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.

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.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

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

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.

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.

Visit us at ablongman.com/polisci

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.

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. I	Political Theory and Law
	Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Systematic Reconstruction and Countercriticism	23
	The Concept of the Political: A Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory	37
	From Legitimacy to Dictatorship - and Back Again: Leo Strauss's Critique of the Anti-Liberalism of Carl Schmitt	56
	Hostis Not Inimicus: Toward a Theory of the Public in the Work of Carl Schmitt	92
	Pluralism and the Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy	109
	Liberalism as a "Metaphysical System": The Methodological Structure of Carl Schmitt's Critique of Political Rationalism	131
	Carl Schmitt and the Paradox of Liberal Democracy	159
Pt. II	Legal Theory and Politics
	Carl Schmitt on Sovereignty and Constituent Power	179
	The 1933 "Break" in Carl Schmitt's Theory	196
	The Dilemmas of Dictatorship: Carl Schmitt and Constitutional Emergency Powers	217
	Revolutions and Constitutions: Hannah Arendt's Challenge to Carl Schmitt	252
	Carl Schmitt's Internal Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism: Verfassungslehre as a Response to the Weimar State Crisis	281
	Notes on Contributors	313
	Index	315

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

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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.

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-Barnett	1
	Mother Jones	51
	Alice Hamilton	95
	Frances Perkins	130
	Virginia Durr	190
	Septima Poinsette Clark	252
	Dolores Huerta	297
	Helen Rodriguez-Trias	341
	Gretchen Buchenholz	390

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)

Charlie Wilsons War or Your Government Failed You

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History

Author: George Cril

In a little over a decade, two events have transformed the world we live in: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of militant Islam. Charlie Wilson's War is the untold story behind the last battle of the Cold War and how it fueled the new jihad. George Crile tells how Charlie Wilson, a maverick congressman from east Texas, conspired with a rogue CIA operative to launch the biggest, meanest, and most successful covert operation in the Agency's history.

In the early 1980s, after a Houston socialite turned Wilson's attention to the ragged band of Afghan "freedom fighters" who continued, despite overwhelming odds, to fight the Soviet invaders, the congressman became passionate about their cause. At a time when Ronald Reagan faced a total cutoff of funding for the Contra war, Wilson, who sat on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee, managed to procure hundreds of millions of dollars to support the mujadiheen. The arms were secretly procured and distributed with the aid of an out-of-favor CIA operative, Gust Avrakotos, whose working-class Greek-American background made him an anomaly among the Ivy League world of American spies. Nicknamed "Dr. Dirty," the blue-collar James Bond was an aggressive agent who served on the front lines of the Cold War where he learned how to stretch the Agency's rules to the breaking point.

Avrokotos handpicked a staff of CIA outcasts to run his operation: "Hilly Billy," the logistics wizard who could open an unnumbered Swiss bank account for the U.S. government in twelve hours when others took months; Art Alper, the grandfatherly demolitions expert from the Technical Services Division who passed on his dark arts to the Afghans; Mike Vickers, the former Green Beret who created a systematic plan to turn a rabble of shepherds into an army of techno Holy warriors.

Moving from the back rooms of the Capitol, to secret chambers at Langley, to arms-dealers conventions, to the Khyber Pass, Charlie Wilson's War is brilliantly reported and one of the most detailed and compulsively readable accounts of the inside workings of the CIA ever written.

The New York Times

Charlie Wilson's War is a behind-the-scenes chronicle of a program that is still largely classified. Crile does not provide much insight into his reporting methods, but the book appears to be based on interviews with a number of the principals. The result is a vivid narrative, though a reader may wonder how much of this story is true in exactly the way Crile presents it. Still, few people who remember Wilson's years in Washington would discount even the wildest tales. — David Johnston

The Washington Post

The stories George Crile tells in Charlie Wilson's War must be true -- nobody could make them up. This is a rousing tale of jihad on the frontiers of the Cold War, infighting at the CIA and horse-trading in Congress, spiced by sex, booze, ambition and larger-than-life personalities. — Thomas Lippman

Ken Auletta

An amazing tale, made all the more amazing because it was missed by the press. George Crile has written a book revealing the extraordinary details and intrigue of a secret war, and that alone would be a monumental achievement. But he has also written a book about how power works in Washington, about how the C.I.A. succeeded in this war but failed because it armed an ally who became our enemy, about how we might better understand Islamic fundamentalism, about how a solitary Congressman guilefully moved the U.S. government, and all of this comes with a breathtaking cast of characters worthy of a LeCarre novel. Only it's all true. And just as vivid.

Dan Rather

Americans often ask: 'Where have all the heroes gone?' Well a lot of them come roaring through in this tour de force of reporting and writing. Tom Clancy's fiction pales in comparison with the amazing, mesmerizing story told by George Crile. By resurrecting a missing chapter out of our recent past, Charlie Wilson's War provides us with the key to understanding the present.

Christian Science Monitor - Gerard DeGroot

A cross between Tom Clancy and Carl Hiassen, with the distinguishing feature that it's all apparently true. . . . Throw in a middle-aged Texan belly dancer, an assortment of Congressional looinies, a few beauty queens, some ruthless Afghan rebels, and a murderous Pakistani dictator who only wants to be understood.

PW Daily

Crucial and timely. . . . Criles book, with its investigative verve and gripping narrative, is a comprehensive political assessment and sobering account of the power structures that run parallel to, but apparently unknown by, official government authorities.

Publishers Weekly

Put the Tom Clancy clones back on the shelf; this covert-ops chronicle is practically impossible to put down. No thriller writer would dare invent Wilson, a six-feet-four-inch Texas congressman, liberal on social issues but rabidly anti-Communist, a boozer, engaged in serial affairs and wheeler-dealer of consummate skill. Only slightly less improbable is Gust Avrakotos, a blue-collar Greek immigrant who joined the CIA when it was an Ivy League preserve and fought his elitist colleagues almost as ruthlessly as he fought the Soviet Union in the Cold War's waning years. In conjunction with President Zia of Pakistan in the 1980s, Wilson and Arvakotos circumvented most of the barriers to arming the Afghan mujahideen-distance, money, law and internal CIA politics, to name a few. Their coups included getting Israeli-modified Chinese weapons smuggled into Afghanistan, with the Pakistanis turning a blind eye, and the cultivation of a genius-level weapons designer and strategist named Michael Vickers, a key architect of the guerrilla campaign that left the Soviet army stymied. The ultimate weapon in Afghanistan was the portable Stinger anti-aircraft missile, which eliminated the Soviet's Mi-24 helicopter gunships and began the train of events leading to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and its satellites. A triumph of ruthless ability over scruples, this story has dominated recent history in the form of blowback: many of the men armed by the CIA became the Taliban's murderous enforcers and Osama bin Laden's protectors. Yet superb writing from Crile, a 60 Minutes producer, will keep even the most vigorous critics of this Contra-like affair reading to the end. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Raymond Puffer - KLIATT

This is a fast-paced and highly colored account, presumably true, of how a freewheeling Congressman teamed up with an Oliver North-ish CIA employee to funnel arms and money to the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet takeover of their country. The subtitle pretty well sums up not only what the book is about, but also its literary style and its target audience. Author George Crile is a CBS television producer, and has put his Washington insider's knowledge to good use. Representative Charles Wilson (D-TX), a 60ish and undeniably handsome politician, was frequently described as a freewheeling party boy with a perennial midlife crisis. Never really a Congressional insider in spite of his longevity, he was most noted for an extremely hawkish view of foreign affairs. The Speaker of the House viewed him as something of a loose cannon, but also as someone who could be useful if he could be held in check. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought everything together. Wilson leapt into extracurricular action, making under-the-table connections and deals that raised money, bought weapons, and got them into rebel hands. In the end he not only helped the mountain guerillas but also managed to spare his party and the House Leadership some discomfort. The combination of James Bond-like action, a noble cause, and sexual escapades proves too much for Crile, and he makes the most of the story. His narrative is fast-moving, supercharged, and overheated, chock-full of high drama and sexual innuendo. In short, it is great fun. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Grove Press, 550p. illus. notes. index., Ages 15 to adult.

Library Journal

A follow-up to "Charlie Did It," a piece on CBS's 60 Minutes that Crile produced with Robert Anderson in 1990, this book is an account of Texas representative Wilson's efforts to aid covert CIA activities to get military aid to Afghanistan's Mujahideen guerrillas, who were fighting the occupying Soviet Red Army in the 1980s. As a member of the powerful House Defense Appropriations and Intelligence Oversight committees, Wilson was in a good position to play a role in the "Great Game" and may have seen himself as a new Lawrence of Arabia. This work must be based on unacknowledged interviews with the main participants, for there is no bibliography and few reference notes; more documentation could surely have been provided. With its colorful international cast of characters, this book provides powerful background for understanding our current predicament. But while this may have been the largest covert operation in U.S. history, it was not the most important; that honor goes to Operation Bodyguard, which hid the D-day invasion plan from Hitler. An interesting and readable story that is suitable for academic and large public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/02; illustrations and index not seen.]-Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

So, let's see. We arm Afghan rebels to fight the Soviets. The Afghans drive the Russians out of their country. We ignore the Afghans. They stew for a few years and hook up with Osama bin Laden.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: A Strange Award at Langley

See also: Alcohol Gender and Culture or Single Malt Whiskey

Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters

Author: Richard A Clark

Richard Clarke's dramatic statement to the grieving families during the 9/11 Commission hearings touched a raw nerve across America. Not only had our government failed to prevent the 2001 terrorist attacks, but it has proven itself, time and again, incapable of handling the majority of our most crucial national security issues, from Iraq to Katrina and beyond. This is not just a temporary failure of our current leadership—it is a systemic problem, the result of a pattern of incompetence that must be understood, confronted, and prevented. Clarke's first book, the number one bestseller Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, explained how the United States had stumbled into a struggle with violent Islamist extremists. Now, in Your Government Failed You, Clarke looks at why these unconscionable failures have continued and how America and the world can succeed against the terrorists. Yet Clarke also goes far beyond terrorism, to examine the inexcusable chain of recurring U.S. government disasters. Despite the lessons of Vietnam, there is Iraq. A trail of intelligence failures litters the Washington landscape. From Katrina to color codes and duct tape, "homeland security" has been an oxymoron. Why does the superpower continue to bobble national security?

Clarke minces no words in his examination of the breadth and depth of the mediocrity, entropy, and collapse endemic in America's national security programs. In order for the United States to stop its string of strategic mistakes, we first need to understand why they happen. Drawing on his thirty years in the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community, Clarke gives us a privileged, if horrifying, look into the debacle of government policies, discovering patterns in the failures and offering ways to stop the cycle once and for all.

Publishers Weekly

With more than 30 years of government experience, Clarke knows what he's talking about when he says government is failing American citizens. He spends a tremendous amount of time exploring how and where specific areas of the government are failing the public. Listeners will be reeling at Clarke's words; he doesn't hesitate to assign blame to specific individuals, including himself and others who are still in power. What is missing from his book is legitimate ways of fixing and mending the long-term problems of government in an election-driven political environment. Clarke attempts to address this, but fails to fully comprehend the numerous powers needed to generate some of the transitions that he wants. Clarke has a decent voice, though often his staggered speech reminds one of William Shatner. Like many nonprofessional narrators, the production abounds with body shifting, throat noises and other distracting sounds. A HarperCollins hardcover.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden or The Destruction of the European Jews

When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden: What the Government Should be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism

Author: Bill Maher

A book with original new posters for America's new war… from Bill Maher…that takes some explaining! In a nutshell…these are posters with messages of how everyone can do things to help fight future terrorism, the kind of posters our government SHOULD be making and plastering everywhere.

Since we live in an era where pandering is expected and therefore essential to politics, the American government no longer asks citizens to sacrifice, as it did in World War I, World War II and during the Cold War. In posters from those eras we see a government unafraid to call upon its people to curb travel, save tin, buy bonds or plant a garden.

Maher has looked through books of these old posters (several will be reprinted at the beginning of the book), and some from 60 or 80 years ago are eerily perfect for today's struggle. "Should brave men die so you can drive?" Our government does not make that same link for its citizens today, although it is just as true. Rather the current administration spent government millions on an ad campaign we've all seen, "I helped the terrorists by doing drugs," even though drugs fund a negligible amount of terrorist activity and oil, ultimately, almost all of it. Whenever somebody tells Maher that drugs fund terrorism, he always says, "It's SUVs that fund terrorism." That, and messages like that, is what these posters say. How can we think differently and act differently to live safer in a better world.

This is a practical book - chock-full of things that can actually be done. When we become smarter, more caring, less materialistic, less myopic and greedy…we will win. We will all win! Maher says, "Since I'm NOT the government, some of my posters exhort us to put the kind of pressure on the government itself that would result for example, in airport security personnel with at least a high school diploma."

About the Author: In 1993 comic Bill Maher created the perfect forum for his quick-witted comedic talents: "Politically Incorrect." He brought together some of the most interesting politicians, entertainers, and journalists to participate in some of the most controversial, topical comical discussions. On September 9, 2001, a remark he made on his show caused quite an uproar: "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away, that's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

On 6/28/02 "Politically Incorrect" went off the air…leaving a big void.

Maher was born in New York and raised in River Vale, NJ. He graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English. He currently resides in Los Angeles. He and his show won four cable Ace Awards and was nominated for an Emmy in 2001. He is the author of Does Anybody Have a Problem With It: Politically Incorrect's Greatest Hits. He has had five HBO specials, and has made many appearances on Letterman and Leno.

Book Magazine

Maher targets terrorism in this book of essays that challenge our national addictions to oil, drugs and SUVs. "The countries that have the money to offer large cash awards to the families of suicide bombers ... are getting that money from people using lots of oil, " he points out. Maher is known for his controversial opinions, but the arguments he presents are really just common sense. In the end, his revealing ideas are less radical than patriotic.

Publishers Weekly

Maher, host of the now-defunct TV debate show Politically Incorrect (which many believe was canceled in response to Maher's riff on the word "cowardly" after the September 11 attacks), brings his latest series of irreverent rants to audio. As the title (inspired by a WWII poster) indicates, this time his target is our nation's role in the war on terrorism. Though he initially sounds a bit restrained, Maher soon warms to his role as reader and gives the spirited, slick and sarcastic delivery for which he's so well known. His opinions on airport security, a spoiled citizenry, empty demonstrations of patriotism and Americans' love affair with cars (which creates a dependence on oil), may dilute some political fine points, but they contain the kind of factoids ("If we increased fuel efficiency by 2.7 miles per gallon, it would eliminate our need for oil from the Persian Gulf") and commonsense logic that often get the so-called "average Joe" riled up. Fans will delight in the Maher-isms that abound here (e.g., many Muslims think of bin Laden as "Michael Jordan, Bill Gates and Batman all rolled into one"). And throughout, Maher keeps listeners in-the-now with qualifiers like "at the time this audio was recorded," befitting his reputation as an outspoken observer of current events. Several postcard reproductions of WWII-style posters created for the book are included in the packaging. Simultaneous release with the New Millennium hardcover (Forecasts, Nov. 4). (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Maher is going to tick off a lot of people with this book-and he's happy to do so. The controversial host of the recently canceled TV show Politically Incorrect delivers his views on everything from the stupidity of airline security measures and legalizing marijuana to the futility of sticking flags on our cars as a way of showing support for the "war on terrorism." "Bull puckey!" says Maher and proceeds to infuriate, agitate, irritate, and lambaste most of the government's actions following the events of September 11, 2001. He spares no one in his denunciation of what he considers ineffective reactions to the attacks on our country. Do you drive an SUV? Do you put up a lavish display of Christmas lights on your front lawn every year? Do you believe the "war" on drugs is winnable? Well, be prepared to be caustically told that you're part of our country's problems. The author is a satirist and an astute political commentator who spares few people in his description of what he feels is wrong with this country. All libraries should add this item to their audio collections-and then wait for the barrage of complaints from patrons who will vehemently disagree with Maher's observations.-Joseph L. Carlson, Allan Hancock Coll., Lompoc, CA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-At first glance, the format of this volume might fool readers into thinking that they are looking at a comedic picture book. The cover, a take-off on a World War II U.S. propaganda poster, shows Maher driving along with a ghostly Osama bin Laden. The book tells readers that to waste gasoline (read oil) by driving alone in an SUV is to help the enemy. The author feels that not enough has been done to prevent further catastrophic terrorist attacks and contends that the government involved the public during World War II by making the best use of propaganda. He argues that Americans have been led to believe that the current war can best be fought if we go about business as usual, pay less in taxes, and continue to buy consumer goods, even if they tie us to regimes in the Middle East known to be financing terror. This book is filled with controversial and perhaps politically incorrect statements, and each essay is likely to provoke a good argument; posters designed for this title illustrate the author's thesis. For example, one depicts SUVs ("Selfish Use Vehicles") adorned with American flags and shows his impatience with people who, after September 11, turned their vehicles into "traveling country fairs." Teens should be taken with this opportunity to validate their opinions or to reevaluate their life choices. The sexually explicit and irreverent language will be familiar to most high school students.-Don Guerriero, Fairfax County Public Library System, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

What People Are Saying

Michael Moore
Bill Maher has the courage to speak his mind-no matter what the consequences-something you can't say about most people these days. And he's damn funny! Now, more than ever, the country needs his outrage. Agree or disagree with him, there is no question that what he has written in this book should be front and center in the great national debate and I, for one, am thrilled that this cantankerous s.o.b. is still there doing battle for the republic we all love.

Larry King
Bill Maher has inherited the mantle of Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift and he wears it with aplomb. If he were living in any other time or in one of many other countries he would truly be in danger of being put to death for his legendary ability to say the unthinkable and say it better (and before) anyone else. When You Ride Alone You Ride with bin Laden is destined to be the most talked about book of the year

Al Franken
After September 11th, when Bill Maher offended easily-offended people with a widely (and in many cases, deliberately) misunderstood remark, Ari Fleisher said that people need to watch what they say and do. In this very funny but ultimately serious, provocative but truly patriotic book, Bill prescribes what Americans can do to defend our nation. And please put this blurb as far away from Ann Coulter's as possible.

Ann Coulter
Bill Maher loves America, hates conventional thinking, and, despite his curmudgeonly image, has a heart of gold. In the war on terrorism, we could use a little less tolerance and sensitivity and a little more manly anger. In this book, Bill leads the way hilariously.

Interesting textbook: Microsoft Office 2007 or Essentials of Business Information Systems

The Destruction of the European Jews (Third Edition)

Author: Raul Hilberg

The Destruction of the European Jews is widely considered the landmark study of the Holocaust. First published in 1961, Raul Hilberg's comprehensive account of how Germany annihilated the Jewish community of Europe spurred discussion, galvanized further research, and shaped the entire field of Holocaust studies. This revised and expanded edition of Hilberg's classic work extends the scope of his study and includes 80,000 words of new material, particularly from recently opened archives in eastern Europe, added over a lifetime of research. It is the definitive work of a scholar who has devoted more than fifty years to exploring and analyzing the realities of the Holocaust.

Spanning the twelve-year period of anti-Jewish actions from 1933 to 1945, Hilberg's study encompasses Germany and all the territories under German rule or influence. Its principal focus is on the large number of perpetrators — civil servants, military personnel, Nazi party functionaries, SS men, and representatives of private enterprises — in the machinery of death.

Author Biography: Raul Hilberg is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont

Quest for Absolute Security or Another City

Quest for Absolute Security: The Failed Relations Among U.S. Intelligence Agencies

Author: Athan Theoharis

In its 2004 report on 9/11, the Kean Commission criticized U.S. intelligence for having failed to anticipate the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Basing its findings on the premise of absolute security, the commission faulted the FBI for not adopting a creative and aggressive approach to the terrorist threat, and both the FBI and the CIA for their inadequate cooperation. But, says distinguished historian Athan Theoharis in his new book, absolute security is an illusory quest that is certain to nurture disappointment-and worse. His compelling analysis traces the troubled history of relations among American intelligence agencies and points out the historical myopia that characterizes the Kean Commission's findings and recommendations.

Political Science Quarterly

Provides expert history as an important context for understanding the lead-up to current debates and controversies on how to organize, operate, and protect homeland security in the wake of September 11.

Kirkus Reviews

Award-winning FBI historian Theoharis (The FBI and American Democracy, 2004, etc.) brings a unique perspective to the question of how and why the intelligence community failed to uncover the 9/11 terrorists and prevent the attack. His balanced, meticulously researched history begins in 1882, when the Office of Naval Intelligence was established. Theoharis describes the proliferation of intelligence agencies over the 100 years since the formation of the FBI in 1908, but dismisses this as a principal cause of the 9/11 failure. Instead, he blames the intelligence community's cult of excessive secrecy, which he attributes to their attempt "to shape the political culture" by focusing more on extralegal political subversion than on potential criminal activities. He describes how this attitude was abetted by the willingness of presidents from FDR on to empower the extralegal activities of the FBI-and later the CIA and NSA-by using secret executive authorizations to bypass congressional oversight. He disagrees with many of the conclusions of the National Commission on Terrorist Acts, which in 2004 cited deficiencies in information-sharing as the primary reason for the intelligence breakdown prior to 9/11. Theoharis also disagrees with the commission's recommendation that oversight be centralized in the executive branch, calling for more congressional oversight rather than less. Using the intelligence services to consolidate their own power has been a prime objective of many presidents, he contends, and it has led to significant intelligence failures and constitutional abuses. An important, provocative book, sure to be widely discussed.

What People Are Saying

John Prados
"The Quest for Absolute Security shows anew his mastery of the Bureau's history."

Geoffrey R. Stone
"Convincingly demonstrates the dangers to liberty inherent in the...authority over intelligence activities and the need for aggressive congressional oversight."--(Geoffrey R. Stone, author of War and Liberty: An American Dilemma)

Nadine Strossen
"Theoharis's compelling and timely book showcases the history of civil liberties in our society....a penetrating, persuasive assessment."--(Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and professor of law at New York Law School)

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments     vii
Introduction     3
The Origins of U.S. Intelligence, 1882-1919     11
A Period of Transition, 1919-1936     28
The Origins of the National Security State, 1936-1945: Part I, Domestic Intelligence     46
The Origins of the National Security State, 1940-1945: Part II, Foreign Intelligence     82
Bureaucracy and Centralization, 1945-1952     99
Secrecy and the Loss of Accountability, 1952-1965     131
The Breakdown of the Cold War Consensus, 1965-1978     170
Reaffirmation of the National Security State, 1979-2005     221
Hopes and Realities     262
Notes     269
Index     294

Book about: One Dish Meals from Popular Cuisines or Six Plates Over Texas

Another City: Urban Life and Urban Spaces in the New American Republic

Author: Dell Upton

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, burgeoning American cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia seemed increasingly chaotic. Noise, odors, and a feverish level of activity on the streets threatened to overwhelm the senses. Growing populations placed new demands on every aspect of the urban landscape—streets, parks, schools, asylums, cemeteries, markets, waterfronts, and more. In this unique exploration of the early history of urban architecture and design, leading architectural historian Dell Upton reveals the fascinating confluence of sociological, cultural, and psychological factors that shaped American cities in the antebellum years.

 

Through contemporary travel accounts, diaries, and correspondence, as well as maps, architectural drawings, paintings, and prints—many previously unpublished—Upton investigates not only how buildings were designed, streets were laid out, and urban space was put to use, but also why. He offers original insights into the way cities were imagined, and an extensive selection of illustrations recreates the various features of the urban landscape in the nineteenth century.

 

Making Waves and Riding the Currents or Schmoozing with Terrorists

Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom

Author: Charles Halpern

This inspiring memoir is about working for a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world, while cultivating the wisdom that supports and deepens this work. Everyone who is trying to make waves - to bring about needed social and institutional change - will enjoy this real-world guide to effectively navigating the currents to achieve success while also maintaining balance, compassion, and hope. Charles Halpern, one of America's most distinguished public interest advocates and social innovators, shares his revealing experiences and learnings along a journey from corporate attorney to activist and social entrepreneur. People of all ages will learn about integrating the inner and outer work of their lives through the practice of wisdom.

Look this: Lei de Contrato Básica de Paralegals, 5E

Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans--to a Jew!

Author: Aaron Klein

In a time of unprecedented danger for the West, it's crucial that Americans understand the true nature of the adversaries we face and how we are making them bolder each day. Join Aaron Klein, award-winning journalist and radio commentator, as he schmoozes and kvetches with radical clerics, suicide bombers, the parents of potential child "martyrs" and the leaders of the world's most dangerous terrorist organizations. Here's the real story behind today's war headlines, told from the unique perspective of a Jew meeting—and eating—with his deadliest enemies. Among the highlights of Schmoozing with Terrorists: Why do the terrorists tell Klein that Hillary Clinton is the jihadist choice for president? Which anti-war politicians and celebrities meddling in Middle East politics are jihadist favorites? What compels someone to blow themselves up in order to kill others? What would day-to-day life be like in America if the terrorists win? (Madonna and Britney Spears take note!)

Power Energy and the New Russian Imperialism or And His Lovely Wife

Power, Energy, and the New Russian Imperialism (PSI Reports Series)

Author: Anita Orban

Russia is the world's foremost energy superpower, rivaling Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer and accounting for a quarter of the world's exports of natural gas. Russia's energy reserves account for half of the world's probable oil reserves and a third of the world's proven natural gas reserves. Whereas military might and nuclear weapons formed the core of Soviet cold war power, since 1991 the Russian state has viewed its monopolistic control of Russia's energy resources as the core of its power now and for the future. Since 2005, the international news has been filled with Russia's repeated demonstrations of its readiness to use price, transit fees, and supply of gas and oil exports as punitive policy instruments against recalcitrant states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, striking in turn the Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, and Lithuania. Orban reveals for the first time in Power, Energy, and the New Russian Imperialism Russia's readiness to wield the same energy weapon against her neighbors on the west, all of them former Soviet satellite states but now EU and NATO member nations: the three Baltic nations and the five East European nations of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. Orban shows how the Kremlin since 1991 has systematically used Russian energy companies as players in a concerted neo-mercantilist, energy-based foreign policy designed to further Russia's neo-imperial ambitions among America's key allies in Central East Europe. Her unprecedented analysis is key to predicting Russia's strategic response to American negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic to host the US missile shield. She alsoreveals the economic and diplomatic modus operandi by which Russia will increasingly apply its energy clout to shape and coerce the foreign policies of the West European members of the EU, as Russia's contribution to EU gas consumption increases from a quarter today to three-quarters by 2020. Orban proves that Russia's neo-mercantilist energy strategy in East Europe is not at all dependent on the person of Putin, but began under Yeltsin and continues under Medvedev, the former chairman of Gazprom.

See also: A Bloody Business or Immigrant Acts

. . . And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man

Author: Connie Schultz

The first time I heard it, I laughed.
Oh, come on, I thought. He didn’t just say that.
We were at a restaurant in southern Ohio, where a hundred or so Democrats and a handful of young campaign workers had gathered to hear my husband, Sherrod Brown, announce for the seventh time in two days why he was running for the United States Senate.
The party chairman of the county stood up at the lectern and in a loud, booming voice, introduced “Congressman Sherrod Brown–and his lovely wife.”
By Week 40 of the campaign, I had been introduced that way nearly a hundred times. I stopped counting once we hit the 50 marker. I knew I was not the point at these gatherings, and I was so proud of the man who was.
Also, I realized I was getting cranky about something I could not change. If I couldn’t rely on a sense of humor, I was in for one long year on the campaign trail.

Writing with her trademark warmth, wit, and common sense, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz reveals the rigors, adrenaline joys, and absolute madness of a new marriage at midlife and campaigning with her husband, now the junior senator from Ohio. She describes the chain of events leading up to Sherrod’s decision to campaign for Senate (he would not run without his wife’s unequivocal support) in a state where no Democrat had won statewide office for twelve years. She writes about the moment her friends in the press became not so friendly; the constant campaign demands on her marriage and family life; a personal tragedy that came out of the blue. She gives us a candid behind-the-scenes look at the often ludicrous trials and tribulations of being anopinionated columnist, a political wife, and a newly married woman in her forties, and the rigors of political life: audacious bloggers, ruthless adversaries, campaign fatigue, political divas, the no-small-planes agreement, and staffers young enough to be her children suddenly directing her and her husband’s every move.
Filled with eye-opening revelations about the election process, . . . and His Lovely Wife illuminates through one woman’s story a marriage, our political system, our working lives, and our nation. Connie Schultz is outspoken, passionate, and very public about her opinions–in other words, every political consultant’s nightmare, and every reader’s dream.

Publishers Weekly

Schultz (Life Happens) gives a frank and adoring account of standing by her man, Sherrod Brown, in his run for U.S. Senate from Ohio. Ashtabula-bred Schultz and Democratic Congressman Brown, both middle-aged, longtime divorced single parents, married in 2004, and by the middle of the next year had decided he would quit his congressional seat and oppose two-term Republican Sen. Mike DeWine. While a supportive and loving wife, Schultz is also a feminist, devoted to her work as a journalist (she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005); she reluctantly gave in to the pressure to take a sabbatical from her Cleveland Plain Dealercolumn during the course of the campaign. However, she became a valuable tool to her husband's success, from forcing his handlers to give the exhausted candidate time to recoup to trotting out her working-class family's hard-luck story when convenient. There are many funny moments (Brown was criticized for his unruly curls and his "cheap suits"), and DeWine's negative ads (led by Republican strategist Karl Rove) prompted Brown's team, in Hillary Clinton's words, to "deck him" with an ad of its own. (Schultz's own newspaper didn't endorse Brown.) Eventually, he won, and Schultz could happily return to her column. Her diary is upbeat, sometimes overly but affably composed. (July)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Joel W. Tscherne - Library Journal

Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is married to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio. In early 2006, she took a leave of absence from the newspaper both to work on her husband's campaign and to avoid any criticism for partisan writing. Here, she recounts the ups and downs of his eventually successful campaign, particularly in the face of new styles of journalism, mounting campaign costs, and the stress of running for office (Brown was long considered the underdog). She also discusses the campaign's effect on their personal lives, including the touching story of her father's impassioned support of her husband and the pain of his death early in the campaign. Finally, she assesses the complexity of appealing to a wide range of potential voters without sacrificing their own core beliefs, particularly in traditionally Republican sections of the state. While not meant as an academic study of modern political campaigning, the book does an excellent job of articulating the ordeal. Strongly recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ2/1/07.]

Library Journal

Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Schultz may have won a Pulitzer Prize, a Robert F. Kennedy Award, two National Headliner awards, and more, but during husband Sherrod Brown's successful run for Congress, she was just his "lovely wife." A smart insider's view of campaigning. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Is Ohio's junior senator planning a 2012 run for president?For someone who claims to have at one point been uncomfortable with campaigning, Schultz (Life Happens, 2006), a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and wife of Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), sure does enough of it in this book. The story of her life during election season opens two years after Schultz and Brown married, and two weeks after Brown decided to give up a safe congressional seat to run against Mike DeWine, a two-term Republican incumbent in 2004's most famous swing state. One morning, as Schultz watched, two men in bespoke suits leap out of a car and attempt to steal the family's garbage. They were thwarted by Schultz and her disabled dog, but, clearly, the stage was set for drama. The campaign only got dirtier from there: Soon DeWine's attack ads were using images of 9/11; critics demanded to know why Schultz kept her name; and Brown's ex-wife had to clarify that, though they may have endured a bitter divorce, Brown is neither a bad man nor a wife beater. While Schultz delivers a chilling account of the hits she, her family and her career took, giving the now-cliched term "battleground state" new life, she often dwells too lovingly on minor slights-it seems every reporter, every senior citizen, every blogger who slighted her or her husband is mentioned here-and wastes time establishing salt-of-the-earth credibility for herself and her husband when she could be bringing their characters to life. The book has all the elements we've seen in the autobiographies of politicians preparing a big run: canned home truths; hard-knock upbringings; genealogies proving a connection to the common man; and-most irritating of all-attemptsto humanize through small "quirky" details. We learn, for example, that Schultz likes Brown's hair curly, not cropped, and that Brown does romantic things for their anniversary-but Brown himself remains a cipher. A book disappointingly devoid of substance.

A Bloody Business or Immigrant Acts

A Bloody Business: America's War Zone Contractors and the Occupation of Iraq

Author: Gerald Schumacher

As the U.S. Army shrinks, a private army steps into the breach. A Bloody Business offers an unprecedented look behind the scenes and into the ranks of this mercenary force (numbering as many as 15,000 today) who guard supply convoys, train foreign soldiers, provide security for foreign leaders and dignitaries—and whose workplaces are the most dangerous hot spots on the planet. With its insights into who these men are, what drives them, where they come from, how they prepare, and what they do, this book provides a uniquely close-up and complete picture of the private army behind America’s military muscle.

The author interviewed security contractors and their families, high-ranking coalition officials, and was in Iraq, where he witnessed how private soldiers fought ambushes, trained Iraqi forces, escorted high-level officials in dangerous conditions, and saw the contractor side of the Iraq war. Includes action on the supply lines and front lines of this unique conflict, and the stories of the contractors who live it every day.

Publishers Weekly

Retired army colonel Schumacher polishes the public image of private wartime contractors in this informative if relentlessly glowing account of these "unrecognized and unappreciated patriots" in Iraq and Kuwait. Schumacher gained access to employees from contracting firms MPRI and Crescent Security, and his perspective is one of deep affection and respect-for people who put themselves in harm's way to provide security for diplomats, to move convoys of precious materials and to rebuild the broken infrastructure of war-torn countries. Describing the day-to-day operations of the trucking, training and security contractors he interviewed in Kuwait and Iraq, Schumacher argues that they don't work for the money (MPRI workers' pay comes to under $20 an hour) but out of a sense of adventure, patriotism and expertise. The author's voice is unpretentious but swaggering, tough but sentimental; he's as critical of the Bush administration for its ill-conceived strategies as of the media for what he considers prejudice. There's not much in the way of subtle policy debate or comprehensive analysis ("Department of Defense outsourcing to civilian contractors is an efficient, short-term solution"), but Schumacher writes with a keen sense of justice and empathy as he recounts the harrowing tales of these contractors-for-hire. B&w photos. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

New interesting book: Technology and Strategy or Business Data Communications

Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics

Author: Lisa Low

In Immigrant Acts, Lisa Lowe argues that understanding Asian immigration to the United States is fundamental to understanding the racialized economic and political foundations of the nation. Lowe discusses the contradictions whereby Asians have been included in the workplaces and markets of the U.S. nation-state, yet, through exclusion laws and bars from citizenship, have been distanced from the terrain of national culture.

Lowe argues that a national memory haunts the conception of Asian American, persisting beyond the repeal of individual laws and sustained by U.S. wars in Asia, in which the Asian is seen as the perpetual immigrant, as the "foreigner-within." In Immigrant Acts, she argues that rather than attesting to the absorption of cultural difference into the universality of the national political sphere, the Asian immigrant-at odds with the cultural, racial, and linguistic forms of the nation-displaces the temporality of assimilation. Distance from the American national culture constitutes Asian American culture as an alternative site that produces cultural forms materially and aesthetically in contradiction with the institutions of citizenship and national identity. Rather than a sign of a "failed" integration of Asians into the American cultural sphere, this critique preserves and opens up different possibilities for political practice and coalition across racial and national borders.

In this uniquely interdisciplinary study, Lowe examines the historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic meanings of immigration in relation to Asian Americans. Extending the range of Asian American critique, Immigrant Acts will interest readers concerned with race and ethnicity in the United States, American cultures, immigration, and transnationalism.

Women's Review of Books

...[Examines] the outsider status of Asians...in twentieth-century America....also [looks] to culture as a source for the creation of alternative notions of identity, community and politics.

Table of Contents:

	Preface
1	Immigration, Citizenship, Racialization: Asian American Critique	1
2	Canon, Institutionalization, Identity: Asian American Studies	37
3	Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Asian American Differences	60
4	Imagining Los Angeles in the Production of Multiculturalism	84
5	Decolonization, Displacement, Disidentification: Writing and the Question of History	97
6	Unfaithful to the Original: The Subject of Dictee	128
7	Work, Immigration, Gender: Asian "American" Women	154
	Epilogue	174
	Notes	177
	Bibliography	223
	Index	241