distinguish the pronouncements of the Episcopal Church from the latest Madonna video.”
• Global warming: “The temperature of the planet has increased about one degree Fahrenheit in the last century. So imagine a summer afternoon when it’s 63 degrees and the next thing you know it’s . . . 64 degrees. Ahhhh!!!! Run for your lives, everybody! Women and children first!”
• Gun control: “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”
• Bill Clinton: “Bill Clinton’s library is the first one to ever feature an Adults Only section.”
• Illegal aliens: “I am the illegal alien of commentary. I will do the jokes that no one else will do.”

If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans is a must-have for anyone who loves (or loves to hate) Ann Coulter.



Sunday, December 28, 2008

God and Gold or Building Construction for the Fire Service

God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World

Author: Walter Russell Mead

A stunningly insightful account of the global political and economic system, sustained first by Britain and now by America, that has created the modern world.

The key to the two countries' predominance, Mead argues, lies in the individualistic ideology inherent in the Anglo-American religion. Over the years Britain and America's liberal democratic system has been repeatedly challeged—by Catholic Spain and Louis XIV, the Nazis, communists, and Al Qaeda—and for the most part, it has prevailed. But the current conflicts in the Middle East threaten to change that record unless we foster a deeper understanding of the conflicts between the liberal world system and its foes.

Kirkus Reviews

A Council on Foreign Relations scholar examines the biggest geopolitical story of modern times: the birth, rise and continuing growth of Anglo-American power. For the past 400 years, notwithstanding the continually renewed opposition from the rest of the world, the Anglo-Americans, with the British handing the baton to the United States, have emerged from every conflict more powerful. Meanwhile, they view themselves as virtuously defending and advancing liberty, protecting the weak, providing opportunity to the poor, introducing principles of democracy and creating more just societies, even as their enemies see only cruelty and greed and a ruthless plot against decency and morality. Mead (Power, Terror, Peace, and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk, 2004, etc.) explains all this and more in his ingenious critique of the brilliantly successful methods and the occasional madness of the English-speaking peoples, from Cromwell to Reagan, Berkeley to Bush. Detailing first the common cultural heritage, he then demonstrates how they have dominated in warfare. He outlines the reasons for their global success (sea power has been the core geopolitical strategy) and analyzes the synthesis of historical experience and religious belief that accounts for their unique and powerful ideology. Finally, he explains why they have been so consistently wrong in believing that their mix of commerce, Christianity, the English language and democratic institutions would convert all opponents and put an end to all strife. He frankly assesses how things stand in the world and how they got this way. Yet, while generally approving of the Anglo-American enterprise, Mead avoids triumphalism. He correctlyacknowledges and explains the resentments and fears of those unable or unwilling to play by the sometimes confusing and often frightening rules of the Anglo-American system. In less skillful hands, this thesis might have drowned in abstruse reasoning or academic jargon, but Mead enlivens the text with numerous amusing and illustrative anecdotes, artful literary allusions and helpful invocations of great historians and philosophers. A remarkable piece of historical analysis bound to provoke discussion and argument in foreign-policy circles. First printing of 40,000



Books about: Maida Heatters Pies and Tarts or Getting the Best from Your Microwave

Building Construction for the Fire Service

Author: Francis L Brannigan

Protect against the life-threatening dangers of building collapse!Extensively updated, revised, and expanded, this 3rd edition text shows you how to recognize the signs of building collapse before it happens—so you can get out while there's still time. You'll be informed about critical topics such as:The toxic combustion products of vermin- and moisture-resistant treated woodThe outcome of multi-million-dollar lawsuits involving some fire-retardant treated plywoodThe total collapse hazard to post-tensioned concrete buildings under constructionThe dynamics of the "stack effect"... and more!Photographs and illustrations help you visualize key concepts, so you can spot dangers on the job.



Table of Contents:
Initial Thoughts and Recommendations. Principles of Construction. Wood Construction. Ordinary Construction. Garden Apartments and Other Protected Structures. Principles of Fire Resistance. Steel Construction. Concrete Construction. Fire Growth. Smoke and Fire Containment. High-Rise Construction. Trusses. Automatic Sprinklers. Rack Storage. Last Minute Updates. Addresses and References. Index.

A Home on the Field or 1858

A Home on the Field: How One Championship Soccer Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America

Author: Paul Cuadros

A Home on the Field is about faith, loyalty, and trust. It is a parable in the tradition of Stand and Deliver and Hoosiers—a story of one team and their accidental coach who became certain heroes to the whole community.

For the past ten years, Siler City, North Carolina, has been at the front lines of immigration in the interior portion of the United States. Like a number of small Southern towns, workers come from traditional Latino enclaves across the United States, as well as from Latin American countries, to work in what is considered the home of industrial-scale poultry processing. At enormous risk, these people have come with the hope of a better life and a chance to realize their portion of the American Dream.

But it isn't always easy. Assimilation into the South is fraught with struggles, and in no place is this more poignant than in the schools. When Paul Cuadros packed his bags and moved south to study the impact of the burgeoning Latino community, he encountered a culture clash between the long-time residents and the newcomers that eventually boiled over into an anti-immigrant rally featuring former Klansman David Duke.

It became Paul's goal to show the growing numbers of Latino youth that their lives could be more than the cutting line at the poultry plants, that finishing high school and heading to college could be a reality. He needed to find something that the boys could commit to passionately, knowing that devotion to something bigger than them would be the key to helping the boys find where they fit in the world. The answer was soccer.

But Siler City, like so many other small rural communities, was a football town, and long-time residents saw soccer as a foreign sport and yet another accommodation to the newcomers. After an uphill battle, the Jets soccer team at Jordan-Matthews High School was born. Suffering setbacks and heartbreak, the majority Latino team, in only three seasons and against all odds, emerged poised to win the state championship.



New interesting textbook: The Audit Process or Electronic Communications

1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War they Failed to See

Author: Bruce Chadwick

1858 explores the events and personalities of the year that would send the America’s North and South on a collision course culminating in the slaughter of 630,000 of the nation’s young men, a greater number than died in any other American conflict. The record of that year is told in seven separate stories, each participant, though unaware, is linked to the oncoming tragedy by the central, though ineffective, figure of that time, the man in the White House, President James Buchanan.

The seven figures who suddenly leap onto history’s stage and shape the great moments to come are: Jefferson Davis, who lived a life out of a Romantic novel, and who almost died from herpes simplex of the eye; the disgruntled Col. Robert E. Lee, who had to decide whether he would stay in the military or return to Virginia to run his family’s plantation; William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the great Union generals, who had been reduced to running a roadside food stand in Kansas; the uprising of eight abolitionists in Oberlin, Ohio, who freed a slave apprehended by slave catchers, and set off a fiery debate across America; a dramatic speech by New York Senator William Seward in Rochester, which foreshadowed the civil war and which seemed to solidify his hold on the 1860 Republican Presidential nomination; John Brown’s raid on a plantation in Missouri, where he freed several slaves, and marched them eleven hundred miles to Canada, to be followed a year later by his catastrophic attack on Harper’s Ferry; and finally, Illinois Senator Steven Douglas’ seven historic debates with little-known Abraham Lincoln in the Illinois Senate race, that would help bring theambitious and determined Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States.

As these stories unfold, the reader learns how the country reluctantly stumbled towards that moment in April 1861 when the Southern army opened fire on Fort Sumter.

Publishers Weekly

Former journalist Chadwick (The General and Mrs. Washington) deals with much more than the previously underappreciated year of 1858 in this engagingly written book. By focusing on the men who drove crucial historical events, Chadwick provides plenty of pre-1858 background to make his case that the events of that year "changed the lives of dozens of important people" and "within a few short years, the history of the nation." Chadwick examines the lives of six who would become the biggest players in the Civil War: Lincoln, Davis, Sherman, Lee, Grant and William Seward, and two others-John Brown and Stephen Douglas-whose actions helped precipitate the conflict. He also offers an insightful look at the enigmatic, eccentric man who was in the White House in 1858, Democrat James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. Chadwick shows clearly how Buchanan dithered-on the slavery issue and in foolish foreign adventures in Paraguay, Mexico and Cuba, among other things-while Rome was about to burn. Buchanan, Chadwick correctly notes, "was certainly not the sole cause of the Civil War," just "one of many, but his ineffectiveness as chief executive dealt a crippling blow to the nation." (Apr.)

Copyright 2007Reed Business Information

Margaret Heilbrun - Library Journal

"The Civil War began in April 1861," begins Chadwick (The General and Martha Washington), who then goes on to say that "this book explores the events and personalities of that single year." Huh? His remark to the contrary, this work is about the year in the title. Chadwick has a penchant for anachronisms, e.g., referring to Douglas and Lincoln in 1858 as "The Prince and the Pauper" 23 years before Twain coined the title, referring to Buchanan's "White House" when it was still commonly called (on its own stationery no less) the "Executive Mansion," and calling Buchanan "paranoid." The book aims to bring the sectional turmoils of 1858 to light for general readers, but be forewarned. An optional purchase.

Kirkus Reviews

An idiosyncratic survey of the American political scene as the clouds gathered for Civil War. The 1856 election of President James Buchanan, the 1857 Dred Scott decision and the proposed pro-slavery, Lecompton Constitution for the new state of Kansas threatened to settle the slavery issue in America, perpetuating forever the peculiar institution that had made the Founders squirm. In 1858, the direction of the political debate changed. Against the backdrop of Buchanan's fecklessness, Chadwick (The General and Mrs. Washington, 2006, etc.) focuses mostly on personalities and incidents headlining the antislavery movement's pushback. The already notorious John Brown's Christmas raid into Missouri and the story of the Oberlin Rescuers both received national press attention, inspiring abolitionists and enraging the South. New York Senator William Seward, in speeches appealing to a "higher law" than the Constitution and warning of an "irrepressible conflict" ahead, positioned himself as the most prominent antislavery elected official and the likely presidential nominee for the Republicans in 1860. Meanwhile, Seward's good friend, Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis, solidified his position as the South's foremost defender and spokesman. In a series of debates during the Illinois senate race-memorably detailed in Allen Guelzo's Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, 2007-Abraham Lincoln made a national reputation for himself and destroyed the hope of the formidable and fence-straddling Stephen A. Douglas for higher office. Throughout the tumultuous year, Buchanan remained in deep denial, preoccupied with foreign policy and visions of territorial expansion, and more concerned withsettling intra-party scores, especially with the fiery Douglas, than with effectively governing the nation. In other chapters seemingly less harmonious with his larger thesis-but forgivable for a writer incapable of dull storytelling-Chadwick looks at the pre-war careers of Robert E. Lee and William Tecumseh Sherman, two unknowns in 1858 destined for later fame. For the general reader, an account of a president who fiddled while the ingredients for a major conflagration assembled before his eyes. Agents: Elizabeth Winick and Jonathon Lyons/McIntosh and Otis



Saturday, December 27, 2008

In an Instant or Nickel and Dimed

In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing

Author: Lee Woodruff

In one of the most anticipated books of the year, Lee Woodruff, along with her husband, Bob Woodruff, share their never-before-told story of romance, resilience, and survival following the tragedy that transformed their lives and gripped a nation.

In January 2006, the Woodruffs seemed to have it all–a happy marriage and four beautiful children. Lee was a public relations executive and Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. Then, while Bob was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him.

In an Instant is the frank and compelling account of how Bob and Lee’s lives came together, were blown apart, and then were miraculously put together again–and how they persevered, with grit but also with humor, through intense trauma and fear. Here are Lee’s heartfelt memories of their courtship, their travels as Bob left a law practice behind and pursued his news career and Lee her freelance business, the glorious births of her children and the challenges of motherhood.

Bob in turn recalls the moment he caught the journalism “bug” while covering Tiananmen Square for CBS News, his love of overseas assignments and his guilt about long separations from his family, and his pride at attaining the brass ring of television news–being chosen to fill the seat of the late Peter Jennings.

And, for the first time, the Woodruffs reveal the agonizing details of Bob’s terrible injuries and his remarkable recovery. We learn thatBob’s return home was not an end to the journey but the first step into a future they have learned not to fear but to be grateful for.

In an Instant is much more than the dual memoir of love and courage. It is an important, wise, and inspiring guide to coping with tragedy–and an extraordinary drama of marriage, family, war, and nation.

A percentage of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the Bob Woodruff Family Fund for Traumatic Brain Injury.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Thus humanized — in ways that would violate the cheer of the talk-show circuit on which they have lately been appearing — the Woodruffs reveal both the strengths and weaknesses that they brought to coping with Bob's crisis. Their frankness heightens the book's impact, as does its wider subject: the increasing frequency in Iraq of explosion-induced head injuries like those Bob suffered. This book means to draw compassion and attention to those casualties, and it surely will.

Publishers Weekly

There's a reason Lee Woodruff's name comes first in this collaboration. While this celebrity memoir revolves around the war injuries suffered by ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, it's really his wife's story. Drawn from the journals she kept during his recovery and also delving deeply into the history of the couple's courtship and family life, this gritty memoir is well served by Lee's capable and compelling speaking voice. Lee's vocal control is strong, even mesmerizing, and she peppers the grave reminiscences with funny stories and witty observations. Her voice sometimes breaks with emotion, whether describing her fears after learning of her husband's condition or earlier heartaches when coping with a miscarriage or learning of the profound hearing loss of one of their twin daughters. Bob intervenes occasionally to describe his family, various career ups and downs, and what he remembers about the incident that rendered him a casualty of war. Listeners may wish to have a tissue or two on hand while they listen to this beautiful story of marriage for better and for worse. Simultaneous release with the Random House hardcover. (Aug.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information



Interesting book: Common Labor or Groupthink in Government

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich

The bestselling, landmark work of undercover reportage, now updated

Acclaimed as an instant classic upon publication, Nickel and Dimed has sold more than 1.5 million copies and become a staple of classroom reading. Chosen for “one book” initiatives across the country, it has fueled nationwide campaigns for a living wage. Funny, poignant, and passionate, this revelatory firsthand account of life in low-wage America—the story of Barbara Ehrenreich’s attempts to eke out a living while working as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart associate—has become an essential part of the nation’s political discourse.

Now, in a new afterword, Ehrenreich shows that the plight of the underpaid has in no way eased: with fewer jobs available, deteriorating work conditions, and no pay increase in sight, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.

New York Times

One of today's most original writers.

Chicago Tribune

Ehrenreich is passionate, public, hotly lucid, and politically engaged.

Boston Globe

Ehrenreich's scorn withers, her humor stings, and her radical light shines on.

Ms. Magazine - Vivien Labaton

Nickel and Dimed is an important book that should be read by anyone who has been lulled into middle-class complacency.

New York Times Book Review - Dorothy Gallagher

We have Barbara Ehrenreich to thank for bringing us the news of America's working poor so clearly and directly, and conveying with it a deep moral outrage and a finely textured sense of lives as lived. As Michael Harrington was, she is now our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism.

Publishers Weekly

In contrast to recent books by Michael Lewis and Dinesh D'Souza that explore the lives and psyches of the New Economy's millionares, Ehrenreich (Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class) turns her gimlet eye on the view from the workforce's bottom rung. Determined to find out how anyone could make ends meet on $7 an hour, she left behind her middle class life as a journalist—except for $1000 in start-up funds, a car and her laptop computer—to try to sustain herself as a low-skilled worker for a month at a time. In 1999 and 2000, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress in Key West, Fla., as a cleaning woman and a nursing home aide in Portland, Maine, and in a Wal-Mart in Minneapolis, Minn.

During the application process, she faced routine drug tests and spurious "personality tests"; once on the job, she endured constant surveillance and numbing harangues over infractions like serving a second roll and butter. Beset by transportation costs and high rents, she learned the tricks of the trade from her co-workers, some of whom sleep in their cars, and many of whom work when they're vexed by arthritis, back pain or worse, yet still manage small gestures of kindness. Despite the advantages of her race, education, good health and lack of children, Ehrenreich's income barely covered her month's expenses in only one instance, when she worked seven days a week at two jobs (one of which provided free meals) during the off-season in a vacation town. Delivering a fast read that's both sobering and sassy, she gives readers pause about those caught in the economy's undertow, even in good times.

Dorothy Gallagher

"Barbara Ehrenreich . . . is our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism."
—Dorothy Gallagher, The New York Times Book

Eileen Boris

"With grace and wit, Ehrenreich discovers . . . the irony of being nickel and dimed during unprecedented prosperity."
—Eileen Boris, The Boston Globe

Stephen Metcalf

"Ehrenreich is a superb and relaxed stylist {with} a tremendous sense of rueful humor."
—Stephen Metcalf, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Diana Henriques

". . . you will read this explosive little book cover to cover and pass it on to all your friends and relatives."
—Diana Henriques, The New York Times

Anne Colamosca

"Angry, amusing . . . An in-your-face expose."
—Anne Colamosca, Business Week

Susannah Meadows

"Jarring, full of riveting grit . . . This book is already unforgettable."
—Susannah Meadows, Newsweek

Library Journal

A close observer and astute analyzer of American life (The Worst Years of Our Life and The Fear of Falling), Ehrenreich turns her attention to what it is like trying to subsist while working in low-paying jobs. Inspired to see what boom times looked like from the bottom, she hides her real identity and attempts to make a life on a salary of just over $300 per week after taxes. She is often forced to work at two jobs, leaving her time and energy for little else than sleeping and working. Ehrenreich vividly describes her experiences living in isolated trailers and dilapidated motels while working as a nursing-home aide, a Wal-Mart "sales associate," a cleaning woman, a waitress, and a hotel maid in three states: Florida, Maine, and Minnesota. Her narrative is candid, often moving, and very revealing. Looking back on her experiences, Ehrenreich claims that the hardest thing for her to accept is the "invisibility of the poor"; one sees them daily in restaurants, hotels, discount stores, and fast-food chains but one doesn't recognize them as "poor" because, after all, they have jobs. No real answers to the problem but a compelling sketch of its reality and pervasiveness. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/01.] Jack Forman, San Diego Mesa Coll. Lib. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Between 1998 and 2000, Ehrenreich spent about three months in three cities throughout the nation, attempting to "get by" on the salary available to low-paid and unskilled workers. Beginning with advantages not enjoyed by many such individuals-she is white, English-speaking, educated, healthy, and unburdened with transportation or child-care worries-she tried to support herself by working as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart employee. She discovered that her average salary of $7 per hour couldn't even provide the necessities of life (rent, transportation, and food), let alone the luxury of health coverage. Her account is at once enraging and sobering. In straightforward language, she describes how labor-intensive, demeaning, and controlling such jobs can be: she scrubbed floors on her hands and knees, and found out that talking to coworkers while on the job was considered "time theft." She describes full-time workers who sleep in their cars because they cannot afford housing and employees who yearn for the ability to "take a day off now and then-and still be able to buy groceries the next day." In a concluding chapter, Ehrenreich takes on issues and questions posed before and during the experiment, including why these wages are so low, why workers are so accepting of them, and what Washington's refusal to increase the minimum wage to a realistic "living wage" says about both our economy and our culture. Mandatory reading for any workforce entrant.-Dori DeSpain, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Molly Ivins
Reading Ehrenreich is good for the soul.


Diane Sawyer
Barbara Ehrenreich is smart, provocative, funny, and sane in a world that needs more of all four.




Table of Contents:
Introduction: Getting Ready1
1Serving in Florida11
2Scrubbing in Maine51
3Selling in Minnesota121
Evaluation193

A Summer of Hummingbirds or Windows Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit

A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade

Author: Christopher Benfey

A surprising and scandalous story of how the interaction within a group of exceptional and uniquely talented characters shaped and changed American thought

At the close of the Civil War, the United States took a deep breath to lick wounds and consider the damage done. A Summer of Hummingbirds reveals how, at that tender moment, the lives of some of our most noted writers, poets, and artists-including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade-intersected to make sense of it all. Renowned critic Christopher Benfey maps the intricate web of friendship, family, and romance that connects these larger than life personalities to one another, and in doing so discovers a unique moment in the development of American character.

In this meticulously researched and creatively imagined work, Benfey takes the seemingly arbitrary image of the hummingbird and traces its "route of evanescence" as it travels in circles to and from the creative wellsprings of the age: from the naturalist writings of abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson to the poems of his wayward pupil Emily Dickinson; into the mind of Henry Ward Beecher and within the writings and paintings of his famous sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. A Summer of Hummingbirds unveils how, through the art of these great thinkers, the hummingbird became the symbol of an era, an image through which they could explore their controversial (and often contradictory) ideas of nature, religion, sexuality, family, time, exoticism, and beauty.

Benfey's complex tale of interconnection comes to an apex in Amherst, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1882, a time when loyalties were betrayed andthoughts exchanged with the speed of a hummingbird's wings. Here in the wake of the very public Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton sex scandal, Mabel Loomis Todd-the young and beautiful protйgйe to the hummingbird painter Martin Johnson Heade-begins an affair with Austin Dickinson and leaves her mentor heartbroken; Emily Dickinson is found in the arms of her father's friend Judge Otis Lord, and that's not all.

As infidelity and lust run rampant, the incendiary ghost of Lord Byron is evoked, and the characters of A Summer of Hummingbirds find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Calvinist world of decorum, restraint, and judgment and a romantic, unconventional world in which nature prevails and freedom is all.

The Washington Post - Mindy Aloff

…[a] tender, suspenseful and informed meditation on action and thought in the cultivated realms of East Coast America following the Civil War.

M. Neville - Library Journal

Literary professor, scholar, and critic Benfey (The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan) examines the intertwining lives of several American writers and artists in post-Civil War America. Contending that while these were years of societal instability, as much had changed after the war, Benfey likewise sees this era as a time of liberation for this group of gifted men and women. Readers gain insight into the behavior of an extended cast of characters including renowned preacher/orator Henry Ward Beecher; writer and painter Mabel Loomis Todd; Austin Dickinson, Emily Dickinson's prominent attorney brother; and painter Martin Johnson Heade. Their parallel interests-e.g., travel and exploration of warmer climates, obsessions with the hummingbird (a bird native only to the Americas) and the trailing arbutus flower, and a fascination with the English romantic writer Lord Byron-are also emphasized. It is clear the author seeks to enlighten, and he achieves that goal with this scholarly yet intimate behind-the-scenes glimpse into the lives of some of our most important artists. Recommended for larger academic libraries.

Kirkus Reviews

Ambitious, eccentric synthesis of late 19th-century artistic currents shows a static America progressing after the Civil War into a period of movement and romance. As evidenced by his previous teeming works, Benfey (The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan, 2003, etc.) likes to keep the literary pot boiling. In this elegant but not entirely cohesive study, he uses the hummingbird as a metaphor for the postwar era's evanescent spirit, and as a means of spotlighting the shared interests of the actors he has assembled. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a radical writer who served as a colonel in the Union army, published essays about hummingbirds that were read avidly by Emily Dickinson, who in turn wove the birds into poems and wrote to Higginson for literary advice. Harriet Beecher Stowe, credited by President Lincoln with starting the Civil War with Uncle Tom's Cabin, sheltered, named and drew pictures of a wounded hummingbird, which Benfey argues became a stand-in for her troubled, alcoholic son Fred. Martin Johnson Heade, recognized for his paintings of salt marshes and haystacks, traveled to Brazil to paint hummingbirds; his work was beloved by Stowe and her brother, abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher, for whom the bird was a metaphor for the delicate female parishioners he seduced. Heade's comely apprentice and crush, Mabel Todd, mingled with the Dickinsons in Amherst, Mass., offering Emily her sketches of hummingbirds while having an affair with the poet's brother Austin; Mabel later helped bring Emily's work to the public light. One life dovetails into the other in this spiraling contemplation, which shows itinerant journalist Mark Twainemerging from his own trip to the tropics "at a critical moment of self-recognition," recognizing that Heade had undertaken "a kindred quest."A handsomely illustrated volume that reflects Benfey's depth of reading and passionate interests, though the connections he makes are occasionally strained.



Table of Contents:

Dramatis Personae

Prologue: A Place in the Sky Where a Cloud Has Been 1

Pt. 1 An Oblique War

Ch. 1 A Tea Rose 13

Ch. 2 The Prodigal 39

Ch. 3 Beecher's Pockets 63

Ch. 4 Tristes Tropiques 81

Pt. 2 At the Hotel Byron

Ch. 5 The Prisoner of Chillon 107

Ch. 6 Birds of Passage 133

Ch. 7 : Covert Flowers, Hidden Nests 159

Pt. 3 Transits of Venus

Ch. 8 Foggy Bottom 179

Ch. 9 A Route of Evanescence 195

Ch. 10 Florida 221

Epilogue: Toward the Blue Peninsula 243

Acknowledgments 261

Notes 263

Index 279

Read also Kids Party Games and Activities or Pillsbury Best of the Bake Off Desserts

Windows Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit

Author: Harlan Carvey

If your job requires investigating compromised Windows hosts, you must read Windows Forensic Analysis.
Richard Bejtlich, Coauthor of Real Digital Forensics and Amazon.com Top 500 Book Reviewer

The Registry Analysis chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
Troy Larson, Senior Forensic Investigator of Microsoft's IT Security Group

I also found that the entire book could have been written on just registry forensics. However, in order to create broad appeal, the registry section was probably shortened. You can tell Harlan has a lot more to tell.
Rob Lee, Instructor and Fellow at the SANS Technology Institute, coauthor of Know Your Enemy: Learning About Security Threats, 2E

Windows Forensic Analysis DVD Toolkit, 2E replaces the first edition as the most comprehensive and thorough resource on incident response and forensic analysis of Windows systems available, providing information and resources not available anywhere else. This book covers both live and post-mortem response collection and analysis methodologies, addressing material that is applicable to law enforcement, the federal government, students, and consultants. It also brings this material to the doorstep of system administrators, who are often the frontline troops when an incident occurs, but due to staffing and budgets do not have the necessary knowledge to respond effectively. The companion DVD contains significant new and updated materials (movies, spreadsheet, code, etc.) not available any place else, because they were created and maintained by the author.

In the two years since the first edition was originally published, cybercrime has continued to increase, and thecriminals committing the crimes have continued to become more sophisticated. Analysts and investigators need up-to-date information to stay one step ahead, whether they're examining a system for signs of an intrusion or a data breach. Also, state and federal legislation (e.g., CA-1386), as well as standards issued by regulatory bodies (e.g., PCI and HIPAA), are adding an entirely new dimension to what was once thought to be solely the domain of IT staff. Incident responders and forensic analysts now have a whole new set of questions to answer, and the only way to answer them is to be armed the latest and most up-to-date information and analysis techniques, all of which are covered in detail in this critical update of the best-selling resource.

* Based on reviewer feedback, the most popular chapter of the book, Registry Analysis, is thoroughly upgraded and expanded with a completely new set of unique tools developed and demonstrated by the author.
* A brand-new chapter, Forensic Analysis on a Budget, collects freely available tools that are essential for small labs, state (or below) law enforcement, and educational organizations that can't afford bloated and expensive application suites.
* Completely new chapter Tying It All Together puts the otherwise isolated concepts in the book into context of incident response and addresses frequent questions posed in public lists and forums.
* Once something a responder should do, developments in 2008 made Windows memory analysis a more sophisticated and important requirement that is given increased detail and focus in the new version of the chapter in this book.
* New pedagogical elements Lessons from the Field, Case Studies, and War Stories present real-life experiences from the trenches by an expert in the trenches, making the material real and showing the why behind the how.
* The companion DVD contains new, significant, and unique materials (movies, spreadsheet, code, etc.) not available any place else, because they were created by the author.



Friday, December 26, 2008

Ellis Island Interviews or Richistan

Ellis Island Interviews: Immigrants Tell Their Stories in Their Own Words

Author: Peter Morton Coan

Like the Statue of Liberty who lifts her lamp nearby, Ellis Island symbolizes the hope, the promise, and the dreams of freedom and opportunity that lure impoverished and persecuted immigrants to seek a better life in America. Between 1892 and 1954, however, it was far more than a symbol; for millions, it was the final hurdle between them and the realization of their dreams. Indeed, if you were born in the United States, it's quite likely that at least one of your ancestors passed through Ellis Island.

In Ellis Island Interviews, more than 100 immigrants from all over Europe and the Middle East offer accounts of those difficult steps that carried them to and through Ellis Island's legendary Golden Door. They describe the lives they left behind, explain why they emigrated, and offer moving stories of their often-frightening experiences, both while crossing the Atlantic and in gaining entry to the United States. They also tell us how they fared in their new homeland. Some of the adventurous souls who tell their stories here-including Bob Hope, writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, and movie director Otto Preminger-rose to fame and fortune in America,. Even the unsung, however, were heroes. This book is a testament to their courage and perseverance.

Peter Morton Coan, former managing editor of Boating World magazine and executive editor of World Tennis magazine, is the author of the critically acclaimed biography Taxi: The Harry Chapin Story. Ellis Island Interviews is his third nonfiction book.



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Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich

Author: Robert Frank

The rich have always been different from you and me, but this revealing and funny journey through “Richistan” entertainingly shows that they are more different than ever. Richistanis have 400-foot-yachts, 30,000-square-foot homes, house staffs of more than 100, and their own “arborists.” They’re also different from Old Money, and have torn down blue-blood institutions to build their own shining empire.
Richistan is like the best travel writing, full of colorful and interesting stories providing insights into exotic locales. Robert Frank has been loitering on the docks of yacht marinas, pestering his way into charity balls, and schmoozing with real estate agents selling mega-houses to capture the story of the twenty-first century’s nouveau riche:

House-training the rich. People with new wealth have to be taught how to act like, well, proper rich people. Just in the nick of time, there’s been a boom in the number of newly trained butlers—“household managers”—who will serve just the right cabernet when a Richistani’s new buddies from Palm Beach stop by.

“My boat is bigger than your boat.” Only in Richistan would a 100-foot-boat be considered a dinghy. Personal pleasure craft have started to rival navy destroyers in size and speed. Richistan is also a place where friends make fun of those misers who buy the new girlfriend a mere Mercedes SLK.

“You want my money? Prove that you’re helping the needy!” Richistanis are not only consuming like crazy, they’re also shaking up the establishment’s bureaucratic, slow-moving charity network, makinglean, results-oriented philanthropy an important new driving force.

Move over, Christian Coalition. Richistanis are more Democratic than Republican, “fed up and not going to take it anymore,” and willing to spend millions to get progressive-oriented politicians elected.

“My name is Mike and I’m rich.” Think that money is the answer? Think again as Robert Frank explores the emotional complexities of wealth.

And, as Robert Frank reveals, there is not one Richistan but three: Lower, Middle, and Upper, each of which has its own levels and distinctions of wealth —the haves and the have-mores. The influence of Richistan and the Richistanis extends well beyond the almost ten million households that make up its population, as the nonstop quest for status and an insatiable demand for luxury goods reshapes the entire American economy.

DaleFarris - Library Journal

Frank, Wall Street Journalsenior special writer, created a stir in popular culture when he began his weekly WSJcolumn and daily blog called The Wealth Report, which discussed the way of life of "Richistanis," residents of the unique world of "Richistan," who have realized tremendous wealth. In 2003, the author learned that the number of American millionaire households had more than doubled since 1995 to over eight million and that these newly affluent were beginning to cluster and create their own universe. In 2003, WSJassigned Frank to focus full time on the life and times of the nouveau riche, which led to his popular Wealth Reporter column and, ultimately, to this fully fleshed work, which provides a fascinating analysis of the life and the culture of the ultra-rich. He digs deep, analyzing their high-end investing patterns and business savvy, charitable giving, and purchase of luxury goods and services. Frank describes their own personalized health-care system, specialized transport system, unlimited, customized travel network, household managers, and much more. He also provides an understanding of the paradoxical nature of many of the newly rich that explains why so many are as common as ordinary middle-class Americans, even though they have more money than they could ever spend and are nothing like the select few among this subculture who attract a media frenzy, like Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, and Bill Gates. The lively narration by Dick Hill helps maintain interest throughout this material, which provides an important contribution to the fields of economics and demography. Highly recommended for university and larger public libraries.



1453 or Devils Highway

1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West

Author: Roger Crowley

A complete and compelling account of the fall of Constantinople, the siege that gave rise to today's jihad.

When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, a remarkable era in world history ended. Constantinople, the "city of the world's desire," was a wealthy, imperial, intimidating, and Christian city, influencing world opinion for a thousand years. The fall of Constantinople marked the end of the Byzantium Empire and the end of the medieval era. Thereafter, two worlds would rise -- that of the West and that of the Middle East.

1453 is brought to life by the stories of its two ambitious battling leaders-Mehmed II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the 57th emperor of Byzantium. It is a vivid, intense tale of courage and cruelty, of technological ingenuity, of endurance and luck. Impeccably researched and told as a real-life adventure, the book explores the issues that led up to and resulted from the fall of Constantinople in a way that is easily grasped and jumps from the pages into the headlines of world news. 1453 is the story of a moment of change that has new relevance today -- a crucial link in the chain of events that besets the modern world.

Roger Crowley works in publishing in England. A former teacher, he has lived and worked in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) and is fluent in Turkish. He lives in Cheltenham, England.

Publishers Weekly

On May 29, 1453, Ottoman forces, under the leadership of Mehmet II, concluded their long and bloody siege of Constantinople by storming the city and overtaking it. According to Crowley, who works in publishing in England; the Ottoman conquest of the city brought to an end centuries of conflict between the Byzantine Empire and Islam. In overwhelming detail and colorless prose, Crowley chronicles the story of an ancient city and its attraction to members of two major religions. Before Mehmet's conquest, Constantinople had faced various unsuccessful sieges, and Crowley faithfully records them. The most destructive events came between 1341 and 1371, when earthquakes and the Black Death devastated the city, turning it into a forlorn series of villages. Although the Byzantine capital recovered enough of its former glory to entice Mehmet to its walls, even he felt tremendous disappointment, finding the city didn't live up to its reputation. Crowley drones through the day-by-day events of Mehmet's siege and the results of the conquest. Perhaps the author's most instructive point, made by others as well, is that Mehmet turned the city into one where religious toleration and multiculturalism flourished. (Aug. 10) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A fluent history of the annus horribilis in which impregnable Constantinople finally fell to Islam, a key moment in a 1,500-year-long clash of civilizations. Constantinople was a multinational, multiethnic city at a great cultural crossroads. Its army and that of the threatening Turks were similarly various: as British writer Crowley, a sometime resident of Istanbul, remarks, the Ottoman Empire's "crack troops were Slavs, its leading general Greek, its admiral Bulgarian, its sultan probably half Serbian or Macedonian." Both sides were intent upon destroying each other. The Ottomans were further driven by the knowledge that Byzantium was the first Christian nation, psychologically important to the rest of Christendom, and they took a calculated risk that by attacking it-and this marked the first time Muslim armies had moved against the city in generations-they would not stir up all of Europe to come to its defense. At the dawn of the Renaissance and with religious and civil strife aplenty at home, the Europeans could not be bothered; as a disappointed Byzantine noted, "We received as much aid from Rome as had been sent to us by the sultan of Cairo." The Ottoman sultan, Mehmet II, brought something new to the field: a 27-foot-long cannon that hurled wall-crushing shots against the city, backing his great fleets and ground forces. A six-day bombardment such as the world had not seen ensued, even as Muslims and Christians committed reciprocal atrocities on the prisoners in their hold. Because, by the Emperor Constantine XI's order, the city would not yield, Mehmet tempted his troops with the promise of a good plundering of the city-though, as Crowley notes, there wasn't much left to be hauledoff, Constantinople having been pretty well picked over in centuries past. Still, the city fell, Constantine was killed and all of Europe mourned the loss of the Eastern Empire, which ushered in two centuries of Islamic warfare on European soil. Swiftly paced, useful guide to understanding the long enmity between Islam and Christianity.



Table of Contents:
List of Illustrationsix
Mapsx
Prologue: The Red Apple1
1The Burning Sea9
2Dreaming of Istanbul23
3Sultan and Emperor37
4Cutting the Throat52
5The Dark Church65
6The Wall and the Gun79
7Numerous as the Stars95
8The Awful Resurrection Blast110
9A Wind from God123
10Spirals of Blood138
11Terrible Engines156
12Omens and Portents173
13"Remember the Date"187
14The Locked Gates203
15A Handful of Dust217
16The Present Terror of the World235
Epilogue: Resting Places253
About the Sources261
Source Notes267
Bibliography283
Acknowledgments289
Index291

Book about:

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



Thursday, December 25, 2008

The Breakthrough or My FBI

The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama

Author: Gwen Ifill

In The Breakthrough, veteran journalist Gwen Ifill surveys the American political landscape, shedding new light on the impact of Barack Obama’s stunning presidential victory and introducing the emerging young African American politicians forging a bold new path to political power.

Ifill argues that the Black political structure formed during the Civil Rights movement is giving way to a generation of men and women who are the direct beneficiaries of the struggles of the 1960s. She offers incisive, detailed profiles of such prominent leaders as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and U.S. Congressman Artur Davis of Alabama (all interviewed for this book), and also covers numerous up-and-coming figures from across the nation. Drawing on exclusive interviews with power brokers such as President Obama, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vernon Jordan, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, his son Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., and many others, as well as her own razor-sharp observations and analysis of such issues as generational conflict, the race/ gender clash, and the "black enough" conundrum, Ifill shows why this is a pivotal moment in American history.

The Breakthrough is a remarkable look at contemporary politics and an essential foundation for understanding the future of American democracy in the age of Obama.

Ann Burns - Library Journal

Moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and senior correspondent of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, Ifill focuses on young African American male politicians who have benefited from the Civil Rights Movement, offering compelling profiles of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and many others.



New interesting book:

My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror

Author: Louis J Freeh

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

Terror and Consent or If Democrats Had Any Brains Theyd Be Republicans

Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century

Author: Philip Bobbitt

An urgent reconceptualization of the Wars on Terror from the author of The Shield of Achilles (“magisterial”— The New York Times, “a classic for future generations”—The New York Review of Books). In this book Philip Bobbitt brings together historical, legal, and strategic analyses to understand the idea of a “war on terror.” Does it make sense? What are its historical antecedents? How would such a war be “won”? What are the appropriate doctrines of constitutional and international law for democracies in such a struggle?

He provocatively declares that the United States is the chief cause of global networked terrorism because of overwhelming American strategic dominance. This is not a matter for blame, he insists, but grounds for reflection on basic issues. We have defined the problem of winning the fight against terror in a way that makes the situation virtually impossible to resolve. We need to change our ideas about terrorism, war, and even victory itself.

Bobbitt argues that the United States has ignored the role of law in devising its strategy, with fateful consequences, and has failed to reform law in light of the changed strategic context. Along the way he introduces new ideas and concepts—Parmenides’ Fallacy, the Connectivity Paradox, the market state, and the function of terror as a by-product of globalization—to help us prepare for what may be a decades-long conflict of which the battle against al Qaeda is only the first instance.

At stake is whether we can maintain states of consent in the twenty-first century or whether the dominant constitutional orderwill be that of states of terror. Challenging, provocative, and insightful, Terror and Consent addresses the deepest themes of governance, liberty, and violence. It will change the way we think about confronting terror—and it will change the way we evaluate public policies in that struggle.

The New York Times - Edward Rothstein

…powerful, dense and brilliant…there is so much to think about in this book that the disagreements it inspires are part of its value.

The New York Times Book Review - Niall Ferguson

This is quite simply the most profound book to have been written on the subject of American foreign policy since the attacks of 9/11—indeed, since the end of the cold war. I have no doubt it will be garlanded with prizes. It deserves to be. It is more important that it should be read, marked and inwardly digested by all three of the remaining candidates to succeed George W. Bush as president of the United States.

The Washington Post - Daniel Byman

My advice is that readers should approach Terror and Consent with a mixture of caution and open-mindedness. Not all of Bobbitt's pronouncements may be convincing. But his book constantly prods us to reexamine our preconceptions about terrorism, which is by itself some preparation for what may lie ahead.

Publishers Weekly

Bobbitt follows his magisterial Shield of Achilleswith an equally complex and provocative analysis of the West's ongoing struggle against terrorism. According to Bobbitt, the primary "driver" of terrorism is not Islam but the emergence of the market state. "Market states" (such as the U.S.) are characterized by their emphasis on deregulation, privatization (of prisons, pensions, armies), abdication of typical nation-state duties (providing welfare or health care) and adoption of corporate models of "operational effectiveness." While market states are too militarily formidable to be challenged conventionally, they have allowed for the sale of weapons on the international market, thereby losing their monopoly on mass destruction; furthermore they are disproportionately vulnerable to "destabilizing, delegitimating, demoralizing" terror. Bobbitt asserts that this situation requires a shift from a strategy of deterrence and containment to one of preclusion. States must recast concepts of sovereignty and legitimacy to define what levels of force they may deploy in seeking and suppressing terrorists. Domestically, the shift involves accepting that in order to protect citizens, the state must strengthen its powers in sensitive areas like surveillance. International alliances can be a major advantage in a war waged not against terrorists, but terror itself. Terror and Consent, the first work to interpret terrorism in the context of political theory, merits wide circulation and serious consideration. (Apr.)

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

Kirkus Reviews

A distinguished scholar proposes an entirely new way of understanding and combating modern terrorism. With the startling statement that "almost every widely held idea we currently entertain about twenty-first century terrorism and its relationship to the Wars against Terror is wrong and must be thoroughly rethought," Bobbitt (Law/Columbia Univ.; The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, 2002, etc.) reframes the discussion, placing terrorism in a historical, strategic and legal context. Building on the premises of his previous work and drawing on a staggeringly wide array of authorities, he argues that with the emergence of the globalized market state, we can expect terror groups to become every bit as worldwide, networked and decentralized as the states themselves. In this sense, the market states have "caused" terrorism or, at least, forced it to assume its modern face. With access to lethal weapons and state-of-the-art communications, future terrorists will make al-Qaeda memorable only as a crude pioneer. To meet this security threat, writes the author, states that depend on the consent of the governed must radically recalibrate their strategies and laws. Bobbitt's prescriptions for preventing terrorism and the proliferation of WMDs, for intervening to prevent genocide or ethnic cleansing, and for mitigating the human-rights consequences of natural catastrophes will likely prove controversial. There are many who will disagree with his arguments, including those unconverted to his belief in the waning of the nation-state, those who insist that the target is confined to radical Islam, and those who resist the idea that we are in a proper war and recoil at the prospectof any diminution of our civil rights to fight it. But this is a serious book, and, notwithstanding his impressive theoretical reach and philosophical scope, Bobbitt keeps his feet on the ground, boldly offering detailed real-world proposals to combat the problems he outlines. To learn, for example, that our safety may require the repeal of statutes passed in the wake of the Civil War-specifically, the Posse Comitatus Act-is to glimpse the shaky state of our preparedness for this new conflict. A challenge for the general reader but a feast for students of law, foreign policy and international relations.



Table of Contents:

Introduction: Plagues in the Time of Feast     3
The Idea of a War Against Terror
The New Masque of Terrorism     23
The Market State: Arming Terror     85
Warfare Against Civilians     125
Victory Without Parades     180
Law and Strategy in the Domestic Theater of Terror
The Constitutional Relationship Between Rights and Powers     241
Intelligence, Information, and Knowledge     289
The Strategic Relationship Between Ends and Means     350
Terrorism: Supply and Demand     397
Strategy and Law in the International Theater of Terror
The Illusion of an American Strategic Doctrine     429
Mise-en-Scene: The Properties of Sovereignty     452
Danse Macabre: Global Governance and Legitimacy     484
The Triage of Terror     511
Conclusion: A Plague Treatise for the Twenty-first Century     521
Coda     547
Acknowledgments     549
Notes     553
Selected Bibliography     647
Annotated Index     663

Go to:

If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

Author: Ann Coulter

“Uttering lines that send liberals into paroxysms of rage, otherwise known as ‘citing facts,’ is the spice of life. When I see the hot spittle flying from their mouths and the veins bulging and pulsing above their eyes, well, that’s when I feel truly alive.”

So begins If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, Ann Coulter’s funniest, most devastating, and, yes, most outrageous book to date.

Coulter has become the brightest star in the conservative firmament thanks to her razor-sharp reasoning and biting wit. Of course, practically any time she opens her mouth, liberal elites denounce Ann, insisting that “She’s gone too far!” and hopefully predicting that this time it will bring a crashing end to her career.

Now you can read all the quotes that have so outraged her enemies and so delighted her legions of fans. More than just the definitive collection of Coulterisms, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans includes dozens of brand-new commentaries written by Coulter and hundreds of never-before-published quotations. This is Ann at her best, covering every topic from A to Z. Here you’ll read Coulter’s take on:

• Her politics: “As far as I’m concerned, I’m a middle-of-the-road moderate and the rest of you are crazy.”
• Hillary Clinton: “Hillary wants to be the first woman president, which would also make her the first woman in a Clinton administration to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office instead of under it.”
• The environment: “God gave us the earth. Wehave dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’”
• Religion: “It’s become increasingly difficult to distinguish the pronouncements of the Episcopal Church from the latest Madonna video.”
• Global warming: “The temperature of the planet has increased about one degree Fahrenheit in the last century. So imagine a summer afternoon when it’s 63 degrees and the next thing you know it’s . . . 64 degrees. Ahhhh!!!! Run for your lives, everybody! Women and children first!”
• Gun control: “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”
• Bill Clinton: “Bill Clinton’s library is the first one to ever feature an Adults Only section.”
• Illegal aliens: “I am the illegal alien of commentary. I will do the jokes that no one else will do.”

If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans is a must-have for anyone who loves (or loves to hate) Ann Coulter.