Saturday, December 5, 2009

The Origins of the Second World War or Multinational Enterprise and the Globalization of Networks of Knowledge

The Origins of the Second World War

Author: R J Overy

The Origins of the Second World War explores the reasons why the Second World War broke out in September 1939 and not sooner, and why a European war expanded into world war by 1941.

Richard Overy argues that this was not just ‘Hitler’s War’ but one that had its roots and origins in the decline of the old empires of Britain and France and the rise of ambitious new powers in Germany, Italy and Japan. Any explanation of the outbreak of hostilities must be multinational in scope taking into account the basic instability of the international system that had still not recovered from the shocks of the Great War.  

In this third edition:

·         The role of Italy in the approach to war has been re-evaluated

·         Overy addresses recent revelations about Soviet policy in the 1930s, particularly exploring Soviet military planning and preparations

·         Arguments about Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement are rethought and reassessed.

This new edition has now been completely overhauled, updated, expanded and reset. With a comprehensive documents section, colour plates, guide to who’s who, a chronology and lists of further reading, The Origins of the Second World War will provide an invaluable introduction to any student of this fascinating period.

Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He has authored 17 books on the Third Reich, the Second World War and air warfare which include:The Air War 1939-1945 (2nd ed, 2006),Why the Allies Won(2nd ed, 2006) and The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia (2004)which won both the Wolfson and the  Hessell Tiltman Prizes for History in 2005.



Table of Contents:

Chronology

Who's Who

Glossary

Maps

Pt. 1 Background 1

1 Explaining the Second World War 3

Pt. 2 Analysis 11

2 The International Crisis 13

3 Economic and Imperial Rivalry 31

4 Armaments and Domestic Politics 46

5 War Over Poland 62

6 From European to World War 82

Pt. 3 Assessment 93

7 Hitler's War? 95

Pt. 4 Documents 101

1 The Treaty of Versailles and Germany 102

2 The Covenant of the League 103

3 The search for a settlement 103

4 American 'appeasement' 104

5 Stalin anticipates war 104

6 The 'Hossbach memorandum' 105

7 Preparation for war before Munich 106

8 The Munich Conference 107

9 The Munich Agreement 108

10 Economic pressure on Japan 109

11 Mussolini's vision of empire 110

12 Hitler's dream of world power 111

13 Economic appeasement 112

14 Britain and Germany in the Balkans 112

15 The Four-Year Plan 113

16 Economic dangers for Britain 114

17 The crisis in France 114

18 'Peace for our time' 115

19 The change of mood in the west 115

20 Hitler plans to crush Poland 116

21 Chamberlain guarantees Poland 117

22 The Franco-British 'war plan', 1939 117

23 British intelligence on Germany 118

24 Stalin warns the west after Munich 119

25 The Franco-British failure in Moscow 119

26 The Soviet reaction to German advances, 1939 120

27 The German-Soviet Pact 121

28 Hitler gambles on western weakness 122

29 The last gasp of appeasement 123

30 Bonnet's doubts about war 123

31 Poland in the middle 124

32 The last days of peace 125

33 Chamberlain's 'awful Sunday' 125

34 Berlin proposes peace 126

35 The Tripartite Pact 127

36 Preparation for total mobilization in Germany 128

37 The Barbarossa Directive128

38 The German attack on Russia 129

39 Russia raises the price for co-operation 129

40 Japan decides on war 130

41 Creating the new world order 130

References 133

Index 145

Book about: Osmotic Dehydration and Vacuum Impregnation or Cassandras Psychic Party Games

Multinational Enterprise and the Globalization of Networks of Knowledge

Author: Peter J Buckley

This book analyzes the role of knowledge within multinational enterprised (MNEs), its spatial dimensions and its transfer within enterprises. It includes conceptual pieces on the global networks of MNEs and pays special attention to Asian network firms. It introdues the concept of the 'global factory' - a framework for the understanding of spatially distributed activities under the control (though not necessarily the ownership) of a local firm. The book also critically examines the concept of globalization and contrasts this with the process of regional integration. It examines knowledge transfer processes in MNEs with particular reference to technology transfer to China. The Chinese theme is taken further by an analysis of the role of foreign direct investment in the transformation of China.



Friday, December 4, 2009

Biosecurity in the Global Age or Becoming Asian American

Biosecurity in the Global Age: Biological Weapons, Public Health, and the Rule of Law

Author: David P Fidler

Biosecurity comprehensively analyzes the dramatic transformations that are reshaping how the international community addresses biological weapons and infectious diseases.

The book examines the renewed threat from biological weapons, and explores the new world of biological weapons governance. Gostin and Fidler argue that the arms control approach in the Biological Weapons Convention no longer dominates. Other strategies have emerged to challenge the arms control approach, and the book identifies four important policy trends—the criminalization of biological weapons, regulation of the biological sciences, management of the biodefense imperative, and preparation for biological weapons attack.

The book also explores the challenges to public health resulting from new security threats. The authors look at the linkages between security and public health policy, both at the national and international level. For instance, Gostin and Fidler scrutinize the difficulty of developing policies that improve defenses against both biological weapons and the threat of infectious diseases from new viral strains.

The new worlds of biological weapons and public health governance raise the importance of crafting policy responses informed by the rule of law. Thinking about the rule of law underscores the importance of finding globalized forms of biosecurity governance. The book explores patterns in recent governance initiatives and advocates building a “global biosecurity concert” as a way to address the threats biological weapons and infectious diseases present in the early 21st century.



Book about: Amazing Peace or Skippyjon Jones

Becoming Asian American: Second-Generation Chinese and Korean American Identities

Author: Nazli Kibria

In Becoming Asian American, Nazli Kibria draws upon extensive interviews she conducted with second-generation Chinese and Korean Americans in Boston and Los Angeles who came of age during the 1980s and 1990s to explore the dynamics of race, identity, and adaptation within these communities. Moving beyond the frameworks created to study other racial minorities and ethnic whites, she examines the various strategies used by members of this group to define themselves as both Asian and American.

In her discussions on such topics as childhood, interaction with non-Asian Americans, college, work, and the problems of intermarriage and child-raising, Kibria finds wide discrepancies between the experiences of Asian Americans and those described in studies of other ethnic groups. While these differences help to explain the unusually successful degree of social integration and acceptance into mainstream American society enjoyed by this "model minority," it is an achievement that Kibria's interviewees admit they can never take for granted. Instead, they report that maintaining this acceptance "requires constant effort on their part." Kibria suggests further developments may resolve this situation -- especially the emergence of a new kind of pan--Asian American identity that would complement the Chinese or Korean American identity rather than replace it.

Reed Ueda

Nazli Kibria is one of the outstanding scholars on the sociology of Asian Americans, as well as in the general field of sociology of race and ethnicity. Becoming Asian American greatly advances knowledge of the dynamic interaction of race, ethnicity, and individual identity in American life. Her case studies offer a fresh, solid approach to discovering what it is like for immigrant racial minorities to become American in our time and indicates a great deal about the future of the American nation.

John Lie

Nazli Kibria presents a rich body of interview data on the changing and diverse nature of Asian-American identity, particularly among Chinese and Korean Americans, making a very solid and sustained contribution to the burgeoning literature within Asian-American studies. Through Kibria's wonderful interviews, we hear very interesting meditations on ethnic identity. She also does a good job of raising important sociological questions about race and immigration. This book may very well become a landmark in the field.

What People Are Saying

Reed Ueda
Nazli Kibria is one of the outstanding scholars on the sociology of Asian Americans, as well as in the general field of sociology of race and ethnicity. Becoming Asian American greatly advances knowledge of the dynamic interaction of race, ethnicity, and individual identity in American life. Her case studies offer a fresh, solid approach to discovering what it is like for immigrant racial minorities to become American in our time and indicates a great deal about the future of the American nation. (Reed Ueda, Tufts University)


John Lie
Nazli Kibria presents a rich body of interview data on the changing and diverse nature of Asian-American identity, particularly among Chinese and Korean Americans, making a very solid and sustained contribution to the burgeoning literature within Asian-American studies. Through Kibria's wonderful interviews, we hear very interesting meditations on ethnic identity. She also does a good job of raising important sociological questions about race and immigration. This book may very well become a landmark in the field. (John Lie, University of Michigan)




Table of Contents:
Preface and Acknowledgments
Ch. 1Asian Americans and the Puzzle of New Immigrant Integration1
Ch. 2Growing up Chinese and American, Korean and American27
Ch. 3The Everyday Consequences of Being Asian: Ethnic Options and Ethnic Binds67
Ch. 4College and Asian American Identity102
Ch. 5The Model Minority at Work131
Ch. 6Ethnic Futures: Children and Intermarriage159
Ch. 7Becoming Asian American197
References207
Index215

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Dirty War Clean Hands or Hunting Nazis in Munich

Dirty War, Clean Hands: ETA, the GAL and Spanish Democracy

Author: Paddy Woodworth

"Democracy is defended in the sewers as well as in the salons". This is how Spanish prime minister Felipe GonzГЎlez responded to allegations that his government was fighting the Basque separatist group ETA with its own methods: indiscriminate terrorism. shooting up crowded bars, bombing busy streets, torturing kidnap victims. For three years the GAL (Anti-terrorist Liberation Groups), created mayhem in the French Basque Country, where ETA had its "sanctuary".

In 1986, the French government began to hand over ETA suspects to the Spanish police in large numbers and the GAL campaign stopped. But this "dirty war" had already created widespread support for ETA among the first generation of Basques to grow up under democracy, and its consequences reverberate to this day. The GAL's links to the Spanish security forces, and finally to GonzГЎlez's own cabinet, have been revealed, despite all the resources of 'State secrecy', by controversial magistrates like Baltasar GarzГіn.

Over the last 15 years, the GAL scandal has fatally undermined GonzГЎlez's reputation as a democrat and EU statesman and raised fundamental questions about Spain's much-praised transition to democracy. The GAL investigations have stretched the relationship between government and judiciary to breaking point, and sent ministers and generals to prison. GonzГЎlez himself may still face charges.

Paddy Woodworth, who has covered Spain for the "Irish Times" and other media since the 1970s, has interviewed both the GAL's surviving victims and the GAL's leading protagonists. He has followed the investigations in the Spanish media and courts for many years. The result is a unique and dramaticnarrative and analysis of what happens when a democratic administration fights fire with fire.



Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Map of GAL Attacks in Basque Country
Map of GAL Attacks in Bayonne
Prologue1
Pt. IAn Ancient People, A Modern Conflict
1'Only 5,000 Years Ago'17
2Boys Become Giant-Killers33
3The First Dirty War44
Pt. IIA Dirty War Run By Democrats
4Clean Hands in Government63
5Fear Crosses the Border71
6Under Siege in the Sanctuary87
7ETA Between Two Fires101
8Bombing Biarritz116
9A Revolutionary Doctor124
10A Black Lady Stalks the Bars139
11Massacre at the Monbar156
12Shooting Women and Children Too161
13The GAL's War is Over170
Pt. IIIPlacing Blame: Investigating the Investigators
14Grounds for Suspicion177
15Protecting Senor X200
16State Terrorism in the Dock230
17Recollections in Tranquillity245
18A Cascade of Confessions259
19Old Bones Tell Their Story281
20Who's Cheating Who?295
21The Paper Chase313
22A Divided Democracy335
23A Minister in the Dock356
24Judgement and Response379
Pt. IVConclusions: Cleaning Up After A Dirty War
25Waking from the Nightmare407
Epilogue420
Chronology of GAL Attacks433
Chronology of GAL Investigations437
Some Notes on the Spanish Constitution, Judiciary and Legal System444
Glossary449
Bibliography458
Index462

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Hunting Nazis in Munich: People and Places in Third Reich Munich

Author: Joachim von Halasz

Discover Hitler's secret sites in Munich. See where Eva Braun and Heinrich Himmler where born and grew up. Learn where the Nazi movement started in 1919 and how it was defeated in 1945.

Gain first hand access to more than 100 historical sites of Third Reich Munich, described in short profiles and pinpointed on city maps. The book is illustrated with more than 60 archive images, some never published before.



Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The Faith of Barack Obama or Masters of Paradise

The Faith of Barack Obama

Author: Stephen Mansfield

DISCOVER the NEW FACE of RELIGION in AMERICAN POLITICS

The 2008 presidential campaign has been among the most religiously charged of any in American history. At the heart of the "faith-based" controversies that have marked this season is the faith of Barack Obama. His religiously-informed political liberalism, his relationship with the fiery Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his years of exposure to "Black liberation theology," and his more than two decades at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago have forced matters of faith and race onto the national stage.

Yet Obama's faith is of more than just political importance. He is helping to give voice to a religious left just now reclaiming its voice in American culture. He is also symbolizing and summoning a new generation who are deeply religious, philosophically postmodern, and passionately oriented to social justice. As important, he is issuing a call for a new era of racial harmony, a harmony he exemplifires as the son of a black African father and a white American mother.

In this fast-paced and insightful look at Obama's faith, best-selling author Stephen Mansfield approaches his subject "kindly and generously," in an attempt to understand who Obama is and how he will lead. Given that Obama is likely to be a feature on the American political landscape for decades to come, this book serves as an essential guide by a leading author to one of the most important stories in our time.

Publishers Weekly

As a veteran communications professional, it comes as no surprise that Mansfield commands an easygoing conversational speaking style that helps buffer some of the potentially loaded issues he chooses to tackle. While he may be best identified by his ties to the conservative evangelical community, Mansfield possesses the ability to explore divergent ideologies while acknowledging some of his personal red flags with a tone of utmost respect. Listeners in search of a definitive, comprehensive Obama spiritual biography may not find the level of dramatic new revelations they were hoping for, but Mansfield succeeds in adding thoughtful theological and political context to events and experiences. Perhaps the most captivating section involves Mansfield's account of a Sunday visit to Trinity United Church of Christ, the congregation from which Senator Obama resigned his membership following publicity surrounding controversial statements by founding pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mansfield presents an analysis of Obama's distinctly postmodern journey that will generate valuable discussion across the religious spectrum. A Thomas Nelson hardcover. (Oct.)

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



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Masters of Paradise: Organized Crime and the Internal Revenue Service in the Bahamas

Author: Alan Block

This is the story of organized crime's penetration of the islands and the corruption of its high officials during the time The Bahamas became politically independent of Great Britain. It describes secret U.S. Internal Revenue Service operations aimed at American criminals involved in Bahamian-based tax scams and similar crimes. Block paints a devastating picture of a symbiotic relationship among off-shore tax havens in The Bahamas, sophisticated American criminals, and complacent public officials in the United States. Block shows how important links in the international traffic in cocaine were forged in The Bahamas, in full view of American officials. Masters of Paradise, now available in paperback, raises major questions about American law enforcement officials' commitment to fighting complex international crime during the 1960s and the 1970s.



Monday, November 30, 2009

Disciplinary Revolution or The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation

Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe

Author: Philip S Gorski

What explains the rapid growth of state power in early modern Europe? While most scholars have pointed to the impact of military or capitalist revolutions, Philip S. Gorski argues instead for the importance of a disciplinary revolution unleashed by the Reformation. By refining and diffusing a variety of disciplinary techniques and strategies, such as communal surveillance, control through incarceration, and bureaucratic office-holding, Calvin and his followers created an infrastructure of religious governance and social control that served as a model for the rest of Europe—and the world.
.



Table of Contents:
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
1Body and Soul: Calvinism, Discipline, and State Power in Early Modern Europe1
2Disciplinary Revolution from Below in the Low Countries39
3Disciplinary Revolution from Above in Brandenburg-Prussia79
4Social Disciplining in Comparative Perspective114
Conclusion157
Notes173
Bibliography209
Index237

New interesting textbook: The New Rules of Marketing and PR or Making It All Work

The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation: The Decade of the 1890s and the Establishment of America's First Five Military Parks

Author: Timothy B Smith

"Smith's book is the first to look at the process of battlefield preservation as a whole. He focuses on how each of these sites was established and the important individuals - the congressmen, the former soldiers, the veteran commissioners who were the catalysts for the creation of these parks." The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation is a watershed book that will be of interest to any reader who wishes to have a better understanding of how such preservation efforts were initiated.



Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Age of Diminished Expectations 3rd Edition or Beslan

The Age of Diminished Expectations, 3rd Edition: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s

Author: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman's popular guide to the economic landscape of the 1990s has been revised and updated to take into account economic developments of the years from 1994 - 1997. New material in the third edition includes:

  • A new chapter--complete with colorful examples from Llyod's of London and Sumitomo Metals--on how risky behavior can lead to disaster in private markets.
  • An evaluation of the Federal Reserve's role in reining in economic growth to prevent inflation, and the debate over whether its targets are too low.
  • A look at the collapse of the Mexican peso and the burst of Japan's "bubble" economy.
  • A revised discussion of the federal budget deficit, including the growth concern that Social Security and Medicare payments to retiring baby boomers will threaten the solvency of the government.


Finally, in the updated concluding section, the author provides three possible scenarios for the American economy over the next decade. He warns us that we live in age of diminished expectations, in which the voting public is willing to settle for policy drift--but with the first baby boomers turning 65 in 2011, the economy will not be able to drift indefinitely.

Library Journal

This book occupies fairly rare territory: the middle ground. Krugman's most likely scenario for the 1990s is neither crash nor boom but a continuation of the 1980s, with some unemployment, more inflation, and only slow growth in income. Surprisingly, Krugman notes, the public will continue to be satisfied with this performance. Designed for the general reader, the book covers the important economic problems and proposed solutions. One also discovers which problems should be real concerns and which are even amenable to solution. Recommended especially for public libraries as a well-balanced introduction to the 1990s.-- Richard C. Schiming, Mankato State Univ., Minn.

Booknews

Targets human factors and how they affect the implementation of any kind of automation in the information system environment. Includes discussion of: accurately portraying the apparent whimsy of upper management; tactics, strategy negotiation, and politics; reorganization, new employers, and new management. A rare, non-technical, non-apocalyptic account of the economy. Krugman (economics, MIT) describes more than predicts, but does think there will be no bust, no boom, a few whimpers, a sigh or two: things could be better, but they could be worse, and we don't expect much anymore. Originally published as a Washington Post Company Briefing Book. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)



Table of Contents:
Foreword
Preface
Introduction1
IThe Roots of Economic Welfare9
1Productivity Growth13
2Income Distribution23
3Employment and Unemployment31
IIChronic Aches and Pains39
4The Trade Deficit43
5Inflation59
IIIPolicy Problems69
6Health Care73
7The Budget Deficit85
8The Embattled Fed101
9The Dollar111
10Free Trade and Protectionism123
11Japan137
IVFinancial Follies155
12The Savings and Loan Scandal159
13Corporate Finance169
14Global Finance185
VAmerican Prospects203
15Happy Ending207
16Hard Landing213
17Drift225
Index233

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Beslan: The Tragedy of School No. 1

Author: Timothy Phillips

On the morning of September 1, 2004, the children of Beslan were excited about the start of a new school year. But as traditional festivities got underway, heavily armed terrorists stormed the school playground, changing ordinary lives in the southern Russian town forever. At least 330 parents and children were killed, some in the massive explosions that tore through the gymnasium, some caught in the crossfire of a three-hour gun battle between the Russian forces and the terrorists. This riveting account not only covers the three days of unimaginable terror and suffering that followed, but includes the people of Beslan speaking in their own words about their ordeal and about their lives in this deeply fractured region. The human story of the siege is here—including the terrible toll that thirst, hunger, and sleeplessness took on the hostages, and the bravery of those who dealt with the terrorists, such as the elderly headmistress of the school and the doctor who tried to relieve the children's suffering. This account also examines the authorities’ response to the siege, finding it wanting, and ultimately places the events of September 2004 in their wider context of centuries of conflict and enmity in the Caucasus.

Scotsman

Timothy Phillips [is] a brave and sensitive writer whose book alternates between a minute-by-minute account of the Chechen separatists' three-day siege and a decade-by-decade summary of its causes-incompetence, arrogance, social decay and corruption.



Saturday, November 28, 2009

Prescription for Survival or American Gunfight

Prescription for Survival: A Doctor's Journey to End Nuclear Madness

Author: Bernard Lown

About the Author:
Bernard Lown, M.D. Cofounder of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize



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American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman--and the Shoot-out That Stopped It

Author: Stephen Hunter

American Gunfight is the fast-paced, definitive, and breathtakingly suspenseful account of an extraordinary historical event -- the attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in 1950 by two Puerto Rican Nationalists and the bloody shoot-out in the streets of Washington, D.C., that saved the president's life.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Hunter, the widely admired and bestselling novelist and author of such books as Havana, Hot Springs, and Dirty White Boys, and John Bainbridge, Jr., an experienced journalist and lawyer, American Gunfight is at once a groundbreaking work of meticulous historical research and the vivid and dramatically told story of an act of terrorism that almost succeeded. They have pieced together, at last, the story of the conspiracy that nearly doomed the president and how a few good men -- ordinary guys who were willing to risk their lives in the line of duty -- stopped it.

It is a book about courage -- on both sides -- and about what politics and devotion to a cause can lead men to do, and about what actually happens, second by second, when a gunfight explodes.

It begins on November 1, 1950, an unseasonably hot afternoon in the sleepy capital. At 2:00 P.M. in his temporary residence at Blair House, the president of the United States takes a nap. At 2:20 P.M., two men approach Blair House from different directions. Oscar Collazo, a respected metal polisher and family man, and Griselio Torresola, an unemployed salesman, don't look dangerous, not in their new suits and hats, not in their calm, purposeful demeanor, not in their slow, unexcited approach. What the three White House policemen and one Secret Service agent cannot guess is that under each man's coat is a 9mm German automatic pistol and in each head, a dream of assassin's glory.

At point-blank range, Collazo and then Torresola draw and fire and move toward the president of the United States.

Hunter and Bainbridge tell the story of that November day with narrative power and careful attention to detail. They are the first to report on the inner workings of this conspiracy; they examine the forces that led the perpetrators to conceive the plot. The authors also tell the story of the men themselves, from their youth and the worlds in which they grew up to the women they loved and who loved them to the moment the gunfire erupted. Their telling commemorates heroism -- the quiet commitment to duty that in some moments of crisis sees some people through an ordeal, even at the expense of their lives.

The Washington Post - Ted Widmer

The definitive history of this attempted murder has now been written by Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge Jr. True to their topic, theirs is an unlikely conspiracy: Hunter is a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic for this newspaper and Bainbridge a journalist and former legal writer in Baltimore. It's a bit unclear what drew them to each other or to this topic, but they attack it with verve.

Publishers Weekly

On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, engaged in a sustained gun battle with Secret Service agents at Blair House. Their goal was to assassinate President Harry Truman. It's curious that the two men haven't found a place in popular memory like other presidential assailants. But this attempt deserves attention because it was explicitly political and because it permanently altered Secret Service practices. Hunter, esteemed for his film criticism and macho adventure novels, teams up with former Baltimore Sun journalist Bainbridge for this richly detailed account of the motives and destinies of virtually everyone connected to the skirmish. This is an ambitious attempt to achieve time-lapse history. The actual confrontation took less than a minute; rather than save it up for the end, the authors spread it across much of the book, interspersed with background material on the participants. The book reads like the product of a film lover/action novelist and a journalist rather than a work of history, with the shootout described in stream-of-consciousness, and melodramatic, cliff-hanging chapter endings. To the authors' credit, though, interpretations are presented as such, and their handling of the recorded events is not only convincing but compelling. Agent, Esther Newberg. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Novelist/film critic Hunter, along with Baltimore Sun journalist Bainbridge, brings cinematic flair to this investigation of the 1950 attempt by Puerto Rican nationalists to assassinate Truman. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Journalists Hunter and Bainbridge reconstruct an attempt on Harry Truman's life, an event that "was of course gigantic news-for about a week."The principal actors in the November 1950 attempt were two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, devotees of a lawyer-revolutionary named Pedro Albizu Campos. The extent of their connection to Campos was not known until long after the attack, yet the operative principle was simple: If any attempt were made on Campos's life in Puerto Rico, then cells would activate in the U.S. and kill Truman. The witness may not have been entirely reliable, and in all events of the assassination effort, there was a certain amount of dumb luck: Truman was staying across the street from the White House, which was being renovated, a fact that a helpful cab driver had to point out to Collazo and Torresola; Collazo had few qualifications apart from a commitment to the cause; much of the attack was concocted on the spot. Yet Torresola was able to shoot several guards and get within ten yards of Truman before being taken down. It all makes for an intrinsically interesting story, but the authors tend to tell everything they can about any particular point of play, layering on incidental details about the lives of D.C. cops and expounding on the history and geography of Puerto Rico while drifting much too often into breathless Dragnet-speak: "The president is in the window he is thirty feet from Griselio who stands unnoticed at the stairway to Lee House the men on the other side haven't noticed him yet he's shot at three men and downed them all the president is thirty feet away and he has a straight line-of-sight picture to that window and therestands the president of the United States so he is very much in the kill zone."Those with patience for run-on sentences may enjoy this long footnote to history.



Table of Contents:
Authors' Note     1
Introduction     3
A Drive Around Washington     5
Griselio Agonistes     12
Revolution     18
The Odd Couple     36
Mr. Gonzales and Mr. De Silva Go to Washington     40
Early Morning     50
Baby Starches the Shirts     54
Toad     62
The New Guy     74
The Buick Guy     83
The Guns     86
The Ceremony     100
Indian Summer     104
The Big Walk     109
Oscar     113
"It Did Not Go Off"     128
Pappy     133
The Next Ten Seconds     138
Resurrection Man     141
So Loud, So Fast     152
Upstairs at Blair     156
Downstairs at Blair     161
Borinquen     167
Oscar Alone     181
The End's Run     184
Good Hands     186
The Colossus Rhoads     194
Oscar Goes Down     200
The Second Assault     203
Pimienta     206
Point-Blank     223
The Man Who Loved Guns     228
The Dark Visitors     236
Mortal Danger     240
The Neighbor     243
American Gunfight     244
The Good Samaritan     252
The Policemen's Wives     258
The Scene     260
Inside the Soccer Shoe     267
Who Shot Oscar?     273
The Roundup     278
Taps     286
Oscar on Trial     289
Deep Conspiracy     298
Cressie Does Her Duty     308
Oscar Speaks     310
- R - I -     317
Epilogue: Destinies     323
Source Notes     327
Bibliography     339
Acknowledgments     349
Index     355

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity or A House Built on Sand

Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity

Author: Gregory Cran

Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought.
The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work.
Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.



Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction1
1Sherman at Melos: Realpolitik Ancient and Modern21
2Truest Causes and Thucydidean Realisms36
3Representations of Power before and after Thucydides72
4Power, Prestige, and the Corcyraean Affair93
5Archaeology I: The Analytical Program of the History125
6Archaeology II: From Wealth to Capital: The Changing Politics of Accumulation148
7The Rule of the Strong and the Limits of Friendship172
8Archidamos and Sthenelaidas: The Dilemma of Spartan Authority196
9The Melian Dialogue: From Herodotus's Freedom Fighters to Thucydides' Imperialists237
10Athenian Theses: Realism as the Modern Simplicity258
11Conclusion: Thucydidean Realism and the Price of Objectivity294
Bibliography327
Index343

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A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science

Author: Noretta Koertg

Cultural critics say that "science is politics by other means," arguing that the results of scientific inquiry are profoundly shaped by the ideological agendas of powerful elites. They base their claims on historical case studies purporting to show the systematic intrusion of sexist, racist, capitalist, colonialist, and/or professional interests into the very content of science. In this hard-hitting collection of essays, contributors offer crisp and detailed critiques of case studies offered by the cultural critics as evidence that scientific results tell us more about social context than they do about the natural world. Pulling no punches, they identify numerous crude factual blunders (e.g. that Newton never performed any experiments) and egregious errors of omission, such as the attempt to explain the slow development of fluid dynamics solely in terms of gender bias. Where there are positive aspects of a flawed account, or something to be learned from it, they do not hesitate to say so. Their target is shoddy scholarship.
Comprising new essays by distinguished scholars of history, philosophy, and science, this book raises a lively debate to a new level of seriousness.

Library Journal

This book is the latest and most explosive bomb to be launched in the "science wars." Recently, a cadre of historians and philosophers of science have attempted to deconstruct the scientific process by examining its underlying social metaphors. Many scholars, especially practicing scientists, view these efforts with undisguised disdain. The essays here, which are by scientists and philosophers, debunk postmodernist science studies by exposing their purported biases, errors, and fallacies. Essentially, they deconstruct the deconstructionists. For example, Michael Ruse asks, "Is Darwinism Sexist?" while Alan Sokal tackles "What the Social Text Affair Does and Does Not Approve." Although some olive branches are extended, the overall tone is aggressive. Academics on both sides of the debate will need this book. Expect a counterattack.--Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib., Coral Gables, FL



Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Cannibal Island or Inclusion

Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag

Author: Nicolas Werth

During the spring of 1933, Stalin's police rounded up nearly one hundred thousand people as part of the Soviet regime's "cleansing" of Moscow and Leningrad and deported them to Siberia. Many of the victims were sent to labor camps, but ten thousand of them were dumped in a remote wasteland and left to fend for themselves. Cannibal Island reveals the shocking, grisly truth about their fate.

These people were abandoned on the island of Nazino without food or shelter. Left there to starve and to die, they eventually began to eat each other. Nicolas Werth, a French historian of the Soviet era, reconstructs their gruesome final days using rare archival material from deep inside the Stalinist vaults. Werth skillfully weaves this episode into a broader story about the Soviet frenzy in the 1930s to purge society of all those deemed to be unfit. For Stalin, these undesirables included criminals, opponents of forced collectivization, vagabonds, gypsies, even entire groups in Soviet society such as the "kulaks" and their families. Werth sets his story within the broader social and political context of the period, giving us for the first time a full picture of how Stalin's system of "special villages" worked, how hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were moved about the country in wholesale mass transportations, and how this savage bureaucratic machinery functioned on the local, regional, and state levels.

Cannibal Island challenges us to confront unpleasant facts not only about Stalin's punitive social controls and his failed Soviet utopia, but about every generation's capacity for brutality--including our own.

Foreign Affairs

Often the details in a single instance sear more deeply than the most gruesome tally of large numbers. Werth, part of the team that prepared the 2004 seven-volume documentary history of the Soviet gulag, here describes the unimaginable inhumanity of the 1933 deportation of 10,000 "dйclassй" and "socially harmful elements" to a small uninhabitable island on the river Ob, deep in the wilds of western Siberia. Although the unspeakable suffering of these thousands -- including the starvation that led to the acts that gave the nameless island a name -- is his centerpiece, Werth describes in rich detail the transformation of the vast western Siberian wilderness into the dumping ground for millions of "de-kulakized" peasants, minority groups from the borderlands, the socially marginal, criminals, and the utterly innocent. Meant in a grotesquely misconceived fashion to rid the cities of undesirables while producing economic development in the harshest of locales, these "special settlements" are a part of the gulag's least-known history. Werth corrects that in plain and clear language, leaving the story to convey its own excruciating eloquence.<



Table of Contents:
Foreword   Jan T. Gross     ix
Preface     xiii
Glossary     xxi
A "grandiose plan"     1
Western Siberia, a Land of Deportation     23
Negotiations and Preparations     59
In the Tomsk Transit Camp     86
Nazino     121
Conclusion     171
Epilogue, 1933-37     181
Acknowledgments     194
Notes     195

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Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research

Author: Steven Epstein

As a society, we have learned to value diversity. But can some strategies to achieve diversity mask deeper problems, ones that might require a different approach and different solutions? With Inclusion, Steven Epstein argues that in the field of medical research, the answer is an emphatic yes.

Formal concern with diversity in American medical research, Epstein shows, is a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the mid-1980s, few paid close attention to who was included in research subject pools. Not uncommonly, scientists studied groups of mostly white, middle-aged men—and assumed that conclusions drawn from studying them would apply to the rest of the population. But struggles involving advocacy groups, experts, and Congress led to reforms that forced researchers and pharmaceutical companies to diversify the population from which they drew for clinical research. That change has gone hand in hand with bold assertions that group differences in society are encoded in our biology—for example, that there are important biological differences in the ways that people of different races and sexes respond to drugs and other treatments.

While the prominence of these inclusive practices has offered hope to traditionally underserved groups, Epstein argues forcefully that it has drawn attention away from the tremendous inequalities in health that are rooted not in biology but in society. There is, for instance, a direct relationship between social class and health status—and Epstein believes that a focus on bodily differences can obscure the importance of this factor. Only when connected to a broad-based effort to address health disparities, Epstein explains, can amedical policy of inclusion achieve its intended effects.

A fascinating history, powerful analysis, and call to action, Inclusion will be essential reading for medical professionals, policymakers, and any concerned citizen.



Saturday, February 21, 2009

Contentious Politics or Growing Apart

Contentious Politics

Author: Sidney Tarrow

Revolutions, social movements, religious and ethnic conflict, nationalism and civil rights, and transnational movements: these forms of contentious politics combine in Charles Tilly's and Sidney Tarrow's Contentious Politics. The book presents a set of analytical tools and procedures for study, comparison, and explanation of these very different sorts of contention. Drawing on many historical and contemporary cases, the book shows that similar principles describe and explain a wide variety of struggles as well as many more routine forms of politics. Tilly and Tarrow have written the book to introduce readers to an exciting new program of political and sociological analysis.



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Growing Apart: Oil, Politics, and Economic Change in Indonesia and Nigeria

Author: Peter Lewis


"Growing Apart is an important and distinguished contribution to the literature on the political economy of development. Indonesia and Nigeria have long presented one of the most natural opportunities for comparative study. Peter Lewis, one of America's best scholars of Nigeria, has produced the definitive treatment of their divergent development paths. In the process, he tells us much theoretically about when, why, and how political institutions shape economic growth."
—Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution 
 
"Growing Apart is a careful and sophisticated analysis of the political factors that have shaped the economic fortunes of Indonesia and Nigeria. Both scholars and policymakers will benefit from this book's valuable insights."
—Michael L. Ross, Associate Professor of Political Science, Chair of International Development Studies, UCLA
"Lewis presents an extraordinarily well-documented comparative case study of two countries with a great deal in common, and yet with remarkably different postcolonial histories. His approach is a welcome departure from currently fashionable attempts to explain development using large, multi-country databases packed with often dubious measures of various aspects of 'governance.'"
—Ross H. McLeod, Editor, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
"This is a highly readable and important book. Peter Lewis provides us with both a compelling institutionalist analysis of economic development performance and a very insightful comparative account of the political economies of two highly complex developing countries, Nigeria and Indonesia. His well-informed accountgenerates interesting findings by focusing on the ability of leaders in both countries to make credible commitments to the private sector and assemble pro-growth coalitions. This kind of cross-regional political economy is often advocated in the profession but actually quite rare because it is so hard to do well. Lewis's book will set the standard for a long time."
—Nicolas van de Walle, John S. Knight Professor of International Studies, Cornell University
 
Peter M. Lewis is Associate Professor and Director of the African Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.



Friday, February 20, 2009

The Condition of the Working Class in England or A Matter of Justice

The Condition of the Working Class in England

Author: Friedrich Engels

This, the first book written by Engels during his stay in Manchester from 1842 to 1844, is the best known and in many ways the most astute study of the working class in Victorian England. The fluency of his writing, the personal nature of his insights, and his talent for mordant satire all combiine to make Engels's account of the lives of the victims of early industrial change an undeniable classic.



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A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution

Author: David A Nichols

Fifty years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce a federal court order desegregating the city's Central High School, a leading authority on Eisenhower presents an original and engrossing narrative that places Ike and his civil rights policies in dramatically new light.

Historians such as Stephen Ambrose and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., have portrayed Eisenhower as aloof, if not outwardly hostile, to the plight of African-Americans in the 1950s. It is still widely assumed that he opposed the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision mandating the desegregation of public schools, that he deeply regretted appointing Earl Warren as the Court's chief justice because of his role in molding Brown, that he was a bystander in Congress's passage of the civil rights acts of 1957 and 1960, and that he so mishandled the Little Rock crisis that he was forced to dispatch troops to rescue a failed policy.

In this sweeping narrative, David A. Nichols demonstrates that these assumptions are wrong. Drawing on archival documents neglected by biographers and scholars, including thousands of pages newly available from the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Nichols takes us inside the Oval Office to look over Ike's shoulder as he worked behind the scenes, prior to Brown, to desegregate the District of Columbia and complete the desegregation of the armed forces. We watch as Eisenhower, assisted by his close collaborator, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr., sifted through candidates for federal judgeships and appointed five pro-civil rights justices to the Supreme Court and progressive judges to lower courts.We witness Eisenhower crafting civil rights legislation, deftly building a congressional coalition that passed the first civil rights act in eighty-two years, and maneuvering to avoid a showdown with Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, over desegregation of Little Rock's Central High.

Nichols demonstrates that Eisenhower, though he was a product of his time and its backward racial attitudes, was actually more progressive on civil rights in the 1950s than his predecessor, Harry Truman, and his successors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Eisenhower was more a man of deeds than of words and preferred quiet action over grandstanding. His cautious public rhetoric -- especially his legalistic response to Brown -- gave a misleading impression that he was not committed to the cause of civil rights. In fact, Eisenhower's actions laid the legal and political groundwork for the more familiar breakthroughs in civil rights achieved in the 1960s.

Fair, judicious, and exhaustively researched, A Matter of Justice is the definitive book on Eisenhower's civil rights policies that every presidential historian and future biographer of Ike will have to contend with.

Publishers Weekly

Former professor Nichols (Lincoln and the Indians) spotlights President Eisenhower's efforts "to eliminate discrimination within the definite areas of Federal responsibility," aiming to end the "myth" that Eisenhower was personally and politically opposed to the enactment and enforcement of civil rights legislation. Nichols builds his argument on Eisenhower's actions: desegregation of the District of Columbia and the armed forces, as well as his support of justice Earl Warren and use of the military to enforce the Brownv. Board of Educationdecision. He attributes skepticism about Eisenhower's motives to the president's "restrained rhetorical style," arguing that Eisenhower's embrace of "a traditional interpretation of the separation of powers" led to his silences. That he "was a gradualist and shared misconceptions about black people common to white politicians of his era" may have played a role as well. That "he called firmly for obedience to law... yet undermined that demand by asserting how little law could accomplish" certainly diminished his civil rights reputation. Nichols takes potshots at Harry Truman and Warren, attributes Lyndon Johnson's actions to "his presidential ambitions" and John F. Kennedy's "promises of progress" to "campaign rhetoric," giving this otherwise balanced study an opinionated bent. B&w photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)

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Kirkus Reviews

Sympathetic assessment of Ike's civil-rights record. It's likely to be controversial as well. Nichols (Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics, 1978) forthrightly acknowledges Eisenhower's gradualism in civil rights. He was born, after all, in 1890, six years before Plessy v. Ferguson; the old general had a racial blind spot that prevented him from fully understanding the plight of black Americans. Moreover, Eisenhower genuinely distrusted the power of statutory law to change hearts or vanquish prejudice and little understood how his repeated, public articulation of this mantra demoralized passionate advocates who'd waited too long for equality. His deeds, however, were less passive than his rhetoric; Nichols persuasively argues that Eisenhower did more than any other white politician in the 1950s to advance the civil rights agenda. The president acted unilaterally to desegregate Washington, D.C., to eliminate employment discrimination by firms handling federal contracts and to vigorously follow through on desegregating the armed forces. Ike proposed and effected passage of the first civil rights legislation since 1875, notwithstanding successful efforts by southern Democratic power brokers to weaken the bill. With the aid of his indispensable Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, Eisenhower made excellent judicial appointments in the deep South, where the likes of Frank Johnson and John Minor Wisdom proved instrumental in the legal struggle to implement Brown v. Board of Education. Even more important was his impact on the Supreme Court; all of his nominees staunchly upheld civil rights, most notably Chief Justice Earl Warren. Eisenhower demonstrated his reverence for thefederal courts, his devotion to the law and his fierce sense of his own duty by becoming the first president since Reconstruction to order federal troops into a southern state, sending them to Arkansas in 1957 to enforce integration in Little Rock's schools. Nichols focuses on the facts, but he also offers a careful analysis of why Ike has not received proper historical credit. Revelatory reading. Agent: Will Lippincott/Lippincott Massie McQuilkin



Table of Contents:
Introduction     1
The Candidate     5
Invoking Federal Authority     23
The President and Brown     51
A Judiciary to Enforce Brown     75
The President and the Chief Justice     91
Confronting Southern Resistance     111
The Civil Rights Act of 1957     143
The Little Rock Crisis     169
Military Intervention in Little Rock     189
Rising Expectations     214
The Final Act     235
Leading from Gettysburg     264
Conclusion: A Matter of Justice     273
Notes     283
Acknowledgments     335
Index     337

Thursday, February 19, 2009

UFOs and the National Security State or Conquests and Cultures

UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Cover-up, 1941-1973

Author: Richard M Dolan

Richard M. Dolan is a gifted historian whose study of U.S. Cold War strategy led him to the broader context of increased security measures and secrecy since World War II. One aspect of such government policies that has continued to hold the public's imagination for over half a century is the question of unidentified flying objects.

UFOs and the National Security State is the first volume of a two-part detailed chronological narrative of the national security dimensions of the UFO phenomenon from 1941 to the present. Working from hundreds of declassified records and other primary and secondary sources, Dolan centers his investigation on the American military and intelligence communities, demonstrating that they take UFOs seriously indeed.

Included in this volume are the activities of more than fifty military bases relating to UFOs, innumerable violations of sensitive airspace by unknown craft and analyses of the Roswell controversy, the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel, and the Condon Committee Report. Dolan highlights the development of civilian anti-secrecy movements, which flourished in the 1950s and 1960s until the adoption of an official government policy and subsequent "closing of the door" during the Nixon administration.



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Conquests and Cultures: An International History

Author: Thomas Sowell

This book is the culmination of 15 years of research and travels that have taken the author completely around the world twice, as well as on other travels in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and around the Pacific rim. Its purpose has been to try to understand the role of cultural differences within nations and between nations, today and over centuries of history, in shaping the economic and social fates of peoples and of whole civilizations. Focusing on four major cultural areas(that of the British, the Africans (including the African diaspora), the Slavs of Eastern Europe, and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere—Conquests and Cultures reveals patterns that encompass not only these peoples but others and help explain the role of cultural evolution in economic, social, and political development.

Publishers Weekly

Sowell presents this as the final volume in a trilogy that includes Race and Culture (1994) and Migration and Culture (1996). Like its predecessors, the book incorporates two principal themes: that racial, ethnic and national groups have their own particular cultures, and that those cultures are mutable. Sowell offers four case studiesthe British, the Africans, the Slavs and the American Indiansin evidence for his argument that the antecedents, processes and consequences of conquest generate broad-spectrum interactions and responses. Cultures in contact with each other usually influence each other even if the matrix is based on domination/submission, he explains. Brutal conquests can lead to the spread of advanced skills. Cultural borrowing is accompanied by genetic diffusion, and both make a mockery of biological racism and behavioral stasis. The key distinction among human communities is, for Sowell, "human capital"the spectrum of individual and collective learned behaviors that produce distinctive patterns of skills and attitudes. The positive form of this capital is based on flexibilityreceptivity to cultural transfers and willingness to apply those transfers in different contexts. Sowell, an economist by training and a conservative by conviction, emphasizes the wealth-creating aspects of human capital and argues for the centrality of achievement to developing group self-esteem. He references his arguments to a wide range of sources from a broad spectrum of disciplines. Academic specialists are likely to join critics of Sowell's emphasis on cultural malleability in accusing him of using the tools of scholarship to support his preconceptions. Sowell's conclusion that the course of history is determined by what peoples do with their opportunities is nevertheless an emotionally and intellectually compelling challenge to determinism in all its variant forms, from Marxism to multiculturalism.

Library Journal

Sowell, a scholar-in-residence at the Hoover Institution and author of several books in the social sciences, examines ways in which military victories throughout history have caused both conquerors and the conquered to change dramatically. The Roman and British Empires, several African tribes, Eastern European Slavs, and Western Hemisphere Indians are presented as civilizations that grew economically and culturally, or declined precipitously, as they clashed with foreign armies. Sowell's scholarship is evident as he examines the interplay of religion, language, education, technology, and other factors in the development of nations. An example is his discussion of the Slavic people as both victors and losers against Celts, Germans, Turks, and others. The third in a trilogy that includes Race and Culture (LJ 7/94) and Migrations and Cultures (LJ 3/1/96), this book bears comparison to Fernand Braudel's A History of Civilization (LJ 10/1/93). Its readable style and impressive scope make it suitable for all libraries.

Booknews

Culminates a trilogy by exploring the role of cultural differences within nations and between nations, today and over centuries of history, in shaping the economic and social fates of peoples and whole civilizations. Based on the observation that the history of civilizations cannot be understood without examining the cultural impact of conquest. Looks at the British, the Africans, the Slavs, and the Western Hemisphere Indians.

Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Oregon

Kirkus Reviews

Hoover Institution scholar-in-residence Sowell concludes a trilogy that began with Race and Culture (1994) and Migrations and Cultures (1996) by consideringþin sometimes stimulating, sometimes muddled fashion; the momentous consequences of long-term military occupation on subject peoples. The history of conquests, Sowell writes, applies not just to the past; itþs also "about how we came to be where we are economically, intellectually, and morally." Beginning with the British (who were subjugated by the Romans, only to create their own empire more than a millennium later), Sowell goes on to analyze the complex interaction between conquering and subject peoples in the case of the Africans, the Slavs of eastern Europe, and Western Hemisphere Indians. Sowell acutely details ways that geography can spur or stall industry (e.g., the lack of mineral deposits and navigable waterways retarded commerce in the Balkans while western Europe began to pull ahead). Even more important than geographic assets, however, is what Sowell calls "human capital" the combination of skills, experience, and orientation. The Scots, for instance, following their absorption into England, achieved a renaissance of science and medicine. Sowell aims to be hard-headed, challenging notions that all cultures are equally worthy. Often, however, his conclusions are simplistic. He criticizes postcolonial African leaders, for instance, for studying "soft" subjects rather than "hard" ones such as math, science, engineering, and medicine, but he doesnþt say that in the West, business growth has frequently been created by marketers who have studied English, psychology, law, and even politics.Moreover, except in the case of the Soviet Union, many of his sources are more than a decade old. This lack of recent specialized studies leads to omissions that call into question some of his conclusions (e.g., while noting that Ireland's economy sputtered into the late 1980s, he doesn't mention that country's more recent boom). Fascinating analysis vitiated, over the course of this trilogy, by repetition, insulting national comparisons, and superficial history.



Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Politics in Plural Societies or The Martyrs of Karbala

Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability

Author: Alvin Rabushka









Longman Classics in Political Science

In revising classic works in political science, Longman celebrates the contributions its authors and their research have made to the discipline. The Longman Classics in Political Science series honors these authors and their work. Providing students with an updated context, each title in the series includes a new foreword, written by one of today’s top scholars, offering a fresh, in-depth analysis of the book and its enduring contributions.

Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Democratic Instability

Alvin Rabushka
Kenneth A. Shepsle

This landmark study in the field of comparative politics is being celebrated for its return to print as the newest addition to the Longman Classics in Political Science series. Politics in Plural Societies presents a model of political competition in multiethnic societies and explains why plural societies, and the struggle for power within them, often erupt with interethnic hostility.

Distinguished scholars Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth A. Shepsle collaborate in this reissue of their classic work to demonstrate–in a new epilogue–the pertinence of the arguments and evidence offered when the book was originally published. They apply this thesis to the multiethnic politics of countries that are of great interest today: Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, and more.

Features

  • Develops and tests a formal model of political cooperation and conflict in multiethnic societies.
  • Offers comparisons amongst 18 countries based on theoretically developed categories, rather than byregion of the world.
  • Brings formal theory together with sound empirical analysis, directly comparing the predictions of theory with the evidence of real-world politics.
  • Examines the problems of orderly government in multiethnic societies and the difficulties in implementing solutions.

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Table of Contents:
Part I     1
The Plural Society     2
Bases of Cultural Pluralism     8
The Theory of Plural Society: J. S. Furnivall     10
The Theory of Plural Society: Conceptual Development     12
A Definition of Plural Society     20
Summary     21
Theoretical Tools     23
Politics and Preference Aggregation     24
Utility and the Risk Environment     32
Intensity     43
Salience     55
Summary     61
Distinctive Features of Politics in the Plural Society: A Paradigm     62
Ethnic Preferences     63
A Paradigm of Politics in the Plural Society     74
Plural Societies: Some Variations     88
Summary     91
Part II     93
The Competitive Configuration     94
Guyana     95
Belgium     105
Ethnic Politics in Trinidad and Malaya     120
Ethnic Competition: The Politics of Demand Generation and the Bankruptcy of Moderation     124
Ethnic Advantage: The Manipulation of Electoral Rules     127
The Paradigm and Surinam: A Prognosis     127
Majority Domination     129
Ceylon     129
Majority Dominance: Five Additional Cases     141
Nationalist Politics: The Absence of Interethnic Cooperation     143
The Ethnic Basis of Political Cohesion     147
Ambiguity, Moderation, and the Politics of Outbidding     150
Machinations: The Manipulation of Ethnic Politics     153
Violence: Communities in Conflict     156
The Dominant Minority     158
South Africa     158
Rhodesia     169
Burundi     173
Fragmentation     177
Properties of Fragmented Societies     177
Fragmentation: The Proliferation of Ethnic Groups     178
Political Parties: The Absence of Brokerage Institutions     187
Authoritarian Rule: The Fragility of Democracy     202
Conclusion     206
Conclusions     207
Switzerland: The Persistent Counterexample     208
(R[subscript x]) Prescriptions for the Plural Society: Some Applications of the Theory     213
A Final Question     217
Epilogue     219
Bibliography     243
Index     255

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The Martyrs of Karbala: Shi'i Symbols and Rituals in Modern Iran

Author: Kamran Scot Scot Aghai

This innovative study examines patterns of change in Shii symbols and rituals over the past two centuries to reveal how modernization has influenced the societal, political, and religious culture of Iran. Shi'is, who support the Prophet Mohammads progeny as his successors in opposition to the Sunni caliphate tradition, make up 10 to 15 percent of the worlds Muslim population, roughly half of whom live in Iran. Throughout the early history of the Islamic Middle East, the Sunnis have been associated with the state and the ruling elite, while Shi'is have most often represented the political opposition and have had broad appeal among the masses. Moharram symbols and rituals commemorate the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE, in which the Prophet Mohammads grandson Hoseyn and most of his family and supporters were massacred by the troops of the Umayyad caliph Yazid.

Moharram symbols and rituals are among the most pervasive and popular aspects of Iranian culture and society. This book traces patterns of continuity and change of Moharran symbols and rituals in three aspects of Iranian life: the importance of these rituals in promoting social bonds, status, identities, and ideals; ways in which the three major successive regimes (Qujars, Pahlavis, and the Islamic Republic), have either used these rituals to promote their legitimacy, or have suppressed them because they viewed them as a potential political threat; and the uses of Moharram symbolism by opposition groups interested in overthrowing the regime.

While the patterns of government patronage have been radically discontinuous over the past two centuries, the roles of these rituals in popular society and culture have been relatively continuous or have evolved independently of the state. The political uses of modern-day rituals and the enduring symbolism of the Karbala narratives continue today.

Kamran Scot Aghaie is assistant professor of Islamic and Iranian history at the University of Texas at Austin.



Monday, February 16, 2009

Right from the Beginning or Law as Politics

Right from the Beginning

Author: Patrick J Buchannan

Warm and self-deprecating, surprisingly witty, honest to a fault about his political views, and not quite as knee-jerk a Reagan conservative as I've been led to expect. Mr. Buchanan has a secret weapon: charm.
The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Syndicated columnist Buchanan begins this memoir by explaining why he refused to be enlisted as the conservative Republicans' choice to succeed Reagan as president. As he discusses his Irish Catholic roots, growing up in Washington, D.C., and Chevy Chase, Md., and attending that ``citadel of liberalism,'' Columbia's journalism school, he looks back with nostalgic affection to the 1950s. His eight years working for Nixon are covered in one short chapter, and about Reagan, this White House insider says even less. In a book that is part autobiography, part political agenda, Buchanan advocates prayer in the schools, the death penalty, support for the government of South Africa, laser-based nuclear weaponry and repeal of the amendment that limits a president to two terms. He defends Oliver North, morally condemns AIDS victims and thunders against the liberal ``milquetoast'' Catholic Church of the 1980s. Conservative Book Club selection. (May)

Library Journal

$18.95. autobiog Buchanan, columnist and television commentator, writes about his beliefs. His autobiography is a veritable celebration of Catholicism and masculinity, replete with accounts of youthful pranks, scrapes, and arrests. Raised by his father to be a fighter, Buchanan welcomed conflict and glided effortlessly into the politics of confrontation. The final two chapters of his book are highly polemical and will undoubtedly alienate some: He urges the elimination of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, decries superpower arms control negotiations, and asserts that ``America's place should be at South Africa's side, sheltering this tormented country from her enemies.'' Politics aside, persistent references to streets and neighborhoods could prove irksome to readers unfamiliar with the metropolitan D.C. area.Kimberly G. Allen, Georgetown University Law Lib., Washington, D.C.



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Law As Politics: Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism

Author: David Dyzenhaus

While antiliberal legal theorist Carl Schmitt has long been considered by Europeans to be one of this century's most significant political philosophers, recent challenges to the fundamental values of liberal democracies have made Schmitt's writings an unavoidable subject of debate in North America as well. In an effort to advance our understanding not only of Schmitt but of current problems of liberal democracy, David Dyzenhaus presents translations of classic German essays on Schmitt alongside more recent writings by distinguished political theorists and jurists. Neither a defense of nor an attack on Schmitt, Law as Politics offers the first balanced response to his powerful critique of liberalism.

One of the major players in the 1920s debates, an outspoken critic of the Versailles Treaty and the Weimar Constitution, and a member of the Nazi party who provided juridical respectability to Hitler's policies, Schmitt contended that people are a polity only to the extent that they share common enemies. He saw the liberal notion of a peaceful world of universal citizens as a sheer impossibility and attributed the problems of Weimar to liberalism and its inability to cope with pluralism and political conflict. In the decade since his death, Schmitt's writings have been taken up by both the right and the left and scholars differ greatly in their evaluation of Schmitt's ideas. Law as Politics thematically organizes in one volume the varying engagements and confrontations with Schmitt's work and allows scholars to acknowledge-and therefore be in a better position to negotiate-an important paradox inscribed in the very nature of liberal democracy.

Law as Politics will interest political philosophers, legal theorists, historians, and anyone interested in Schmitt's relevance to current discussions of liberalism.



Table of Contents:
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why Carl Schmitt?1
Pt. IPolitical Theory and Law
Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Systematic Reconstruction and Countercriticism23
The Concept of the Political: A Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory37
From Legitimacy to Dictatorship - and Back Again: Leo Strauss's Critique of the Anti-Liberalism of Carl Schmitt56
Hostis Not Inimicus: Toward a Theory of the Public in the Work of Carl Schmitt92
Pluralism and the Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy109
Liberalism as a "Metaphysical System": The Methodological Structure of Carl Schmitt's Critique of Political Rationalism131
Carl Schmitt and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy159
Pt. IILegal Theory and Politics
Carl Schmitt on Sovereignty and Constituent Power179
The 1933 "Break" in Carl Schmitt's Theory196
The Dilemmas of Dictatorship: Carl Schmitt and Constitutional Emergency Powers217
Revolutions and Constitutions: Hannah Arendt's Challenge to Carl Schmitt252
Carl Schmitt's Internal Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism: Verfassungslehre as a Response to the Weimar State Crisis281
Notes on Contributors313
Index315

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Netroots Rising or The Man from Clear Lake

Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics

Author: Lowell Feld

The 2006 elections will be remembered as the year when the center of power in American politics shifted from traditional "top-down" central broadcasters to new "bottom-up" decentralized activists in the blogosphere and netroots. The authors give firsthand accounts of the burgeoning power of the netroots to determine the outcome of political contests, most notably as when the national balance of power was tipped by Jim Webb's "rag-tag army" of bloggers and netroots activists who provoked and exposed the gaffe that proved fatal to George Allen's senatorial bid.

Veteran online campaigners Feld and Wilcox recount and analyze many other political campaigns in which netroots activism was decisive or instructive, including: U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's downfall, Tim Kaine's election as Virginia governor, Howard Dean's and Wes Clark's presidential campaigns, Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe Lieberman in Connecticut.

The authors conclude with an assessment of the prospects for Netroots 2.0. Will the netroots hordes "crash the party" or will they work out an uneasy cohabitation with the traditional party power elite?

About the Author:
Lowell Feld is a political consultant and netroots specialist

About the Author:
Nate Wilcox is a political and public affairs consultant with the WebStrong Group, advising clients such as Senators John Kerry and Tom Harkin on online strategy

Donna L. Davey, Margaret Heilbrun - Library Journal

These two Democratic political consultants offer a rich, even gripping narrative, well sourced, of our century's transformation in political engagement by means of "netroots." The "Deaniacs," the draft Clark effort, the campaign against Tom DeLay, and Jim Webb's unlikely victory (Feld coordinated Webb's online fundraising) are among the stories told here. Feld and Wilcox are not sure what the future holds for the netroots phenomenon, but their book has long-term value for large public and undergraduate libraries. [eBook 978-0-313-34661-3. $43.95.]



Table of Contents:
Foreword   Markos ("Kos") Moulitsas Zuniga     vii
Preface     xi
Acknowledgments     xvii
Introduction     xix
Doing Everything Wrong     1
Howard Dean and the Killer Ds     11
Activists Build a Movement, Insiders Kill It     29
Taking on DeLay, Inc.     51
What a Difference a Year Makes     75
Drafting an American Hero     95
Win One, Lose One     123
Combat Boots vs. Cowboy Boots     135
What's Next for the Netroots?     165
Notes     173
Bibliography     181
Index     191

See also: Bob Greenes Total Body Makeover or Transforming Emotions with Chinese Medicine

The Man from Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Gaylord Nelson

Author: Bill Christofferson

On Earth Day 1970 twenty million Americans displayed their commitment to a clean environment. It was called the largest demonstration in human history, and it permanently changed the nation's political agenda. By Earth Day 2000 participation had exploded to 500 million people in 167 countries.

The seemingly simple idea—a day set aside to focus on protecting our natural environment—was the brainchild of U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. It accomplished, far beyond his expectations, his lifelong goal of putting the environment onto the nation's and the world's political agendas.

A remarkable man, Nelson ranks as one of history's leading environmentalists. He also played a major role as an early, outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, and as a senate insider was a key player in civil rights, poverty, civil liberties and consumer protection issues.

The life of Nelson, a small town boy who learned his values and progressive political principles at an early age, is woven through the political history of the twentieth century. Nelson's story intersects at times with Fighting Bob La Follette, Joe McCarthy, and Bill Proxmire in Wisconsin, and with George McGovern, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Russell Long, Walter Mondale, John F. Kennedy, and others on the national scene.



Saturday, February 14, 2009

Lighting the Way or Attack Politics

Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America

Author: Karenna Gore Schiff

Karenna Gore Schiff's nationally bestselling narrative tells the fascinating stories of nine influential women, who each in her own way, tackled inequity and advocated change throughout the turbulent twentieth century.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who was born a slave and fought against lynching; Mother Jones, an Irish immigrant who organized coal miners and campaigned against child labor; Alice Hamilton, who pushed for regulation of industrial toxins; Frances Perkins, who developed key New Deal legislation; Virginia Durr, who fought the poll tax and segregation; Septima Clark, who helped to register black voters; Dolores Huerta, who organized farm workers; Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, an activist for reproductive rights; and Gretchen Buchenholz, one of the nation's leading child advocates.

Gore Schiff delivers an intimate and accessible account of the nine trail-blazing women who deserve not only to be honored but to have their example serve as beacons.

Karenna Gore Schiff has worked as a journalist, lawyer, and most recently, Director of Community Affairs for the Association to Benefit Children. The eldest daughter of Al and Tipper Gore, she lives in New York City with her husband and two children. This is her first book.

The New York Times - Alexandra Starr

… it is amazing to contemplate just how much these women were able to accomplish. They were intimately involved in some of the defining crusades of the 20th century, agitating for the end of Jim Crow laws in the South, basic worker protections and child labor regulations.

The fact that it's almost incomprehensible today that those policies were ever controversial speaks to the lasting nature of these women's legacies.

The Washington Post - Sara Sklaroff

That Schiff can write fluently of the faults and failures of these women bespeaks a triumph of feminism: Our heroes are not so fragile that we need coddle their memories. Wells-Barnett allows pride to cloud her judgment; Hamilton makes an incorrect scientific finding about the 1902 Chicago typhoid epidemic that allows city officials to stage a fatal coverup; even Anthony has a bad moment, criticizing Wells-Barnett for having the gall to take a husband. These are not paper-doll heroines: They are fully realized, flesh-and-blood women, flawed but all the more impressive for such complexity … at its best, Lighting the Way is solid popular social history, like a textbook for advanced high school students. By which I mean no insult: If these women's lives were now routinely taught in our schools, Schiff could consider her work a major success.

Publishers Weekly

Schiff, who is most notably Al Gore's oldest daughter and a lawyer and journalist, has put together a collective biography of nine outstanding American women of the 20th century-some unjustly little known. The more celebrated are Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931), an African-American journalist who brought the horrors of lynching to public attention; Mother Jones (c. 1837-1930), an Irish immigrant and lifelong crusader for workers' rights; and Frances Perkins (1882-1965), the first woman Cabinet member, appointed by FDR. Schiff also illuminates less renowned but highly influential figures, including Alice Hamilton (1869-1970) a physician and pioneer in calling attention to the dangers of industrial poisons, and Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987), child of a former slave, who became a teacher and tireless advocate for racial equality. Several of the subjects are still alive, like Dolores Huerta, cofounder with Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers, and Gretchen Buchenholz, who established the Association to Benefit Children. Schiff has done excellent research, and though her prose isn't especially stylish, she shows her heroines as fully rounded figures. She points out, for example, that Wells-Barnett's feud with the NAACP was counterproductive and that Mother Jones's opposition to women's suffrage limited her reach. (Feb. 8) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

In this collection of nine biographies, Schiff writes about women who were highly influential in the area of social justice. Some are better known than others, and the author highlights the important contributions of each and also points out some of their mistakes, which made them less effective, but very human. Many of the women knew each other or were strongly influenced by the others; three areas of social justice—workers' rights, women's and children's rights and civil rights—are well represented. Mother Jones, Alice Hamilton and Delores Heurta worked to protect workers' rights and their health; and Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet member worked within the government to create legal protections for workers. Ida B. Wells worked to stop lynching, Virginia Durr to abolish poll taxes, Septima Clark to educate people to be able to vote. Helen Rodriguez-Trias and Gretchen Buchenholz work on children's and women's health issues. These crusaders' childhoods and private lives are part of the larger picture and none are painted as saints, but instead as real women who sacrificed, made mistakes and achieved greatness. This is a wonderful book that will be an inspiration for girls especially.

Library Journal

In this spirited and engaging first book, Schiff, daughter of former Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore, profiles nine women who helped change the course of history by overcoming injustice in their own lives. Selected because they resonated with Schiff personally, these stories show how "political movements are built from the ground up, often by people who never receive credit for their eventual successes." The book is well researched and illustrated with black-and-white photographs throughout. Biographical details are placed in historical context, resulting in rich portraits that illustrate each woman's impact upon specific conditions of her day. For example, Schiff describes the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in her essay on Frances Perkins, FDR's secretary of labor, and explains the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 that orphaned Ida B. Wells, who became an antilynching activist and journalist. Schiff's other past and present women include the greater and lesser known: Mother Jones, Alice Hamilton, Virginia Durr, Septima Poinsette Clark, Dolores Huerta, Helen Rodriguez-Trias, and Gretchen Buchenholz, who founded the child advocacy organization where Schiff works. A prominent display of the dates of each woman's life would have helped general readers get oriented. Recommended for public libraries.-Donna L. Davey, Tamiment Lib., NYU Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Lawyer and activist Schiff resurrects nine little-known heroines who played a crucial role in America's humanitarian development. The best antidote to current cynicism about politics, notes former vice president Al Gore's eldest, is to offer "stories of those who fought against it by keeping politics grounded in public service." Her narrative of grassroots activism begins with Ida B. Wells's 1890s campaign to bring the lynching of blacks to greater public attention and closes with Gretchen Buchenholz's dogged, ongoing crusade to promote the welfare of New York City's homeless families through the Association to Benefit Children (where Schiff formerly served as director of community affairs). Many of the stories discern the connection between personal experience and the crusade for social justice: After losing her husband and four children during the 1867 yellow-fever epidemic, Mother Jones transformed her devastation into tireless work for miners and children forced into unspeakable labor. Among other women featured is public-health official Alice Hamilton, whose work identifying unsafe factory conditions gained her a grudging invitation to teach at Harvard in 1919, making her the first woman to be appointed to the faculty, and Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet member, who paved an important direction in labor relations under FDR. Virginia Durr and Septima Poinsette Clark, as far apart in race, class and upbringing as two Southern women could be, helped turn back the pernicious tide of racism during the civil-rights era. Mexican-American Dolores Huerta collaborated with Cesar Chavez in establishing basic human rights for farm workers. Placed at the head of the beleaguered LincolnHospital's Pediatrics Collective in the South Bronx in 1970, Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias grew over the years into a passionate critic of forced sterilization and inequities of healthcare. Schiff takes particular note of the fact that many of her subjects sacrificed a happy home life to pursue their missions, entangled in the age-old conflict between family and work. Important reading for young and old alike.



Table of Contents:
Ida B. Wells-Barnett1
Mother Jones51
Alice Hamilton95
Frances Perkins130
Virginia Durr190
Septima Poinsette Clark252
Dolores Huerta297
Helen Rodriguez-Trias341
Gretchen Buchenholz390

New interesting book: Against the Terror of Neoliberalism or Fundamentals of Fire Fighter Skills

Attack Politics: Negativity in Presidential Campaigns since 1960

Author: Emmett H Buell

Ask most Americans, and they'll tell you that presidential campaigns get dirtier and more negative with every election. But Emmett Buell and Lee Sigelman suggest that may not be as true as we think. From Jimmy Carter's use of "fear arousal" in attacking Ronald Reagan to George Bush's allusions to the "L word" to disparage Michael Dukakis's liberalism, Buell and Sigelman show how, over the last dozen elections, negativity may have been well publicized but hasn't increased—and that John Kennedy waged the most negative campaign of all.

Buell and Sigelman focus on both presidential and vice-presidential nominees as sources and targets of attacks and also examine the actions of surrogate campaigners like the Swift Boat Vets. Drawing on the New York Times as a research base—more than 17,000 campaign statements extracted from nearly 11,000 news items—they provide a more comprehensive assessment of negativity than anything previously attempted.Beginning in 1960, Buell and Sigelman categorize campaigns according to their level of competitiveness—from runaways like 1964 to dead heats like 2000 and 2004—to demonstrate how candidates go negative as circumstances warrant or permit. They break down negativity into different components, showing who attacked whom, how frequently, on what issues, how they did it, and at what point in the campaign. They also compare their findings with previously published accounts of these campaigns—including first-hand accounts by candidates and their confidants. And, as an added bonus, each chapter features "echoes from the campaign trail" that reflect the invective exchanged by rival campaigns. Attack Politics pinsdown much about negative campaigning that has previously been speculated on but never subjected to such systematic research. It offers the best overview yet of modern presidential races and is must reading for anyone interested in the vagaries of those campaigns.This book is part of the Studies in Government and Public Policy series.

Donna L. Davey, Margaret Heilbrun - Library Journal

Political and media junkies will appreciate-and even be surprised by-the who, what, when, and how that Buell (public policy, Denison Univ.) and Sigelman (political science, George Washington Univ.) present up through the 2004 election. Looking at both presidential and vice-presidential nominees, they base their findings on campaign statements quoted in the New York Times, as well as published accounts by those involved in the campaigns. Cogent research and analysis, plus choice quotes, mean this deserves a place in every political history collection.

What People Are Saying

Richard Lau
This tour de force joins John Geer's In Defense of Negativity as a 'must read' for all scholars studying negative campaigns, but also for students of political communication, democratic deliberation, and campaign strategy more generally. (Richard Lau, author of Negative Campaigning: An Analysis of U.S. Senate Campaigns)


James W. Ceaser
In this remarkable book Buell and Sigelman provide not only the most systematic treatment of negative campaigning, but also the best account yet written of the development of the modern presidential campaign. Both political scientists and practitioners will want to have this work ready at hand in their library; it is the indispensable 'bible' on the subject. (James W. Ceaser, coauthor of Red over Blue: The 2004 Elections and American Politics)


Richard Lau

This tour de force joins John Geer's In Defense of Negativity as a 'must read' for all scholars studying negative campaigns, but also for students of political communication, democratic deliberation, and campaign strategy more generally. (Richard Lau, author of Negative Campaigning: An Analysis of U.S. Senate Campaigns)


James W. Ceaser

In this remarkable book Buell and Sigelman provide not only the most systematic treatment of negative campaigning, but also the best account yet written of the development of the modern presidential campaign. Both political scientists and practitioners will want to have this work ready at hand in their library; it is the indispensable 'bible' on the subject. (James W. Ceaser, coauthor of Red over Blue: The 2004 Elections and American Politics)